Baseball Money Lines Explained

Written August 11, 2007 by Jack Jones

mlb-money-lines Baseball betting is different than most other sports in that there is no point spread set for the game. Instead, baseball sportsbooks use the money line. When you make baseball picks against the money line, you are simply picking who you will think will win the game outright, it doesn’t matter how many runs the team wins or loses by, they just need to score more than the other team. What odds makers do in lieu of the point spread is weigh the money line with heavier odds on the favorite. This is an example of what MLB odds might look like:

Texas Rangers -140
Oakland A’s +130

What these odds tell us is that the Rangers are projected to win the game. The favorite in MLB matchups will always be the negative number, while the underdog is always positive. The easiest way to think about money lines is in terms of $100. In the example above, the -140 means that you would need to risk $140 to win $100 on the Texas Rangers. As for the A’s at +130, that number tells you that you can risk $100 to win $130 on them.

The great part about money lines is that, when you bet on underdogs, you can decrease the percentage of games you need to win to show a profit. For example, if you bet on 100 games with an average line of -130, you would need to win 58% (58 of 100) of your bets just to turn a profit, betting $100 per game. You would win $5,800, but lose $5,460 on these bets, giving you a total profit of $340. Now, looking at a situation where you bet on mostly small underdogs, say and average line of +115 over 100 bets, you would only need to win about 47% of your bets (47 of 100) to show a profit. You would win $5,405 in this case, while losing $5,300, a profit of $105. Say you can up your winning percentage to 50% at an average money line of +115. If you are able to do that, you would win $5,750, while losing $5,000, a profit of $750. As you can see, winning bets on underdogs can add up quickly. Sportsbooks are, of course, well-aware of this, but because most people lean toward betting favorites and not underdogs, they don’t really care. If you choose your bets wisely and take as many high-value small to medium underdogs as you can, you will be well on your way to a profitable MLB season. Learn even more about how to bet baseball.

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