Analytics or common sense?
When it comes to sports betting there are some people that live and die by the numbers and analytics and there are some people that just want to have fun and use their “gut.”
I believe numbers and analytics are important and don’t feel completely comfortable placing a wager without some hard data behind that decision. As we know, that doesn’t always work out. I also know a lot of people that just have a feeling about games and they use that to make wagers.
While that doesn’t sound very scientific, they are probably using some kind of analytics and they don’t even realize it.
For example, if a college basketball team with a 4-13 record upset the number 1 ranked team in the country by shooting 80% from three-point range, do we really think they could do it again in a rematch.
Whether they know anything about analytics or not, most people are going to take the No.1 ranked team in the rematch. Why? Because there is no way that the underdog is going to shoot like that again.
People that know and understand analytics realize that’s a form of regression to the mean. Regression is one thing that I consistently look at. Is positive regression coming? Is negative regression coming?
We all know that if a player hits 10 home runs in a week that they will not be able to keep that up week after week.
Baseball is full of statistics and numbers and that leads to opportunities to identify regression – especially since it’s a long 162-game regular season. Numbers and player performance will nearly always get back to their averages.
Many of our picks during the season will reflect regression in some form. It’s something you should keep in mind when making your own plays.