Making money as a sports bettor can be tough. While many get into the hobby thinking they can easily turn their knowledge about sports into cold, hard cash, it’s often much trickier than that. However, bettors using our MLB +EV betting tools (including myself) have found plenty of success with one MLB player prop: strikeouts! We haven’t been swinging and missing with them: our tools currently sport a 13% ROI on them! Let’s talk about how the tools work and what our strikeout prop betting strategy has been — and what yours can be.
MLB Strikeout Player Props: Our Betting Tools Have a 13% ROI!
MLB Strikeout Player Props: The Results
Using our handy market-based positive expected value (+EV) results tool (which you can read more about here), we can filter to view all MLB strikeout player props the tool has given an OS Rating, a measurement of value that takes into account both expected win rate (xWIN) and expected value (EV), of three or greater. When we do so, we see that our tools currently sport a 13.2% return on investment (ROI):
Over a sample of 687 bets across every sportsbook our tools are equipped to process, we won 394 bets and lost 293. That 57.4% win rate is good, but because not every MLB strikeout prop is priced to even odds, it doesn’t mean much: the 13.2% actual ROI is what matters.
Some sportsbooks stand out as easier to beat than others. For instance, 14 of the 394 winning bets that met the above criteria were available at ESPNBET while only five of the losers were, giving us an ROI of 46.1% over a small sample. We identified 53 winners at FanDuel with only 34 losers as well, good for a nice 21% ROI.
Note that our MLB player prop tools weren’t profitable at a few books. For instance, the tools identified 39 +EV strikeout bets at Fanatics but only 17 of them won, yielding a brutal -10.6% ROI. We were also negative at Circa and PointsBet (which is functionally Fanatics at this point).
But what if you were even choosier with your MLB strikeout player prop bets?
If we filter to only MLB strikeout props with OS Ratings of six or higher, our ROI increases to 16.5%! While the sample of bets falls from 687 to 297, so you would be placing fewer wagers, you would have a made money at a more efficient clip.
These numbers reveal how beatable off-market lines at Caesars and ESPNBET have been. We went 5-1 at both sites, which, while a small sample, speaks to how important jumping on those lines can be. SuperBook has been even more beatable, with us going on a 19-6 tear and scoring a 55% ROI over a 25-bet sample. So how do the MLB betting tools work?
MLB Strikeout Player Props: The Strategy
The below content is repurposed from our guide to using +EV sports betting tools.
How Do OddsShopper’s MLB Betting Tools Work?
Before we talk about how to use OddsShopper’s +EV betting tools, let’s talk about how they work. Our model indexes the odds from across the sports betting market, adjusts for hold, book sharpness and other factors, then generates a breakeven price called “true odds” against which all publicly available odds are compared.
When a wager is trading for longer odds than the true odds, we know that a bet is a +EV bet. How do we know this? Our model is carefully backtested to ensure we have a positive return on investment. Again you can check out our results — or the results of our subscribers, some of which are included in this article.
While you can arrive at a +EV bet by other means, OddsShopper’s market-based approach is a great way to build your bankroll. It relies on the presupposition that some sportsbooks are sharper than others, especially Pinnacle, a high-limit, low-hold offshore book.
Because Pinnacle has higher limits and lower hold than domestic books, also called public books, they have more incentive to post more efficient odds. We can use their lines to beat public books, who often price up overs (and price down unders) in hopes of pocketing more money from public bettors.
How to Use OddsShopper’s +EV Betting Tools
Now let’s talk about how to use OddsShopper’s tools. When you first sign up, you should navigate to the shop pages to see the best +EV bets today. It should look something like this:
You’ll find bets from a variety of sports and on a variety of markets. In this screenshot alone, we’ve got several NBA player prop bets, a few MLB player prop and home run bets, as well as a golf tournament matchup.
Our shop pages are customizable. You can change your state, which will lead to only wagers available to you rendering as +EV bets. You can customize your bankroll, which will change the recommended bet sizing. You can also filter by league, sportsbook, type of bet and when the game, match or tournament in question will occur
Next, let’s take a quick look at an example wager and how our product team describes each of the key terms.
Bet Size: The recommended bet size as a percentage of your bankroll. This metric is based on a fractional Kelly Criterion approach that leads to a reasonable balance of minimizing risk of ruin while maximizing potential reward.
EV: An abbreviation for “expected value,” this metric estimates the long-term profitability of a wager by taking into account the probabilities/payouts associated with each potential outcome.
xWin: The probability of winning the bet implied by the Sharp Sportsbook Algorithm true odds.
OS Rating: The OS rating provides a rating for each +EV bet. An OS rating above 20 signifies an exceptional bet. Ratings between 10 and 20 are highly favorable bets. Finally, a rating between 0 and 10 indicates a solid bet. We factor in the EV, expected win, bet size, and negative geometric drag to calculate this rating.
Hold: The synthetic hold across the entire market, which is the loss a bettor would sustain if he bet both sides of the market to win equal amounts. The larger the hold, the more difficult it is to beat that market.
OddsShopper’s Sports Betting Tools & Tips
New to sports betting? OddsShopper’s selection of Betting 101 articles is here to help. We even have a parlay builder and our guide to parlay betting. Check out our guide to finding positive expected value (+EV), and you can unlock more +EV plays by signing up for OddsShopper Premium!
