Baseball has returned. And at this time, it looks like they are playing a 162 game schedule. Most ballparks are allowing limited seating. The Blue Jays, the lone Canadian team, will be orphaned, at leas tin the beginning of the season. They are playing in the Tampa, Florida area, where their Minor league A ball team is located. So keep this in mind when handicapping their home games.
If you are using my book Betting on Major League Baseball: The Underdog Method, here are the dollar values for runs in each league.
For the year 2021, these are the average runs per game from 2020.
National League 4.71 runs per game
American League 4.58 runs per game
Dividing a dollar by runs per game gives us the following:
National League 21.2 cents per run or 0.212 dollars per run
American League 21.8 cents per run or 0.218 dollars per run
To be honest, I’m not sure how good these numbers will hold up over the course of a 162 game season. Last year’s season was only 60 games due to the pandemic. Many of the players were not playing their best baseball. Some of them undoubtedly were worried about family and friends, as well as themselves. The numbers did seem to drop off.
For this reason, it may be a good idea to simply ignore 2020 and use the 2019 numbers. This is what I plan on doing while monitoring run production in both leagues.
The following are the averages for 2019.
National League 4.78 runs per game
American League 4.88 runs per game
Dividing a dollar by runs per game gives us the following:
National League 20.9 cents per run or 0.209 dollars per run
American League 20.5 cents per run or 0.205 dollars per run
Good luck!
Ken Osterman