MLB Baseball Betting – Best Under Bets In 2022 Season
The Major League Baseball season has hit the All-Star break. When you look over the various trends and tendencies for MLB teams through the first half of the season, and if you connect that to listed betting odds and prices over the past three and a half months, what do you notice? What stands out? Let’s look at the most consistent winners of under bets in Major League Baseball through the first half.
Houston Astros
The under-versus-over record for the Astros is 54-32-3. Why has this team produced so many unders? Start with Justin Verlander having a Cy Young-level season, with a 12-3 record and a lot of dominant performances which carried a game under the total. The Astros’ pitching contained the New York Yankees’ batting order. The Astros have been able to feast on a lot of light-hitting American League teams and bring games under the number. Houston has also gone 4-0 against the New York Mets, with most of those games going under rather than over the total. Over the past week of play, the Astros have lacked slugger Yordan Alvarez, which has contributed to multiple games going under the total as well.
Detroit Tigers
The under tally is 54, and the over tally is 34 with 4 pushes. The Tigers have had, by most metrics, the worst offense in the American League this season. They simply haven’t produced very much even though Miguel Cabrera has been hitting near .300 the whole season. Cabrera hits a lot of singles instead of loading up on extra-base hits the way he used to. That drives down the Tigers’ run production. The Tigers have also been giving a lot of at-bats to their players of the future, such as Spencer Torkelson, who has struggled hugely and was just sent down to Triple-A to get his batting swing in order. The other really big reasons for the Tigers’ bunch of unders: one, their bullpen has one of the lowest ERAs in the American League. Two, Javier Baez – the splashy acquisition from the Chicago Cubs – has been a mammoth disappointment this season. He has not gotten nearly as many big hits as he or the team hoped. There are lots of holes in the batting order, and that explains the large number of unders.
Los Angeles Dodgers
The unders are 46, the overs are 33, and there have been 10 pushes. The Dodgers have played a lot of unders because of two men in particular: Tyler Anderson and Tony Gonsolin. These two guys were expected to be back-end rotation fillers, not frontline stars. Yet, with Walker Buehler being injured and Clayton Kershaw missing a month of action, Anderson and Gonsolin have become saviors for the Los Angeles rotation. Anderson is 10-1 and Gonsolin is 11-0. That’s 21 winning decisions against only one loss. Because Gonsolin and Anderson entered the year without much fanfare, games involving them – as opposed to Kershaw – had higher over-under totals. They have regularly pitched under those totals. The Dodgers’ pitching prowess has pushed a lot of games under the total, but Anderson and Gonsolin are the two biggest reasons for this trend.
Pittsburgh Pirates
The under-over record is 46-36-8. The Pirates are a light-hitting team, and starting pitchers such as Zach Thompson have made substantial improvements over the course of the season. When the Pirates went 5-1 against the Dodgers, most of those games went under the total. Pittsburgh’s lack of offense combined with underrated pitching has made the Pirates a good under bet this year.