Baseball oddsmakers are getting ridiculously creative.
A quick glance at PointsBet Sportsbook shows me that I can bet over 100 ways on most of the baseball games on today’s board. There are 125 ways to bet Brewers-Tigers. 124 ways to bet Angels-Rangers. 119 ways to bet Rays-Nationals.
This is a far cry from your daddy’s way of baseball betting with the moneyline, run line and total.
Lots of professional bettors I know swear by the first five inning bet. This is a wager that alleviates your concerns about bullpens and also a manager’s use of said bullpens. It’s a bet that essentially cuts a baseball game in half by only taking the first five innings into account.[[ad:athena]]
The Chicago White Sox are on an absolute tear right now in the first five innings. OddsShark’s Joe Osborne tweeted that the South Siders are 11-and-2 (F5) in their last 13 games. I am a diehard White Sox fan and I wish I would’ve thought of this angle sooner. Sox manager Ricky Renteria’s bullpen managing gives me hives and these bets take the bullpen out of the equation.
A first five innings wager
PointsBet Sportsbook
So today you can lay -131 with Dylan Cease and the Sox or take +100 with Joe Musgrove and the Pirates in the first five innings. If the two teams are tied after five, you simply get your money back.
If you’re feeling extra frisky, you can bet the first five inning three-way line. It’s a soccer style wager where you can bet the Sox (+100), Pirates (+130) or a draw (+550). If it’s 1-1 after five and you bet an Andrew Jackson on the draw, you win 110 bucks. Not bad.
The Los Angeles Dodgers (23-10-9), Minnesota Twins (26-13-4), Houston Astros (22-12-7), Cleveland Indians (21-12-8) and Chicago Cubs (23-14-2) are the five best five inning teams this season according to Osborne. All of those teams are cashing tickets at a 60 percent clip or better.
