Spencer Schultz, whose favorite plays can be seen on PressBoxOnline.com, recently shared some tips for betting on baseball this summer.
PressBox: What’s your process to come up with your daily Orioles picks?
Spencer Schultz: I like it a lot. I think it’s a fun way of staying local to Baltimore, having something engaging for somebody who’s a bettor who loves the Orioles. It gives you a fun thing to tail or check out or play along with. It’s been a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it. I do it myself. I take the pick myself, so I put my money where my mouth is in that regard. Matchups definitely are a part of it. I look at team matchups, too. It happens in every sport, but baseball especially: “Oh, Bo Bichette is coming to town.” For whatever reason, Bo Bichette bats [.378 and has a 1.058 OPS] at Camden Yards. Ryan Mountcastle crushes the Blue Jays.
I’ve been trying to work a little bit more negative correlation in when I see it. That would mean that if you take Gunnar Henderson to hit a home run, then you take the under, because if you conversely take the over, of course if Gunnar Henderson hits a home run the over is theoretically more likely. The odds on it are less. But if you take someone to score and then the under to hit, things like that are a lot of fun.
If you’re looking for a cheap way to entertain yourself with a baseball game, bet pitcher strikeouts. If you’re watching a game or you’ve got family over or something like that, put five bucks on one of the pitchers to record strikeouts. I think it makes you pay attention to pitching. You’ll pay a little bit of extra attention while your team is pitching, I think. Rooting for strikeouts is a fun way to do so.
PB: What is FanDuel’s “Dinger Tuesday” and why do you like to play it?
SS: If you put $25 on a single home run bet, for every home run hit in that game you will get $5 back if yours does not hit. I like to play it because I think it’s a fun offer. I like to go look at games with high run totals, therefore it’s more likely that there are runs scored and therefore it’s more likely that home runs are hit in that game. I like it because it’s guaranteeing a bonus bet back if you miss.
Home runs are fun. I think the name itself is fun and the fact that you do get money back is the combination there. I think it’s a fun day to look outside of the team you consistently follow. Go look around at odds for other players, go look at who’s pitching and see if the Rangers with Marcus Semien and Adolis Garcia [are facing] a pitcher that’s been struggling. Home runs are fun. They’re a fun thing to bet on, and the fact that you get money back makes it worthwhile there.
… Another fun way of betting home runs is to round-robin them, so that breaks up parlays for you. I like doing three players to hit a home run — this doesn’t apply to the “Dinger Tuesday” special — and round-robin by twos, so it’ll be three sets of parlays with those three players. Those will amplify your odds and break up your parlay for you, so I think those are fun things to do as well if you start to get into the home runs and think you see something between a couple players you really like.
PB: At what point in the middle of the season do you like to reevaluate your preseason thoughts on futures bets for division winners, award winners and the like?
SS: Pretty much on a weekly basis I’ll take a look and see. The Rangers, the reigning World Series champs, have had a couple injuries here and there but they’re still a very good team. They should be able to, in my opinion, turn things around. They’re in probably the weakest division in baseball. Slumps happen. Aaron Judge started the season cold as ice and then [had a huge May]. MVP bets are all based on value and trying to hedge yourself out. When you see someone that you know is in a slump, they’re probably going to have worse odds. People tend to flock to hot streaks and run away from cold streaks. Hot streaks are what make people drop their money, but if you can end up theoretically getting the five guys … that are strong candidates in your mind and you can get them at +2000 at different points, if you put the same unit on all five of them, you bet five units to bring back 15, or 20 overall. Hedging yourself out with futures throughout the season I think is a fun thing to do.
PB: Do you prefer betting on the full game or first five innings?
SS: I really like the full game. [It’s] a way to look at it I think in a more responsible manner as a more casual bettor. You’re paying to have fun. If you put a dollar on a game, it’s a little bit more fun to watch something that you maybe aren’t as interested in. I definitely like to maximize my entertainment value. I view gambling as entertainment. For me, maybe a little bit more of trying to make money, but I think a lot of people should look at it from the perspective of, “Oh, if I put $5 on this, I want to have fun.” It makes it fun, something to root for, something to pay attention to, something to enhance my experience a little bit more. I personally enjoy from the entertainment perspective betting on full games for that reason. DraftKings does a promo where if you bet a winner and they go up by two runs at any point in the game it cashes, so I think that’s a fun way to not let some leads get trickled away. But I generally don’t do first five innings as much. I really like to bet full games because it just gives me more to root for, look for, pay attention to and have more fun.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox