The Tribe’s current winning streak is the longest by any team in Major League Baseball this season as well as the longest run of success the club has strung together since winning 13 straight in 1951.
Thursday’s accolades belonged to 29-year-old righty Carlos Carrasco, who is now 1-0 with a 1.14 ERA, 27 strikeouts and just seven walks in three starts during Cleveland’s 13-game rampage through professional baseball. A rampage, mind you, that has featured the Indians outscoring the opposition 80-26 (+54 run differential), which is good for a winning margin of 4.15 runs per game.
Predictably, gambling twitter immediately responded with some variation of the following data: If you had bet to win $100 on every game Cleveland was listed as a favorite during the team’s current 13-game winning streak and risked $100 on Cleveland when the Indians assumed the underdog position during said streak, you would currently be up $1,337.
That’s a respectable chunk of change for less than two week’s worth of work. But with Cleveland’s moneyline prices beginning to surge due to the team’s recent onslaught against all comers, could you have found a way to turn a similar profit without assuming as much risk?
The answer, of course, is yes. And all you would have had to do was replace your moneyline bets with run line wagers.
For the uninitiated, a run line bet is essentially Major League Baseball’s version of the NFL point spread, with one team listed as a 1.5-run favorite, the other listed as a 1.5-run underdog and corresponding odds attached to both spreads. For example, the Indians were listed as -120 favorites for Thursday night’s game against the Blue Jays (+110) on the moneyline, but were posted at the more appealing price of +130 if you were willing to lay 1.5 runs against Toronto (-150). The benefit is the opportunity to back the better team with less financial risk, while the downside is the fact that Cleveland had to win by two or more runs to cash the run line bet as opposed to simply winning the game by any margin to cash the moneyline ticket.
Since the Indians launched their 13-game tirade against the rest of Major League Baseball back on June 17 in Cleveland against the White Sox, the Tribe have been listed as a moneyline favorite 11 times and run line favorite four times. And if you were to bet to win $100 every time Cleveland was a favorite and risk $100 in each instance the Indians were listed as an underdog, here’s how your portfolio would break down:
13 moneyline bets: 13-0 record, $1,884 risked, $1,337 won
13 run line bets: 11-2 record, $1,468 risked, $1,129 won
By simply substituting run line bets for moneyline bets during Cleveland’s 13-game winning streak, your profits would have dropped by 15.5 percent, but your overall risk assumed would have plummeted by 22.1 percent. That’s not a bad tradeoff when you need to win by two or more runs with a pitching staff that has limited the opposition to just 2.0 runs per game during its 13-game stretch of nothing but victory celebrations.
But here’s the tricky part: It’s easy to come swooping in after a team has won 13 straight matchups and exclaim, “Hey, you should have been betting the run line instead of the moneyline!” After all, hindsight is 20/20. What we need to identify is a way of determining which teams offer the best chance for success when betting the run line.
Thankfully, we have those rankings for you, as well as something else you should be taking into consideration.
Below you will find Major League Baseball’s 30 member organizations ranked by run line winning percentage entering Thursday night’s slate of action. In addition, you’ll notice a number in parenthesis next to each team’s record. That number represents the run differential ranking for each club entering Thursday night as well. For example, when you see a (6) next to the Texas Rangers, you’ll know that Texas ranks sixth in MLB in run differential.
1. Texas Rangers: 52-28 (6)
2. Baltimore Orioles: 46-31 (7)
3. San Diego Padres: 46-33 (25)
4. Detroit Tigers: 45-34 (15)
5. Chicago Cubs: 44-34 (1)
6. Kansas City Royals: 44-34 (18)
7. Cleveland Indians: 43-35 (2)
8. Colorado Rockies: 42-36 (16)
9. Oakland A’s: 42-36 (23)
10. St. Louis Cardinals: 41-37 (4)
11. Washington Nationals: 42-38 (3)
12. Milwaukee Brewers: 40-38 (26)
13. Toronto Blue Jays: 41-40 (11)
14. Boston Red Sox: 39-39 (5)
15. Miami Marlins: 39-39 (14)
16. San Francisco Giants: 39-41 (8)
17. Philadelphia Phillies: 39-41 (27)
18. Cincinnati Reds: 39-41 (30)
19. Chicago White Sox: 38-41 (17)
20. Seattle Mariners: 37-41 (10)
21. Houston Astros: 37-42 (12)
22. Los Angeles Dodgers: 37-44 (9)
23. Arizona Diamondbacks: 37-44 (21)
24. Pittsburgh Pirates: 36-43 (19)
25. Minnesota Twins: 35-43 (29)
26. Atlanta Braves: 34-44 (28)
27. New York Yankees: 34-44 (20)
28. Tampa Bay Rays: 32-46 (22)
29. Los Angels Angels: 32-47 (24)
30. New York Mets: 30-48 (13)
The first question you may be asking yourself is, “Why run differential?” That’s an excellent inquiry. Essentially, we want to look at each team’s run differential to give us an idea of which squads have the firepower to consistently cover 1.5 runs while also examining which clubs get blown out on a regular basis. As you’ll notice in the rankings above, five of the top ten run line clubs (Rangers, Orioles, Cubs, Indians and Cardinals) also rank within the top ten in run differential, while five of the bottom ten run line clubs (Angels, Rays, Braves, Twins and Diamondbacks) also rank within the bottom ten in run differential. So based on this simple correlation alone, we’ve discovered that a third of the league’s run line record matches up with its run differential ranking.
One team to keep an eye on moving forward in regards to run line wagering is the Philadelphia Phillies, who have lost 28 of their last 39 games after commencing the season with a 24-17 record. What’s intriguing about Philadelphia is that despite winning just 43.8 percent of their contests this season, the 2008 World Champions are a shocking 18-9 (.666) in one-run games in 2016. That type of performance in one-run affairs is extremely difficult to sustain over the course of a 162-game season, so don’t be surprised if the Phillies exhibit a regression in that department in the very near future.
As for the Indians, who knows when Cleveland’s starting rotation will hit a rough patch and regress to the mean. After all, this club hasn’t lost since the Cavaliers defeated the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.
