This past Wednesday, Baltimore ended a prolonged nine game losing streak at San Diego and still had one more game to play in the series against the Padres.

2007-06-23

This past Wednesday, Baltimore ended a prolonged nine game losing streak at San Diego and still had one more game to play in the series against the Padres. Under the preconceived notion that teams in rut are likely to still be in one after losing a number of games, it appeared to make sense to play against the Orioles for this and the other obvious reasons. Instead, Baltimore came thru with another victory to win the interleague series.

This brought up a question that had to be answered and naturally led to others. How does a major league baseball team perform the game after they ended a lengthy losing streak? Without knowing the results it made sense from a value perspective to play on these teams because oddsmakers would probably undervalue these clubs or overvalue the opponent with how this team was playing.

The idea became to break it down into two categories and adding one more piece to each one. One category was teams off a five game losing streak and the other was six or more consecutive losses. Within each one we added if they were home or away the next outing after finally winning a game.

For 2007 the results were contrary to my general belief that bad luck would continue to follow these teams. This season there has been 16 instances of teams having losing streaks of six or more games. After busting out of their losing ways, these clubs of 25 man rosters won two in a row 10 of 16 times. The numbers were evenly divided 5-3 both home and away, with road teams garnering +2.70 units of profit and home teams grinding out +0.25 units.

This year to date all baseball squads off five game losing stretches did even better. In this grouping they were 12-6 and nicely profitable. Road teams were 5-4 for +1.55 units and home teams were especially sharp at 7-2 for +5.05 units. When adding all four sections together, it totals impressive numbers at 22-12 good for +9.55 units of profit. The study is fair and balanced since we had five games that were (+) or (–) 175 on the money line and the favorite had 3-2 record.

With the season not quite half over and never hearing of this being an angle worth following, decided to look at all of 2006 season and determine if similar results were available. Not unexpectedly this was not the case and here are the numbers.

Next Game after Ending Losing Streak

Five Losses playing at Home – 9-9 -3.15
Five Losses playing Away – 9-10 +3.00
Six or more Losses playing at Home – 6-14 -4.65
Six or more Losses playing Away – 18-12 +5.55

This proved hardly worth making the effort to follow last season with 42-45 record, scratching out -0.75.

Two conclusions can be drawn from delving into these numbers that are reason enough to see if this has value. For 2007 the categories are all profitable which should be reason enough for those that like hot trends. Can this change, of course it can, yet it still makes sense to ride it while it’s hot. The other thought is breaking apart one other aspect from the beginning of the 2006 major league baseball season. When a team is off a long losing streak of six or more games and breaks through with a win and playing at home, the pressure to certain degree in lessened. The home crowd is still in their corner and is pleased the club posted a victory. If this home team is playing an opponent in a more competitive situation with the money line at (+) or (–) 155, they are 19-10 +11.45 units in the next game. Interesting.

Click here to read latest MLB news