How Weather Impacts Total Betting for MLB

Baseball is one of two major sports (football, of course, being the other) that is played outside where the players will need to deal with the elements. While baseball might not quite play through a monsoon or blizzard like the NFL does, they still do need to deal with wind and temperature.

Read below to learn everything involved with how the weather impacts MLB games, and specifically the total.

Temperature Impact

Whenever I think of baseball, I think of hot, muggy summer days. So, let’s dive into how hot weather impacts the total, and for this purpose we will define hot as anything 90+ degrees.

In general, heat leads to the ball going farther in the air, which obviously means more runs. The hotter the temperature is, the more home runs are hit, to put it simply.

With that said, that doesn’t mean you can blindly bet the over of every single game that is 90 or more degrees. Oddsmakers are also aware of these trends, so they are likely to update their lines in such games where this would be the case.

Instead, the best strategy to apply here is to note each game in which the temperature is 90+ degrees, and then line shop, meaning look into each sportsbook that is regulated in your state and see if there is a certain book that hasn’t updated their odds yet.

The secret of sports betting is that not all sportsbooks have the same exact odds and they all update their odds at a different rate. It is possible that DraftKings has updated the total to reflect the temperature, while FanDuel has not. So, it is important that you are signed up for every sportsbook that is available in your state as well.

The Impact of Wind + Wind Direction

With temperature out of the way, wind is where the most profitable betting trends have been identified. The most important factor when it comes to wind is which direction is the wind actually blowing. Obviously wind blowing out of the park is entirely different than wind blowing in.

With that said, the biggest trend when it comes to weather is to take the under when the wind is blowing in. This is something that has been tracked over the past 15 years and in only one occasion did taking the under when the wind was blowing in not result in a win percentage above 50%.

The opposite of this would be wind blowing out, of course. While not as profitable as taking the under with the wind blowing in, it is still in general a profitable betting trend to take the over when the wind is blowing out.

An important factor in all of this is to account for the stadium in which the games are being played in, of course. Going back to that wind blowing out trend, there are two stadiums in which that trend doesn’t apply and your ROI would actually double if you took both of them out. The two stadiums, which comes as no surprise, are the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels ballparks.

Similar to with the temperature trends, the most important thing you can do is to line shop and find examples where sportsbooks are slow to update their lines.

Sportsbooks are aware of all the same trends we are, but it doesn’t mean that they are quick enough to update the over/under to reflect these different types of situations. A profitable sports bettor would do the research to find games where any of these trends might occur, but to line shop to find the best odds before placing any bets.