Coming Off a Long Road Series vs. a Short Road Series
(August 01, 2006)
In yesterday's article: Baseball Travel Angle - First Home/Road Game, we explained that road teams struggled in their first home game back from a road trip.
As a handicapper, our first instict is to ask "Does it matter how long their road stint was?". I guess we all would expect that a team on the road for three consecutive series is more likely to let up than a team on the road for just three games.
So let's check the past results of teams coming home off a road game if their road game was the following type.
| # of Road Series |
Win% |
Units |
E[x] |
| 1 |
50.8 |
-39 |
-8.2 |
| 2 |
51.8 |
-115 |
-8.1 |
| 3 |
58.8 |
+38 |
+8.1 |
| 4 |
52.0 |
-9 |
-5.9 |
We were wrong. Teams coming off a long road trip (3 or 4 series) generally do BETTER when they come home than do teams off of short road stints.
The reasons may not be clear but all the tell tale signs of a bounceback angle is present. Let me explain. We obviously see that teams coming off a third road series is 16 points devalued as compared to if they were coming off a first or a second road series. We know it has nothing to do with line movement, sportsbook shading because of their whopping 58.8% record.
So you must put yourself into the shoes of a team playing so many series. Teams that play on the road in their third series generally do bad (which we will explain in a later article). So if you are playing on the road and are playing bad, you cannot wait to come home. You want to kick the living daylight out of your opponent when you get back home to make up for your prior poor performances.
So taking a look only at home teams coming off their third road series, let us see how they did if they were off a win/loss.
| Previous Result |
Win% |
Units |
E[x] |
| Off a Win |
57.3 |
+2 |
+1.0 |
| Off a Loss |
60.2 |
+36 |
+14.3 |
As you can see, there is a 13 point difference between teams off a loss in this situation and teams off a win. And as handicappers, we have won 71% of our picks when they fall into that category because we only take teams that we feel have an E[x] of 30 or more.
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