USA Baseball Betting Guide For 2024

In order to have baseball betting odds explained fully, you have to start with the moneyline bet. The moneyline bet, often called a straight bet, is the easiest wager type to understand. Additionally, it sets the table for all other baseball wagers, as each bet you’ll see – regardless of type – will have attached moneylines.

In essence, the moneyline is a bet’s “price tag.” That is, it shows how much you stand to win on any given wager, using $100 as its basis. (This is not a betting minimum, as the top USA sports betting sites accept wagers of $0.50 to $1.00.)

Favorites will always have a negative moneyline, which shows how much you must risk to win $100. Underdogs, meanwhile, will always have a positive moneyline, which shows how much you stand to win on a $100 bet. Again, all bets have associated moneylines.

But straight moneyline bets are also their own class of wager. With this kind of bet, all you have to do is pick the winner – straight up – and you’ll be paid out according to the moneyline when you win.

Obviously, moneylines are the best kind of wager when you intend to bet on an underdog. Favored teams have much smaller payouts, for obvious reasons: They’re expected to win.

Here’s an example of how the baseball moneyline looks:

• New York Yankees -195 at Toronto Blue Jays +240

Let’s say the Yankees are the number-one team in the league, while the Blue Jays are the last-place team. The Yanks have dominated them all season, and nothing is likely to change for their next game. Here, taking New York is a safe bet, but it pays out less. Per the above moneyline, you’ll have to risk $195 to win $100.

So while you may be more likely to win, you're going to have to take a much bigger risk to get a meaningful reward. The Blue Jays, as underdogs, pay out much better. In this example, a $100 bet pays out $240 in winnings!

And honestly, with baseball gambling, taking the dog is often a savvy move. In the MLB, there are 162 games in a season, so you're going to run across a ton of upsets and instances where a team like the Blue Jays win “when they’re not supposed to.” Knowing how to spot potential upsets can be very lucrative.

In baseball, what you probably recognize as the “point spread” is called the run line. Like the straight bet, the run line in baseball tells you which team is the favorite to win and which is the underdog.

However, run line bets serve two purposes: One, they make the favorite a more compelling wager with better payouts, and two, they keep the sportsbook operator from taking any liability. Baseball run line spread bets are designed to get equal action on both sides of the bet so the sportsbook doesn't lose any money regardless of which side wins.

Here’s an example of a baseball run line:

• New York Yankees +1.5 (-110) at Boston Red Sox -1.5 (-110)

Note that both bets payout the same: You must risk $110 to win $100. The book keeps the difference as a house take or vigorish (aka “the vig” or “the juice”). In the example above, the Red Sox are favored by one and a half runs, as the team with the negative run line is always the favorite.

If you pick the Red Sox to win, this runline means they have to win the game by two or more runs. Let’s say they beat the Yankees by a final score of 6-4. That “beats the spread” and you win your bet.

If Boston only wins 6-5, however, the Yankees have “covered the spread” and you lose. That’s because – as underdogs – the Yankees are given a 1.5-run “head start.” This means they can lose by up to a run and Yankees bettors still win the wager.

Baseball runline bets are almost always going to be set at 1.5 runs. Sportsbooks use the half-run increment to guarantee that the final score can’t result in the exact number of the spread itself. If the spread were two runs and the Yanks won 6-4, that would result in a “push,” and all bets would be refunded.

Over/under lines in baseball – aka baseball “totals” bets – are all about the final score, but they're a little trickier to predict since baseball is usually a much lower-scoring game than football or basketball. For instance, you may see every single game of the day end up with a score like 2-1, 2-0, 1-0, and other similar totals.

But occasionally, some pitcher will give up seven runs in the top of the first, and games can be lopsided with 12-2 or 15-6 final tallies. You never really know.

Baseball O/U bets look like this:

• Atlanta Braves at St. Louis Cardinals – O/U 6.5 (-110)

Here, you’re betting on whether the final score of the game will have more than six combined runs (“over”) or fewer than six combined runs (“under”). You simply make your pick based on which end of that final projection you think will be more likely.

With this sort of bet, you really need to dig your heels in and look up some vital information, which we’ll help you with below in our exclusive baseball betting primer.

Baseball prop bets – or proposition bets – are a wide category of wagers that have to do with individual or team-based performances within a given game. Typically, each game at a legitimate online sportsbook gives USA bettors three general options for the prop betting category:

Baseball Player Props – Odds on what specific individual players will do during a given game. These include how many hits someone will get, how many strikeouts a pitcher will throw, whether or not the cleanup man will hit a home run, and so on.

Baseball Team Props – Odds on what entire teams will do during a given game. These include how many total hits a team gets, how many errors a defense commits, whether or not a club will turn a double play, and more.

Baseball Game Props – Odds on other game-related action as a whole. These include things like how long a game will last, whether or not there will be a rain delay, whether or not the game will go extra innings, etc.

Almost all baseball props are presented in the over/under or yes/no format (which works identically to the former). Each has its associated moneyline on both sides (although some props have only one side), and you’ll usually find 100+ props for each game at any reputable sports gambling website.

Additionally, most sites also now feature custom prop builder tools that allow you to make unique bets all your own, giving you tens of thousands of gambling permutations per matchup.

Futures bets are a lot like baseball props, but they vest over the long run. Basically, with baseball futures, you’re wagering on what will happen for a given team or player over the course of an entire season.

Additionally, while most baseball betting is broken down on a game-by-game basis, futures are up all season long. In fact, many kinds of futures odds are up during the whole of the offseason and preseason, too.

The most popular baseball futures bets are those that allow you to wager on league champions. If you’re betting on the Majors, for example, the biggest futures bets are those for the eventual World Series winner. You can also gamble on how well you think a given team will do in their division and whether or not you think they’ll win the National League or American League championship.

In NCAA baseball, you can bet on winners of conference titles and the College World Series. For Japanese baseball and Korean baseball, the most popular futures are which teams will win the Japan Series and Korean Series, respectively.

You can also bet futures on things like league MVPs, Silver Sluggers, Gold Gloves, Rookies of the Year, and other individual accolades, as well as which players will make their respective all-star games and more.

Each legitimate online sportsbook will have different futures on their boards, of course, so it’s important that you shop lines between multiple providers to find the best deals.

It’s also important to get your wagers in as early as possible. Baseball futures odds are up year-round, and savvy bettors know that the sooner they place their wagers, the better the payouts will be.

For example, if you pick the Dodgers to win the next World Series, you’ll see lines of +600, +800, or even +1000 or more before the season starts. However, once the season gets underway and the team establishes itself as a real contender late in the campaign, those odds will narrow considerably, possibly to +300 or less.

Live betting has lately become one of the most sought-after ways to wager on baseball. Traditionally, sports bets would have to be placed before a given game gets underway, and all your risk would be locked in.

While this is still the most popular way to gamble on baseball, live odds allow bettors to make in-game adjustments. Just as a team might be forced to go to the bullpen early, live betting lets you change your approach as the action unfolds.

Example: Let's say you took the Atlanta Braves over the Cincinnati Reds, with the Braves favored by 1.5 runs (Braves -1.5). However, midway through the 5th inning, you see that the score is Reds 5, Braves 1. You’re now over 90% likely to lose your initial bet.

With traditional betting, you might scowl a bit and change the channel, as the game is no longer all that interesting.

But with live odds, there's a way to leverage here and even to come out ahead on your bets! With the live betting options at the sites we recommend, you can effectively switch your bet to the Reds at whatever the current live lines reflect.

This will pay out less, as the Reds are now heavily favored, but you can possibly earn an even break, and you can always bet even more if you feel like you can win it all back.

Similarly, if the Braves are way up on the Reds at the midway point, you can double down on the new, updated live lines and win even more on top of your first wager. Live betting allows you to recover all kinds of bad pregame bets regardless of why those bets turn bad.

From a lopsided first inning to a pitcher injury a beaned batter, things that used to change the fundamental outlay of a given contest no longer impact your bottom line in such a negative, unexpected way.

Live baseball bets are fantastic ways to leverage and to win more money, especially if you're a serious baseball fan and know all about pitchers, hitters, individual stats, etc.