By the time you’ve picked up your copy of this week’s Gaming Today, the 2020 Major League Baseball campaign will either be complete or on the verge of a world champion crowned.
That leaves us without any over/unders to decipher this week. But we can reflect.
No matter how you fared in this once-in-a-lifetime (hopefully) season from a betting perspective, there will always be an asterisk next to everything. This year’s breakout players and teams, or the disappointments from a significantly shorter (and different) timeframe in which the games took place — all of these were affected in some way by the incredibly unusual circumstances we were dealt.
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And that should be everyone’s main takeaway: how pretty much everything turned out different from what we would have seen throughout the standard 162-game, late-March-through-October year.
No fans? Of course that’s going to throw a wrench into handicapping. Nobody knew how that variable would affect each player — and how that would snowball.
National League bouts without pitchers hitting? The endless supply of seven-inning doubleheader games? All of this added up to a truly extraordinary experience for anyone who was watching, and undeniably mostly so for us bettors. But whether you had a great showing or a poor one, the main item everyone needs to unpack is that this unthinkable year was more atypical than anything else.
That means you shouldn’t get too high or too low from how you ultimately fared. Hey, I’ve already read reports that NL rules will revert back to normal as soon as next season commences. In other words, get ready to handicap and break down NL matchups like you would prior to 2020.
When we reach the end of March in 2021, fans will hopefully be allowed back at full capacity. At the very least, they should be back in some form similar to how Arlington hosted fans in the NLCS and World Series. Either way, that’s another variable gone.
Breathe. Exhale. Take the season for what it was. A different type of experience that no baseball fan could have ever imagined.
But then prepare to get back to work with your regular routines and techniques that you’d normally deploy for betting MLB. This past “season” was merely a mirage.
Last week: 0-2
Season: 7-8