Do MLB Home Teams Have a Case of the Mondays?

Do MLB Home Teams Have a Case of the Mondays?

Monday can be one of the more interesting days in baseball. Every team in the league plays over the weekend and while many teams will receive their day off on Monday, there is consistently an ample slate of  games. This is a common travel day, but does either team hold an advantage?

One would assume that the team playing at home would gain an extra advantage as their added rest should prove beneficial. However, using our BetLabs software, you can see that there is a bias towards visitors on the first day of the work week.

Simply betting on every visitor on Monday’s would have produced a minimal profit, but as you begin adding a contrarian lens to the equation, the return on the investment (ROI) quickly ascends. The table below, with data taken from Pinnacle, examines the performance of road teams on Monday’s as we become more selective with our public betting percentages.

As you can see betting on teams who are receiving less than 35% of public wagers has the highest units earned with 28.14, however the actual return on investment would be noticeably higher when that number drops below 30%. This simply means that you would have to be more selective with the games you bet on, but the expected returns are greater.

Today there are numerous road teams receiving less than 30% of public wagers, and in fact, there are actually two teams who are under that elusive 15% threshold — which boasts a 17% ROI despite a limited sample size. Currently the Houston Astros (+163 at Pittsburgh) and the Colorado Rockies (+180 at St. Louis) are receiving just 13% of moneyline wagers and will be games we continue to monitor.