The Moneyline Is Where Every MLB Bettor Starts
Before I learned about run lines, totals, props, or parlays, I learned the moneyline. Pick a team, pick the price, and wait for the final out. No spreads to cover, no totals to track – just a binary outcome: your team wins or it does not. That simplicity is precisely why the moneyline remains the highest-volume MLB betting market on every crypto sportsbook I have used.
The US legal sports betting market surpassed $165 billion in handle during 2025, and moneyline bets on baseball account for a dominant share of that action. The market’s depth means the pricing is efficient – sharp bettors, algorithmic models, and sportsbook traders all converge on a consensus price within minutes of a line opening. Breaking through that efficiency requires understanding not just what the moneyline number means, but how the implied probability behind it is constructed and where the sportsbook’s margin hides.
For UK bettors accustomed to football and horse racing, the MLB moneyline has a distinctive character. Baseball favourites are shorter-priced than in most other sports – a dominant home team might be 1.40, compared to 1.65 or higher for a similarly positioned football side. This compression reflects baseball’s inherent randomness: even the best team in a season loses 40% of its games. Understanding this compression is the first step toward making the moneyline work for you rather than against you.
Reading Moneyline Odds in Decimal and American Format
Crypto sportsbooks display odds in multiple formats, and as a UK bettor you will most naturally read decimal odds. But American odds – the format used by US-based bettors and many crypto platforms – convey the same information in a way worth understanding because it reveals the relationship between favourites and underdogs more intuitively.
Decimal odds are straightforward: the number represents your total return per unit staked. A moneyline of 1.65 means a 1-unit bet returns 1.65 units total – your original stake plus 0.65 units of profit. A moneyline of 2.40 returns 2.40 units total. Lower numbers mean stronger favourites; higher numbers mean longer-priced underdogs.
American odds use a different convention. Favourites are shown with a minus sign: -150 means you must stake 150 units to win 100 units of profit. Underdogs carry a plus sign: +200 means a 100-unit stake returns 200 units of profit. To convert American to decimal: for negative odds, divide 100 by the absolute value and add 1 (so -150 becomes 100/150 + 1 = 1.667). For positive odds, divide by 100 and add 1 (so +200 becomes 200/100 + 1 = 3.00).
Fractional odds – the traditional UK format – are rarely the default on crypto platforms but are sometimes available. A moneyline of 1.65 in decimal equals 13/20 in fractional, meaning 20 units staked returns 13 units of profit plus the stake. Most crypto bettors working across international platforms settle on decimal as the common language, and I recommend doing the same.
Implied Probability and Removing the Overround
This is where moneyline analysis stops being about reading numbers and starts being about evaluating value. Every set of moneyline odds implies a probability for each outcome, and those implied probabilities always sum to more than 100% – the excess is the sportsbook’s margin.
To extract the implied probability: divide 1 by the decimal odds. A favourite at 1.65 implies a 60.6% win probability (1/1.65). An underdog at 2.40 implies 41.7% (1/2.40). Sum those: 60.6% + 41.7% = 102.3%. The 2.3% above 100% is the overround – the house edge baked into the price.
To find the “true” implied probability – the market’s actual assessment of each team’s chances, stripped of the margin – you need to remove the overround. The simplest method is proportional: divide each side’s implied probability by the total. The favourite’s true implied probability becomes 60.6% / 102.3% = 59.2%, and the underdog’s becomes 41.7% / 102.3% = 40.8%. These now sum to 100% and represent a cleaner estimate of the market’s view.
Why does this matter? Because your job as a bettor is to find spots where your assessment of the true probability differs meaningfully from the market’s. If your model gives the favourite a 63% chance of winning but the market implies 59.2%, you have a potential edge on the favourite. If your model says 55%, the market is telling you this favourite is overpriced and you should look at the underdog – or pass entirely.
Finding Underdog Value in a 162-Game Season
Here is the counter-intuitive truth that nine years of MLB betting has hammered into me: the long-term money in moneyline betting leans toward underdogs, not favourites.
MLB generated a record $12.1 billion in total revenue in 2024, and that commercial success means the league’s competitive structure keeps teams relatively close in talent. The 162-game schedule amplifies this parity by creating thousands of individual matchups where the underdog’s win probability is not far below 50%. A team with a true 45% chance of winning, priced at 2.40 (implying 41.7%), offers a 3.3 percentage-point edge – a significant overlay that compounds into serious profit over a large sample.
The public betting bias in MLB is tilted heavily toward favourites. Recreational bettors disproportionately back the team more likely to win, which pushes favourite prices lower (worse value) and underdog prices higher (better value). This bias is well-documented and has persisted for decades despite being widely known – because the psychological discomfort of betting on a team you expect to lose is a barrier that most recreational bettors cannot overcome, no matter what the maths says.
The specific underdog profiles I target: road teams with above-average starting pitchers facing home teams with inflated records from a soft early schedule. Teams coming off a losing streak of four or more games, where the market has overcorrected based on recent results rather than underlying quality. And divisional underdogs in the second half of the season, who know the opposing team’s tendencies intimately and whose familiarity narrows the talent gap.
Discipline is the hard part. Underdog betting means losing more individual bets than you win. A profitable underdog strategy might hit at a 42% rate, which means roughly three losses for every two wins. The profit comes from the higher price on each win compensating for the higher loss frequency. You need a bankroll deep enough to absorb the losing streaks and a temperament patient enough to trust the process across 162 games. The main crypto MLB guide covers bankroll structure for this kind of approach.
