MLB Simple Game Lines 2017

I’m turning my attention back to sports wagering for a bit. One of the key elements in analyzing sports for wagering purposes is past data, and lots of it. Any potential system you develop needs to be back tested using past data. A significant part of an analysis project is finding and manipulating past betting lines coupled with the results of the game involved. I’ve used several sources in the past. In recent years I’ve mainly relied on data from www.sportsbookreview.com and www.covers.com.

Finding and downloading data seems easy, but it isn’t. You’re faced with formatting issues and converting the data you get into a format that is usable for you. There’s also the problem of bad data. Some of the data elements are garbage in all the downloads I’ve done. You need a system to edit, convert, and manage the data. This is critical, because if you end up with some bad data, the results of your back testing can be terribly skewed.

One of the best sources for historical data is found in the archive section of Sports Book Review.

http://www.sportsbookreviewsonline.com/scoresoddsarchives/scoresoddsarchives.htm

This data is in Excel format that takes some manipulation to get clean useful files. Unfortunately, it isn’t perfectly clean data. I use a combination of Power Basic and Excel to build my analytical files. So, I keep data in comma delimited files.

In an attempt to eliminate any bad data and simulate what one might find just looking at a book at random times. I’ve taken several books MLB lines for 2017 and used for a median line. It was done by eliminating extreme money line and total values. This is data that can be used to back test a system for the 2017 MLB season. Following is a link to that file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WWOoysxAZniZgog5UuZ5at8vJsM_73C4/view?usp=sharing

The file is in comma delimited format which can easily be used by programs or loaded into an Excel spread sheet. The format is straightforward. The only field that needs a bit of explanation is the first one, GameID. This has the date of the game, 3-character abbreviations for the two teams, and a single digit. The last digit is normally 0, but if the game is part of a double header then it is a game number, either 1 or 2.

If you have questions about this file, go to the “Handicapper Think Tank” forum at Sports Book Review under the thread “Simple 2017 MLB Data File”. In my next post, I’ll use this file to look at one of my current projects. Follow me at @ole44bill on Twitter to know when this is posted.