This Week: Hansel Wei on Betting Baseball. Read the whole article in Hansel's Zone at GoSportsBet.

We all know starting pitching is important. Great. Fantastic. This is not news. However, make sure that when you’re analyzing a starting pitching matchup, you look at the factors that are actually important. While many sources only take into account a pitcher’s season ERA and win-loss total to date, we’re a couple months into the season now – long enough for a pitcher’s season totals not to reflect his current form. A 10-3 pitcher with a low ERA might look like a good bet, but if you delve a little deeper, you might find that, after an incredible start, he’s lost his last three starts and put up an ERA of over 6.00 in those games. This is where you need to get your hands on all the information you can find. Is a pitcher struggling with a nagging injury? Does he have offfield issues going on that might affect his performance? Another crucial factor is to compare how a pitcher does on the road versus at home. For some pitchers, there is a huge discrepancy in this respect. Is there one park where, for whatever reason, a pitcher always seems to struggle? If you’re serious about winning, do a little homework and look for the little things that might make a difference. Thanks to the internet, this information is not hard to come by, and it will pay dividends for you in the long run. Another area that is often overlooked is relief pitching. While starters will ideally pitch the bulk of the game, and as a result, should be your first consideration, many games are won and lost in the late innings by bullpens. Look into how a team’s relief pitchers have done both on the season and in recent games. Another important factor is fatigue and depth – if a team is coming off a 16-inning game where they were forced to use five relief pitchers, and their starter has only averaged 4.2 innings per game in his last four starts, fatigue might well be a deciding factor in the game, depending on the depth of the team’s bullpen. Finally, as I’ve noted in my article on playing streaks, it’s much more important
to consider how a team has performed recently than their wins and losses on the season. Winning is contagious – once a team gets hot, the whole ball club is liable to get caught up in it. Is a team’s starting rotation finally starting to come together? Have role players been getting clutch hits? Are hitters doing a good job of bringing home runners in scoring position? Any number of...

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