Sports Betting 'Naughty or Nice' List: The Naughty List Out of Season Sports

We began our Christmas season themed rundown of the best and worst ATS teams throughout all sports last time out with ‘The Nice List’.  And then we looked at the worst sports betting money burners in ‘The Naughty List’.  Here’s the deal--everyone knows the Christmas carol with the line about Santa Claus that says “He’s making a list, checking it twice...going to find out who’s naughty or nice”.  Just in time for the Holiday Season we’re going to take a few days to do a sports betting version of the ‘naughty or nice’ list.  In our first ‘naughty and nice’ installments we looked at the sports currently on the odds board at BetOnline.ag.  Now we’re going to look at the sports that are currently ‘out of season’.

As we’ve discussed in our other articles, a team doesn’t need to be bad to lose a bunch of money for their ‘financial backers’.  That being said, to lose more money than any other team in a given league being bad sure helps.  Teams are bad against the spread for a variety of reasons. Some teams find themselves on the bottom half of the ATS record table due to a sputtering offense or leaky defense.  Some teams are just poorly coached.  Other teams can’t seem to cover a number even though they might have a winning record straight up. In this article, instead of giving you an in-depth analysis of which teams are good (or bad) against the spread and why we’re going to give you a quick sport by sport rundown.  We’ll did the ‘Nice List’ last time out--the teams that make the most money for bettors.  Now we’ll turn our attention to the ‘Naughty List’--the teams that lose the most money for the wagering public.

THE BIGGEST MONEY BURNERS IN SPORTS BETTING:  THE NAUGHTY LIST—OUT OF SEASON EDITION

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL (TEAM):  No big surprise here.  The Detroit Tigers were historically bad in 2019 with a record of 47-114.  They ended the season 53.5 games out of first place in the AL Central and won 7 fewer games than the other worst team in MLB, the Baltimore Orioles.  The Tigers were so bad that no matter how high their underdog prices went they kept losing as did their financial backers.  Detroit lost -41.3 units overall.  That’s -12.9 more units lost than the second biggest money burner in baseball aka the Boston Red Sox (-28.4 units).  As for Baltimore, they were no treasure either losing -19.8 units.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL (PITCHER):  Lefthander Chris Sale has been one of the best starters in baseball for nearly a decade.  Last season, however, he completely imploded.  His ERA more than doubled from 2.11 in 2018 to 4.40 last year.  It might not have been entirely his fault—he was suffering from inflammation in his left elbow and the Red Sox shut him down in mid-August.  By then the damage was done and Sale had lost -19.2 units with Boston going 10-15 in his starts.  The second biggest money burning starter had a very good year last year.  In fact, he even picked up his second Cy Young Award.  The New York Mets Jacob DeGrom had the best WHIP in the National League (0.97), the most strikeouts (255) and the second best ERA (2.43).  Unfortunately, the Mets were 14-18 when he started and as defending Cy Young Award holder he was always installed at chalky prices.  DeGrom was an underdog at BetOnline.ag in just 3 of his 25 starts.  He was priced at -145 or higher in 19 of his assignments.

WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION (WNBA):  The New York Liberty did a good job emulating the inept play of the ‘other’ New York pro hoops team, the New York Knicks.  The Liberty went 10-24 SU and finished second from the bottom of the WNBA table.  What was most ‘impressive’ about the distaff NYC team is that their pointspread record was nearly identical to their SU record at 12-22 ATS.  The result was that they lost -12.2 units on the season.  They lost outright but covered the spread as an underdog just three times all season.  They were favored only four times all year and went 1-3 SU/0-4 ATS.  They were awful at home, playing most of their games at the Westchester County Center where they went 4-13 SU/5-12 ATS.  Things might be looking up for the Liberty—in January 2019 they were purchased by Alibaba.com founder Joseph Tsai and will move to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn full time next year.

CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE (CFL):  The Ottawa Redblacks were very similar in their performance to the aforementioned New York Liberty.  The Redblacks were the worst team in the CFL going 3-15 SU and lost more money for bettors than any other team in the league going 5-13 ATS good for a -9.3 unit loss.  Not far behind the Redblacks were the Edmonton Eskimos who lost -8.3 units going 9-11 SU and 6-13-1 ATS.  Also losing -8.3 units on the season were the Calgary Stampeders who finished second in the West Division with a 12-6 SU record but went 6-13 against the spread.  Calgary managed to go 2-8 ATS at McMahon Stadium despite a 7-3 SU record.  They also went 2-12 ATS as a favorite despite going 9-5 SU in that role.