Here's something I just stumbled across that I think is interesting. I don't know who wrote it but what he says compares favorably with what my records show.
MLB
'Baseball Road Dogs'
For the most part, baseball bettors are far more likely to bet the favorite rather than the underdog. The oddsmaker knows this and has a tendency to inflate the line presenting value with underdogs. Keep in mind, just because a team is favored does not mean the club will win every time. The baseball season is a long, grueling one and there are days when teams don't give their best efforts, ace pitchers have an off day, relievers implode, hitters slump and/or costly errors are made. A study of this season's baseball road underdogs shows the group winning only 44.9% of the games but increased betting accounts by +$3102. Since betting each and every road underdog is rather unrealistic we broke it down by line ranges to see which performed the best. Road Dogs in the lower range (< $1.50) had 'Lot's of Byte' winning 46.7% of the time (362-413) stuffing +$2322 into betting accounts. Road Dogs with some bite were found in the $1.50 to $1.70 range as they won at 43.3% clip (69-90) cashing +$1925 worth of tickets. But, Big Dogs higher than $1.70 were 'All-Bark-No-Bite' posting a 23-54 mark depleting accounts by -$1145. A few betting nuggets found within the 'Lots-of-Bite' sweet spot. Road dogs in the range which loss it's previous road game and playing a division foe were 75-63 (54.3%) the next outing rewarding backers with +$2664 at the betting window. Road Dogs from the sweet spot which suffered a 2 run or less defeat the previous game were 93-93 next time out (+$1724) split between 38-42 (+$316) playing within the division, 38-42 (+$1408) outside the division which includes 9-12 (-$131) in interleague action.
Zac, these are very similar to the numbers I've seen while doing 3-game road dog chases this season. I stopped chasing about 10 days ago when I finally realized a decent profit can be made just by playing them flat. While chasing, I was hitting about 49% on individual games at an average price of +125 at 5Dimes reduced juice. The win percentage was a even a bit higher in April and May. I am thinking dogs might do better early in the season because they are motivated and haven't played themselves out of contention. Thanks a lot for this info. I'll be focusing on the road dogs the rest of this season, with an eye looking toward 2015.