Should We Expect the Mariners to Keep Cashing Over Tickets?

If you've been betting on over/unders this season, you may have noticed that games involving the Mariners go over a lot of the time. Though they've cooled off lately, Seattle's surprisingly strong bats have a lot to do with this, but their horrendous pitching is more to blame.

With 5.07 runs scored per game and 5.98 allowed, the M's are averaging more than 11 runs per game. I can assure you that their over/unders are not around 11 each night.

Overwhelming Success

How about that pun? The month of May is darn near over and Seattle's overs have gone 36-19-2 (65.5%) so far. If only we had known they'd be cashing overs so much before the season started we'd be rich — 15.4 units rich, to be precise.

The Rangers narrowly edge the Mariners out in terms of runs per game (11.07 compared to 11.05), but they play in the hot Texas heat and typically have over/unders between 10 and 12 at home. They've also gone over more often than not, but at 28-23-1, they're closer to the middle of the pack.

The second "best" over team has been the Pirates at 31-20-1. I put best in quotes because, as you'll see in a bit, these types of teams haven't really fared well historically.

Historical Comps

Using Bet Labs, I went through and found other teams that have cashed overs at higher than a 60% rate through May. Do they continue to go over at a high rate, or do they come back to earth?

This Seattle team has been one of the top over teams since 2005, but nowhere near as overwhelming as the 2017 Mets.

There are 30 teams in the table and, if you haven't already counted them up yourself, I'll spare you the trouble. Just 10 of the teams went over in at least half of their remaining games, which certainly surprised me. Furthermore, just six of them cashed at a 53% rate or higher, which is really what you'd want to see if you were planning on betting on their overs.

In fact, there's almost as many teams that went over less than 45% the rest of the way than there are teams that went over more than 53%.

The moral of the story: Do not expect the Mariners to keep cashing overs. I can't speak to every team on this list, but I personally expect the Mariners' bats to keep cooling off.

Through April, they were scoring 5.91 runs per game and allowing 5.5. In May, they're scoring just 4 runs per game and allowing 6.6 … yikes. I imagine the pitching staff won't be this bad, either, but can't make any promises there.

As I mentioned before, these teams that start out cashing overs like mad typically haven't been good teams. On average, they've won just 76.56 games and just three of them have made the postseason. None of them made the World Series, either.

So in case you were holding your breath on a Mariners World Series appearance … well, I hope you didn't need this article to tell you that isn't happening.