MLB Home Underdog Moneyline
Moderate home-underdog moneyline value
Rejected — 5,446 home-underdog bets returned PF 0.949 and lost 159.3 units. The 2019–2021 holdout remained below break-even at PF 0.993.
- Category
- Sports betting
- Window
- 2012-04-05 → 2021-10-03
- Instruments
- MLB regular-season closing moneylines
- Timeframe
- Pre-game closing moneyline
- Tested
- 2021-10-03
Measured equity history
Recorded directly from the chronological test ledger.
Shown in the backtest's native equity or cumulative P&L units. It is not scaled to an investment amount because the published artifact does not provide a defensible capital denominator.
How it works
BackfillingThe bet
What market behavior this strategy is wagering on.
Plain-English explainer is backfilling — check back tomorrow. We publish the explanation only once it's written and reviewed, never auto-filled.
How it decides
What makes it enter, size, and exit a position.
Plain-English explainer is backfilling — check back tomorrow. We publish the explanation only once it's written and reviewed, never auto-filled.
How it can break
The regimes and failure modes that turn the edge negative.
Plain-English explainer is backfilling — check back tomorrow. We publish the explanation only once it's written and reviewed, never auto-filled.
Gate scorecard — 2 / 6
auto-imported from results.json| # | Gate | Result | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Minimum sample ≥300 bets | 5446 bets | ✓ |
| 02 | Profit factor ≥1.05 | PF 0.949 | ✗ |
| 03 | Max drawdown no worse than -25% | max DD -100.0% | ✗ |
| 04 | Real PF beats permutation p95 | real PF 0.949 vs permutation p95 0.966 | ✗ |
| 05 | Holdout profit factor ≥1.00 | holdout PF 0.993 | ✗ |
| 06 | Holdout sample ≥75 bets | 1594 holdout bets | ✓ |
VERDICT: REJECTED
Blindly backing moderate MLB home underdogs did not beat the closing price. Across 5,446 bets from 2012–2021, home teams priced from +105 to +180 returned profit factor 0.949 and lost 159.3 units at fixed one-unit risk.
The frozen 2019–2021 holdout was nearly break-even at PF 0.993, but did not cross 1.00. The real result also failed to beat the 95th percentile of outcome permutations (0.949 versus 0.966). Starting with a 100-unit bank, continued fixed staking eventually exhausted the bank, recorded as a -100% maximum drawdown.
The screen passed only the full and holdout sample-size gates. Home field did not compensate for the favorite-longshot tax embedded in underdog prices.
Frequently asked
Is MLB Home Underdog Moneyline profitable in 2026?
In this pre-registered backtest (2012-04-05 → 2021-10-03), MLB Home Underdog Moneyline returned a profit factor of 0.95 and passed 2/6 validation gates (placebo N/A). Verdict: REJECTED. Every result is published, pass or fail.
Has MLB Home Underdog Moneyline been backtested honestly?
Yes — through 6 pre-registered evidence gates appropriate to the available dataset, with the specification locked before any out-of-sample metric is computed. It failed and is published anyway.
Methodology: 11-gate validation — pre-registered spec, 6-gate battery, real market data. Full reproducible report: backtests/mlb_home_underdog/REPORT.md in the source repository.Author: Validated Research Team (Methodology v1.0 — 11-gate validation). Backtests are not investment advice.