MLB Unders Are No Longer So Easy To Come By

There were two things you could count on at the beginning of the MLB season -- hammering the under was profitable, and the Reds were always worth fading.

Now, only one of those still rings true. Yes, the Cubs are still terrible, but teams around baseball are putting up a more runs than where we started.

This shouldn't be a surprise though, with the trend expected to fade off at some point.

The Big Change

It was just a couple of weeks ago that only three teams were hitting the over more than 50 percent of the time. Now though, there are 12 coming in hitting the over in at least half their games:

Cincinnati 64.70%

Atlanta 58.80%

Colorado 58.80%

Philadelphia 57.60%

Cleveland 57.60%

SF Giants 55.90%

Milwaukee 51.50%

St. Louis 51.50%

San Diego 51.40%

Seattle 51.40%

Texas 50.00%

Kansas City 50.00%

That's a pretty big jump over a short amount of time.

What Else It Means

There were plenty of theories for this slow start, and in reality, it's likely a combination of them all that factored in. The weather has been unseasonably cold around the country, which can have an affect. Then there's the shortened Spring Training after the lockout was finished, plus the fact that every team now has balls in humidors, which reduces fly ball distance in drier weather. In high-humidity environments though, the opposite can happen (#science, right?).

The Reds have the highest over percentage, but also are tied for the worst run differential in MLB (-65). Again, they're bad so this should be expected. The Pirates on the other hand also sit at -65 in run differential, but have only gone over in 45 percent of their games.

Overall, half of these teams on this list have a positive run differential, with the Phillies (+18), Guardians (+5), Giants (+34), Brewers (+29), Cardinals (+37), and Padres (+16) falling there.

Cincinnati is also tied for the second-highest amount of runs their games go over at +1.5 (tied with the Giants), with Cleveland leading the way at +1.7 runs over. Philly (+1.1) and Milwaukee (+1.0) are the only other teams who've seen their games go over by at least a full run this season.

In the end we expected baseball to get livelier and bats to get hotter, and as the summer approaches it's clear we're getting just that. Time to adjust your strategy if you haven't already.

That 70-percent under rate was a great trend to ride early this year, and we'll miss it, but hey, at least we can still count on the Reds to stay consistent.