In 2022, the American League West had two teams that won at least 90 games, including the Houston Astros, who impressively recorded 106 victories.

Meanwhile, the Oakland Athletics, who finished 5th in the AL West, won only 60 times.

2023 AL West Standings	Record	Winning %
Houston Astros	90-72	.556%
Texas Rangers	90-72	.556%
Seattle Mariners	88-74	.543%
Los Angeles Angels	73-89	.451%
Oakland Athletics	50-112	.309%

The Baltimore Orioles (101 wins) and the Tampa Bay Rays (99 wins) combined to win 200 games in the American League East, and the Kansas City Royals won just 56 games and finished 31 games back in a bland AL Central division.

More than almost all other professional sports, Major League Baseball has a parity issue.

From a gambling perspective, because moneyline bets have traditionally been the most popular form of MLB betting, teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Boston Red Sox are often not paying very good MLB odds.

This is where the beauty of a parlay, especially the same game parlay, can work to a bettor’s advantage.

What Is An MLB SGP

An MLB parlay is a single bet that requires multiple outcomes to hit.

A parlay bet allows a bettor to keep their stake low, but because it requires multiple events to all win, a parlay ticket can come with some very enticing odds.

Before the arrival of Same Game Parlays (SGP), a traditional MLB parlay meant picking winners and totals from multiple baseball games.

An example of a traditional parlay bet is:

• NY Yankees to Win | -150 Odds
• Toronto Blue Jays to Win | -130 Odds
• CWS and Boston OVER 9 runs | -105

Total wager: $10 | Pay-Out $57.57 | Profit $47.47

In our example above, we created a 3-game MLB parlay. We have picked the Yankees and Blue Jays to win and the White Sox vs Red Sox game to go OVER 9 runs.

You can see that our $10 wager would return $47.47 in profit.

If we were betting on the Yankees game, a $10 wager would payout $6.67 in profit based on the -150 moneyline.

The difference in payout between the Yankees bet, and our parlay ticket gives us an understanding of why parlay tickets are so popular.

What Is An MLB Same Game Parlay (SGP)

An MLB Same Game Parlay, often called an SGP, allows bettors to build parlay tickets but no longer requires them to make selections from multiple games.

An SGP is a parlay ticket where all the bets are from the same game. An example of the same game parlay could be:

• Houston Astros to win | -140
• Toronto vs Houston OVER 9.5 runs | +110
• Alex Bregman to hit a HR | +310

In our example above, you can see a bettor has made a 3-game parlay ticket from the Toronto Blue Jays vs Houston Astros game.

There are many reasons why a bettor would prefer to play an SGP instead of a traditional parlay ticket. Sometimes we have a very good sense of how one particular game will play out.

Sometimes it’s just a simple case of only wanting to bet on and then watch our favorite team.

MLB SGP Strategy

When it comes to being successful with SGPs, a bettor has to do a good job creating a game narrative or script for the game and then having the actual game play out in a similar way they envisioned it.

By creating a game narrative, we mean a bettor must have a good sense of who will win or lose and whether the game will be a high-scoring or a low-scoring pitcher’s duel.

What hitters have an advantage against the starting pitcher, what pitchers have an advantage, and are due for a big strikeout performance?

Here is an example of an MLB SGP with a game narrative:

• Los Angeles Dodgers to win
• Walker Buehler has OVER 5.5 strikeouts
• Max Fried has UNDER 5.5 strikeouts
• Mookie Betts has OVER 1.5 hits

The above 4-game parlay paints an excellent game narrative, and by looking at the four individual bets, we understand how the bettor expects this game to play out.

The first two bets are the Dodgers to win and the Dodgers starting pitcher to have OVER 5.5 strikeouts. That makes sense.

If Walker Buehler delivers an excellent performance for Los Angeles, then odds are, they have a great chance to win the game.

The second and third bets are also loosely related. Max Fried is a very good starting pitcher for the Atlanta Braves.

In this case, the bettor is suggesting that Fried might have some problems against a very talented Dodgers lineup.

The final bet is also related to the Braves pitching.

Although it’s likely, Mookie Betts will face multiple Braves pitchers and not just Fried, this bet is suggesting if the Dodgers win, Mookie Betts will have had a good game at the plate.

If a bettor can visualize or pre-script what the game will look like, they have a real advantage in SGP betting.

Stat Distribution

A critical skill to develop when jumping into SGPs is understanding stat distribution and not betting against yourself.

If a bettor feels that a team will have a good day offensively at the plate, they should obviously make bets accordingly.

However, even a winning team will only score a certain amount of runs.

The St. Louis Cardinals may score 7 or 8 runs in a game, but how many different players will hit a home run to score those runs?

It probably won’t be 5 or 6 different guys going deep. Of course, it’s possible, but it’s not very likely.

Instead of betting on four Cardinals to all hit a home run, a more realistic strategy would be to pick just one player you expect to have a big day and combine that bet with a couple of other game-related ones.

How Can BestOdds Edge and Pro Help

When building MLB Same Game Parlays, there may be no better tool for recreational bettors than BestOdds Edge and BestOdds Pro.

The BestOdds PRO betting platform has a Same Game Parlay feature that does the majority of the homework for us.

If you are a BestOdds EDGE subscriber, you have access to hundreds of different player prop bets during a busy MLB day.

Each MLB player comes with their own player profile card detailing essential information for bettors.

Looking at our Cody Bellinger profile card above, we can see:

• Bellingers total runs scored O/U is set at +0.5, and the Best Odds for someone looking to bet Over 0.5 is +139 at Caesars.
• We also see the BestOdds EDGE platform believes that bettors have a 70% advantage (edge) over the sportsbooks by betting the Over for this prop.
• The system also provides a Bet Rating, which is a confidence rating in the data used to determine our betting edge.

One common strategy for EDGE users is to find a couple of different player prop bets where the system shows a big advantage for bettors and parlay them together.

Sometimes those are Same Game Parlays, and sometimes they are just a traditional parlay.

Either way, using the EDGE platform to identify when the advantage is in our favor is one-way BestOdds EDGE can help SGP bettors.

What Are Correlated Odds?

If you research Same Game Parlays, you will eventually come across the term Correlated Odds. Correlated Odds are the reason why SGPs never existed until just recently.

Correlated odds refer to multiple bets all tied to the same outcome. In baseball, a bettor can take advantage of Correlated Odds in many ways.

If a bettor thinks that Zack Wheeler will have a dominating performance against the NY Mets, then there are a couple of different ways to bet that.

You could make the following SGP:

• Zack Wheeler has Over 6 strikeouts
• NY Mets Under Team Total 4.5 runs
• Philadelphia Phillies to win

In our example above, you can see how those three outcomes could all be related. If the Phillies starting pitcher Zack Wheeler has a great game, then it’s likely the NY Mets won’t score many runs.

If the Phillies get an outstanding performance from their starting pitcher and the Mets don’t score many runs, then there’s a greater-than-average chance the Phillies win.

It took oddsmakers a very long time to develop a pricing algorithm to allow for correlated odds and the creation of the same game parlays.

It is important to know that SGPs don’t payout at the same odds as traditional parlays.

This is because there is no correlation of odds between traditional parlays that involve different events from different games.

However, when it comes to SGPs, they are often built entirely around correlated odds, and sportsbooks adjust their pricing to factor that in.

Why Bet MLB Same Game Parlays?

The easy answer to this question is they are fun. But that theory applies to many different sports bets, so why are Same Game Parlays so much fun?

SGPs Allow Us To Tell A Story

For many of us, creating the narrative and getting a chance to bet on that storyline to play out keeps us invested in the sports and teams we love. A lot of bettors use SGPs when betting on their favorite teams.

These are the teams we are following already. These are the teams we have most likely watched on TV regularly and are familiar with the players at all nine positions.

So these are also the teams where playing an SGP might mean you have a slight advantage on the house.

Oddsmakers are great at what they do but rely on statistics, numbers, and trends. They don’t get to watch all 5000 MLB games played each year.

We should always remember that plenty of people recommend you should never bet on your favorite team because, as a fan, we might have built-in biases and have trouble being objective.

We always recommend you take the time to document all of your betting history, even if you are an occasional recreational gambler.

By documenting your betting history, you can see your win/loss percentage when betting on your favorite team.

You will know if you have tendencies to overbet them to win or any player biases that are holding you back.

Dream Big!

The last reason people love to play SGPs is that they provide a chance to cash a big payout.

Go ahead and load your ticket with 3 or 4 different player props. If you pick the correct narrative and the game plays out as expected, you can cash a 5 or 6-leg parlay ticket.

Whatever your reason for building an SGP ticket, remember that most profitable gamblers are not basing their betting strategies around parlays.

These are fun to build and play, but with the pricing provided and the difficulty of picking multiple winners, you are ahead of the curve if you break even with them.