The 2005 MLB season was the most bizarre season that we have seen in the 5 years we have been studying underdogs. There were so many different anomalies and strange occurrences not only with underdogs, but with the baseball season in general.

Let's take a detailed look at the strange 2005 season. This info is intended to help give you some insight, and should not be taken as a list of complaints or excuses. We call it like it is.

Futures Bets:
First, let's review our 2005 Futures results.

We won 7 of 10 Futures plays in 2005. Had Boston held on to win the AL East, it would have been 8 of 10.

In one of the other futures losses, we believe that if San Francisco had Barry Bonds for most of the second half of the 2005 season, as was initially expected, we would have won that futures play as well (which was San Francisco OVER 82.5 wins for the season). At the time the futures play was placed (in Spring Training), Bonds was expected to be back around the All-Star game. Without Bonds, that team was not the same.

National League Dogs:
It is not unusual for one league to have more winning units than the other league - that happens every season. But, we have never had a season where an entire league was decimated with losing underdog units as we had in the National League in 2005. Not an excuse - just a fact.

Consider this: When we use our formula, we first put each game through a set of primary filters. These filters screen out many losing games. Even after our primary filter screened out many losing games, National League teams (underdog plays) lost over 50 units in the 2005 season. So, if you take away our primary filter, they lost a lot more than 50 units. That is what we mean by an entire league getting decimated. Even St. Louis, which had the best NL record in 2005, was not a profitable dog.

Keep in mind that our formula's plays did not lost 50 units on National League teams. What we're saying is that even after the primary filter screened out many losing games, that is what was left to choose from in the National League.

What was really odd about the National League in 2005 was that teams that we would normally see do well as underdogs, given their team profile, did so poorly. Specifically, Florida, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Houston. Florida and San Diego were particularly disappointing dog plays in 2005, and given their profile, they should have performed much better.

American League Dogs:
The American League was the opposite story in 2005. Almost all the profitable teams came from the American League in 2005. We have never seen a season so lopsided, where almost all winning units came from one of the two leagues. Usually, it is much more evenly balanced.

One exception in the American League in 2005 was the Minnesota Twins. Minnesota was perhaps the most underperforming underdog team we have seen in the past five years. The Twins lost over 18 units in 2005 EVEN WITH our primary filter screening out losing games. Now, we didn't lose 18 units on Minnesota with our formula's plays (which uses a combination of both primary and secondary filters), but our point is that the Twins had a most bizarre year as a dog play. A team like the 2005 version of the Minnesota Twins would normally respond well as an underdog play given their team profile.

Another anomaly in 2005 was that a few American League teams that would normally fit the profile as poor underdog plays turned out to be excellent underdog plays. This threw us for a loop. In the five previous MLB seasons where we studied underdogs extensively, this has never happened. We know in one particular case with one team, it was a complete fluke. They had won units simply because of a freak statistical occurrence.

It bears repeating that the winning units in 2005 were all heavily concentrated on the American League side of the ledger...so much so that you could have just played AL teams exclusively in 2005 and won a lot of money. It's just another anomaly that might happen once every 10 years or so in baseball.

Individual Teams:
We usually get a pretty good sense of how well each team will perform as an underdog. We first put together a profile for each team based on particular statistics. Once we do that, we can segment the teams. But in 2005, several teams bucked the odds and either outperformed their team profile as an underdog, or severely underperformed as an underdog given their team profile.

For example, in most other seasons, a team with the 2005 Florida Marlins' specific team profile would have been at least a marginally profitable underdog. But in 2005, the Marlins were a horrible dog.

There were other teams that either outperformed their profile in a strange way (causing us to miss some winning units) or underperformed given their specific profile.

One team that dramatically outperformed in 2005 given their specific profile was the Milwaukee Brewers. Because of this, we were thrown off by them, and missed some winning units. In fact, few teams caused us more damage and frustration in the 2005 season than the Milwaukee Brewers did in the month of May. As soon as the Brewers were dropped after losing us seven straight games, they got incredibly hot. We've learned from that experience, and it will benefit us in future seasons. From that experience, we created another tool which looks at teams even more intensively at the micro level.

We now have five seasons of extensive records on underdogs in baseball. It is not unusual in a Major League Baseball season to have a few teams outperform or underperform given their profile - but we saw an unusual amount of teams perform uncharacteristically as underdogs in the 2005 season.

Houston and Oakland:
There were two additional anomalies in the 2005 season. Both the Houston Astros and the Oakland A's went from 15(+) games under .500 to 10(+) games over .500 during the course of the season. No team has done that in the previous 32 MLB seasons. And TWO teams did that in the 2005 season. This also threw off our formula.

Both Houston and Oakland got exceptionally hot, something that we missed because of the bizarreness of them bucking the kind of stats you would not normally see in a baseball season (the past 32 seasons anyway).

Prior to their hot runs, both Houston and Oakland were poor dog plays. Houston in particular was one of the worst dogs in baseball.

NL West:
Baseball pundits have called the 2005 National League West division the worst division in 30+ years. Some argue it is the worst ever. Every team in that division was a poor dog play in 2005. In a season that has seen so many strange things, this was just another oddity. And it cost us.

As we mentioned before, the San Diego Padres in particular should have been a strong dog in 2005 given their profile. But they were a horrible dog. Another strange twist in a strange year.

Other Factors:
One cause of the underperforming National League underdogs in 2005 was that there were several teams with poor three and four spot starters in their rotation. When a team has a three or four spot starter in a game, it can potentially be a good underdog play. But in 2005 in the National League, many of the three and four spot starters had unusually bad seasons in underdog games.

Another factor was that a lot of closers had rough seasons in 2005. This accounts for the preponderance of 9th inning/ extra inning meltdowns that we saw in mid-season (at a rate that was higher than usual for underdogs). We did experience fewer ninth inning meltdowns later in September.

The 2005 Los Angeles Dodgers were a good example of this. Without Eric Gagne, the Dodgers had a lot of blown saves in 2005. Gagne saved a lot of games for us in the 2004 season. In fact, Gagne won us a ton of units in 2004 (by saving games where LA was a dog).

John Smoltz (Atlanta) saved us a lot of games in 2004, and his replacements in Atlanta in 2005 lost us several games.

Late Hot Run:
The Dogs Formula won 23.69 units in the final 9 days of the 2005 regular season (based on 1 unit per play). The Dogs Formula won money every day during that incredible hot streak.

It was the hot streak that we waited on during the mid-summer months. It just happened to come much later than expected.

The latest hot streak pushed the formula's record into profitability for the 2005 season, despite all the strange things that happened in 2005. It's very encouraging, because it means that even with all the statistical anomalies that we saw in the 2005 season, the formula was still profitable over the course of the entire season. That tells us that no matter what the baseball gods throw at us during a most bizarre season, the formula can still profit.

Unfortunately, that hot run didn't come around mid-season, but what is clear is how hot this formula can get in a very brief period of time - and that you never know when it's going to hit. Each season, the Dogs Formula has had very hot runs (see our home page for details). A lot of money can be made off the Dogs Formula in a very short period of time. We can't predict when those hot runs will come...but we can say with complete confidence that the hot runs will come each season.

Primary and Secondary Filters:
The Dogs Formula is comprised of a set of primary filters and secondary filters. The primary filters are the backbone of the formula. If they did not work, the formula would not work.

Because the 2005 MLB Season had so many statistical anomalies, it should not surprise us that the secondary filters were impacted. What happened in the 2005 season was our primary filters alone actually outperformed (won more units) than our combination of primary filters and secondary filters. That is the first time that has happened since we discovered the Dogs Formula.

In every previous season, the primary filters saved us a ton of losing units (the numbers are listed on our home page), but it was our secondary filters that then catapulted us to 40+ winning unit seasons.

So why have secondary filters at all? Because primary filters alone are not enough to have a 40+ unit winning season.

The good news is that the primary filters worked very well again in 2005. They filtered out many losing units. So why did we have such an off season then? Because it was the secondary filters that took a hit given all the statistical anomalies of 2005.

The formula works. If the primary filters, which are the backbone of the formula, did not work in the 2005 season, or any other season, then the formula would not work.

Given that the 2005 season was the first season our primary filters alone outperformed our combination of primary and secondary filters, it could be that every 5-7 MLB seasons we have a situation where certain statistical anomalies will throw the formula off, and it will impact our secondary filters. The good news is that even in a strange season like the 2005 season, our primary filters still work.

Cheers,

The Baseball Formula Team

Click here to subscribe.