As we round out the first month of the MLB season, many Bodog handicappers from the other major sports are looking to place money on their favorite baseball teams. For all intents and purposes, baseball is the most profitable sport to handicap, because the regular season is longer then any other sports league, and there are plenty of statistics you can focus your attention on. One of the statistics that many sharp handicappers look at is team slugging percentage. A team’s slugging percentage can indicate that they have better price per head odds then their opponent.

What is slugging percentage? Slugging percentage is a direct measurement of the combination of singles, doubles, triples and home runs divided by at bats. That is to say, a player or team that accumulates a greater amount of singles, doubles, triples and home runs after dividing that number by the team’s total at bats, is more likely to score runs then a player or team with a lower number. Slugging percentage calculates the total power of a hitter, by looking more closely at where each hit ended up. Here is an MLB blogs example.

Babe Ruth is often considered the greatest power hitter ever, as gave the New York Yankees the reputation that they have today. In Ruth’s first season with the Yankees in 1920, he had 458 at bats, in which he had 172 hits. Within those 172 hits, Ruth accumulated 73 singles, 36 doubles, nine triples and 54 home runs. Using the aforementioned formula to determine Ruth’s slugging percentage this would be the result.

SLG = (73 x one) + (36 x two) + (nine x three) + (54 x four) = 388

We would then take 388 which is the total hits from the at bats and divide it by 458, which results in 0.847. In baseball if you have a slugging percentage higher then 800 then you are considered one of the better hitters in the game. At the same time, hitting lower then 700 is considered very bad.