MLB run lines: both sides close to fair, neither measurable

Over 753 games the home -1.5 came back about +3.8% and the road +1.5 about -5.4%. Neither figure separates from zero, and this is the third window of this market to order the two sides differently, so which side is dearer is not something it has answered.

Written by Jesse, NegativeEV. Last updated 2 August 2026.

• Sample: 753 MLB games quoted at the standard line, 1,506 side bets
• Window: 2026-04-19 to 2026-07-31
• Priced at: best price across books on each side, at home -1.5 / road +1.5
• Measured: 2026-08-02

Realized EV per bet	Figure	Detail
Home -1.5	+3.8% (± 4.6)	won 40.9%, priced at 39.6%
Road +1.5	-5.4% (± 2.9)	won 59.1%, priced at 62.6%
Mean per-book two-sided hold	4.1%

The sample is games where books quoted the standard home -1.5 / road +1.5 pair, so the result is about those two literal sides. It does not generalize to favorites against underdogs, which is a different split measured separately on moneylines.

Method

For each game the best price on each side at the standard 1.5-run point is taken across books, and both sides are graded against the real final margin from the mapped play-by-play corpus. Realized win rate and expected value per bet are reported for each side, along with the mean per-book two-sided hold - which is the book's margin in the quotes, a separate quantity from the realized figures beside it. Games missing from the corpus are excluded rather than defaulted.

Inside the noise floor

Neither side clears its own noise floor. On 753 games the home -1.5 is +3.8% ± 4.6 and the road +1.5 is -5.4% ± 2.9, and both intervals cover zero. Three windows of this market have now ordered the two sides three different ways: a 206-game pass put the home -1.5 at -0.9% ± 8.7 and the road +1.5 at -3.0% ± 5.5, a 245-game pass put them at -3.3% ± 7.9 and -1.1% ± 5.1, and the full archive reverses the ordering again. The decimals are estimates rather than measured costs, and three windows that disagree is what a market too close to fair to read looks like. The large-sample prop and ATP runs are the sharper measurements.

Written up for readers: https://negativeev.com/about/run-lines All findings: https://negativeev.com/research