For one, the variety in the lines is much smaller. That’s also a shorter name, which fits better on a phone screen.īaseball isn’t a high-scoring sport like basketball or football, so the runline works very differently from point spreads in those sports. The runline will just be displayed as “spread” to avoid erroneous terminology across sports in many cases. The runline is baseball’s version of a point spread. As in every sport, the moneyline bet is a bet on the winning team regardless of the score.
The runline is not to be confused with moneyline bets, which keep that name in baseball. The team with the plus number after the name (underdog) on a runline has to win or lose by less than that number for the bet to win.
The team with the negative number after their name on a runline (favorite) has to win by more than that number for the bet to win. A bet on the Royals -1.5 means the Royals would have to win the game by two runs or more for the bet to win.