There are two run lines on a baseball game and most people only ever look at one of them. The standard is -1.5, where the favorite has to win by two and a one run win is a loss. The alternate is -1, where the favorite still has to win by two but a one run win is a push and the money comes back.
That push is the entire product. It is also the reason the -1 costs so much more, and the question worth answering is whether the protection is ever worth the price.
So we counted. Every completed regular season game in 2026 through September 9, 2,194 of them. Each game was scored twice, once from each club's side, and the side with the higher season win percentage was treated as the favorite. That gives 2,185 favorite rows after ties are dropped.
The three outcomes
A -1 has three outcomes rather than two, and here is how often each of them landed.
| Outcome for the better club | Games | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Won by 2 or more, ticket wins | 909 | 41.60% |
| Won by exactly 1, ticket pushes | 338 | 15.47% |
| Did not win, ticket loses | 938 | 42.93% |
Take the pushes out, because a push is not a decision, and the real hit rate on a -1 is 909 of 1,847, which is 49.21 percent.
Put that number next to what the market usually charges for a -1 on a solid favorite, somewhere between -170 and -250, and the shape of the problem is already visible. A price of -170 needs 62.96 percent. A price of -230 needs 69.70 percent. The all favorites number is under 50.
It has to be sorted by how big the mismatch is
Lumping every favorite together is not useful, because the market does not price them together. So we split by the gap in season win percentage between the two clubs, which is the crudest honest proxy for how large a favorite is.
| Win pct gap | Games | Win by 2+ | Push | Hit rate, pushes removed | Fair price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 5 points | 889 | 335 | 129 | 44.08% | +127 |
| 5 to 10 points | 674 | 285 | 107 | 50.26% | -101 |
| 10 to 15 points | 433 | 186 | 80 | 52.69% | -111 |
| 15 to 20 points | 146 | 77 | 17 | 59.69% | -148 |
| 20 points or more | 43 | 26 | 5 | 68.42% | -217 |
The line climbs the way it should, and it climbs slowly. Going from a coin flip matchup to a genuine mismatch moves the hit rate about 24 points, and the very best bucket in the sport still only just reaches the number a -217 would demand.
That top bucket is 43 games. Forty three. It is the most quotable row on this page and the least trustworthy one, and anybody using it to justify a position should say the sample size out loud first.
The push is smaller than people assume
The pitch for a -1 is the protection, so it is worth knowing how often the protection actually pays.
Across all favorites the push landed 15.47 percent of the time. Inside the buckets it moved less than you would expect: 14.51 percent in the closest matchups, 18.48 percent in the 10 to 15 band, and only 11.64 percent in the 15 to 20 band.
One run games are the most common single result in baseball. 604 of the 2,194 games this season were decided by exactly one run, 27.53 percent of the schedule. Two runs came next at 19.10 percent and three at 14.27. But a one run game splits both ways, and the favorite is only on the winning end of about half of them, which is why the push column lands near 15 rather than near 27.
What this means at the window
One. The -1 is not a discount version of the moneyline. It is a bet that the game is not close, sold with a partial refund attached, and the refund is worth roughly 15 percent of the ticket.
Two. Most -1 prices on the board are asking for a hit rate no bucket in this study produces. Anything past about -175 needs the mismatch to be extreme, and extreme mismatches are rare enough that a full season produced 43 of them.
Three. Season win percentage is a blunt tool. It says nothing about who is pitching, and the starting pitcher gap is the single biggest input into whether a baseball game turns into a blowout. A club with a mediocre record starting an ace belongs in a bucket this study cannot see.
Four. If a -1 is the play, size it down. At -230 a losing ticket costs 2.3 times what a winning one returns, and the push does not fix that, it only reduces how often you find out.
Five. Compare it to the -1.5 every time. The whole decision is what the push protection costs relative to what the standard run line pays, and that comparison is different on every game.
Method: All completed 2026 regular season games through September 9, 2,194 of them, from the MLB Stats API schedule feed with final scores. Season win percentage is computed from that same set, so it is the full season figure rather than the record as of each game date, which slightly favors clubs that improved late. Each game is scored once from the better club's side, and games between clubs with identical win percentages are dropped, leaving 2,185 rows. Fair price converts the hit rate with pushes removed into American odds with no vig applied. Margins and outcomes are exact.