Baseball fans can gain an edge on bookmakers by analysing the weather according to John Leekley from Home Run Forecast.

Leekley told Jesse Learmonth, host of the BettingStartups.com podcast, that his company has created an index to quantify this information during an interview at SBC Summit North America.  

He said: “We can measure the atmosphere and quantify that measurement on an index from one to ten, with ten being the most favourable conditions for ball flight and one being the worst. We’ve seen over the past year or several years a correlation between what the index is and how many runs are scored and how many home runs are hit during a game.

He explained that at the time of the interview, 68 MLB regular season games had scored a 1 on Home Run Forecast’s scale and 65% of those games had hit the under on the number of runs scored based on the line set by ESPN Bet.

Bettors will be able to use this data to compare the weather index with bookmaker’s predictions on the number of runs scored or home runs hit and decide whether there is value in placing a bet. 

Looking towards the future, Home Run Forecast already has a partnership with fantasy sports site RotoWire and Leekley revealed that the company is working on partnerships with other sites including FantasyPros.

He added: “ We have had some conversations with some of the teams about maybe being mentioned on some broadcasts and things like that. You might see the index pop up in a game or two here and there as you go forward.”