This MLB season has brought us a fantastic, consistent promotion at DraftKings Sportsbook: all customers are eligible for a daily MLB Early Win promotion token. Users can select any MLB moneyline on that slate, apply the token, and receive a full payout if their team goes up by two runs at any point in the game — even if they don’t end up winning. Let’s dive into what is DraftKings’ MLB Early Win promo and how to use it, including my strategy tips. Make sure to check out our sports betting tools or our sports betting promos as well!
What is & How to Use DraftKings’ MLB Early Win Promo
What is DraftKings’ MLB Early Win Promo
Let’s start with the easiest question to answer: What is DraftKings’ MLB Early Win promotion? It’s a special offer that allows users who opt-in to apply a token to their MLB moneyline bets. Instead of the team actually having to win the game, the team merely has to lead by two runs at any point in the game, and the bettor will receive their full payout.
How to Use DraftKings’ MLB Early Win Promo
To use the MLB Early Win promo, you first must click “opt in” on the MLB homepage. Once you’ve done so, click on any moneyline market. You should see a (1) in the “bonuses” section of your bet slip — click it and select the early win token.
Once you’ve applied the token, simply wager however much you feel comfortable betting on your chosen team and confirm your wager. If your team leads by two, you’ll receive your early payout before the conclusion of the game.
How to Make a Profit With DraftKings’ MLB Early Win Promo
So, should you just use your early win token on moneyline bets you would’ve placed anyway, or is there another optimal strategy? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that you should target teams that meet at least a few of the specific set of conditions I’ve listed below — or you should use our market-based MLB betting model to back teams trading with positive expected value (+EV) on the moneyline. More on that below.
Avoid Heavy Favorites — Go with Underdogs, Pick’ems or Slight Favorites
My biggest rule when using any early win promo is not to lay too much juice. Sure, betting on the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Miami Marlins at -250 odds will probably win, but will it win at a rate higher than the 71.4% implied probability of the line you’re laying — and is that juice worth the squeeze when you’ve only got one early win token to use? The returns aren’t good enough, and you need to win at too high of a rate to be profitable with better alternatives on the board.
Instead, I recommend backing teams that fall within the sweet spot of -150 (60%) to +150 (40%)*. If you’re able to get a full unit down at odds within that range, you’re profiting at least two-thirds of a unit. *There’s an argument for backing true longshots with early win tokens, especially since you don’t need to win at a clip close to 50% with them, but I prefer to pick teams in which the house has more confidence.
Road Teams Have More Value Than Usual
This point is somewhat self-explanatory. If you’re just betting on a team to go up by two runs, the road team can put runs on the board before the home team even steps up to the plate. This can effectively neutralize whatever disadvantage they may have on the mound if the top of their order is good enough.
The advantage of the first half-inning doesn’t disappear immediately, either. For example, if the Orioles are on the road and only plate one run in the top half of the first but hold their opponent scoreless in the bottom, they’ll get another crack at going up by two before the home team comes back up.
Of course, the advantage a road team gets with the MLB early win promo is balanced by the fact that this is still, ultimately, a moneyline bet. While it’s more difficult for a home team to go up by two early, they will get the bottom of the ninth (and the bottom of every extra inning) to actually go for the win, which would still cash your ticket even if they never led by two. That said, if you’re counting on a late-game comeback to cash your early win ticket, you probably could’ve targeted a different game
Back Teams with Strong Early Offenses
This may be obvious, but with an early win promotion, a team with a top-heavy batting order is less of a liability than they would be without the early win offer. If things fall your way, you’ll cash your ticket before the bottom of the order has to make an impact.
Offenses are slightly more important than starting pitchers for DraftKings MLB early win promotion because while starters can limit runs, they can’t put them on the board (unless they’re Shohei Ohtani). This is especially the case if you’re backing a road team, as you can cash your ticket before their starter even takes the mound.
To gauge offensive production, I look at expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA), the importance of which you can read more about in my guide to +EV MLB betting. In short, the metric measures how much offense a team should be producing, not how much they have produced, which filters out high-variance outcomes.
But while it’s important to get a sense for a team’s performance in xwOBA, you should also check out their individual players’ xwOBA to see, first, where they fall in the batting order; and, second, whether they’re in the lineup for that day.
Don’t Trust a Shaky Starting Pitcher, Especially Not at Home
My final strategy tip is a corollary of the one above — if strong offensive production early is important, then pitching capable of neutralizing early offensive production matters, too.
This is principle especially important at home. If you’re thinking about backing a slight home dog on the early win markets, but they’re starting, say, a washed-up veteran, they may never get a chance to take the lead.
Strategy Recap & Conclusion
Ultimately, if you’re using an MLB early win token, at least two (ideally three, if not four) of the following are true: (1) the team is trading for odds longer than -150, (2) the team is on the road, (3) the team has a strong series of bats atop the order or (4) the team (especially if they’re at home) has a solid starting pitcher on the mound.
But those four conditions are the method to my madness — there’s more to the story. Sometimes, MLB moneylines will be trading with +EV in our MLB betting model and getting some exposure to them with an early win token will reduce your risk. Let’s discuss how to use our tools for this purpose!
How To Use OddsShopper’s +EV Betting Tools
The following content is repurposed from our guide to how to use +EV betting tools. For more information, read the full story!
Now let’s talk about how to use OddsShopper’s tools. When you first sign up, you should navigate to the shop pages to see the best +EV bets today. It should look something like this:
You’ll find bets from a variety of sports and on a variety of markets. In this screenshot alone, we’ve got several NBA player prop bets, a few MLB player prop and home run bets, as well as a golf tournament matchup.
Our shop pages are customizable. You can change your state, which will lead to only wagers available to you rendering as +EV bets. You can customize your bankroll, which will change the recommended bet sizing. You can also filter by league, sportsbook, type of bet and when the game, match or tournament in question will occur
Next, let’s take a quick look at an example wager and how our product team describes each of the key terms.
Bet Size: The recommended bet size as a percentage of your bankroll. This metric is based on a fractional Kelly Criterion approach that leads to a reasonable balance of minimizing risk of ruin while maximizing potential reward.
EV: An abbreviation for “expected value,” this metric estimates the long-term profitability of a wager by taking into account the probabilities/payouts associated with each potential outcome.
xWin: The probability of winning the bet implied by the Sharp Sportsbook Algorithm true odds.
OS Rating: The OS rating provides a rating for each +EV bet. An OS rating above 20 signifies an exceptional bet. Ratings between 10 and 20 are highly favorable bets. Finally, a rating between 0 and 10 indicates a solid bet. We factor in the EV, expected win, bet size, and negative geometric drag to calculate this rating.
Hold: The synthetic hold across the entire market, which is the loss a bettor would sustain if he bet both sides of the market to win equal amounts. The larger the hold, the more difficult it is to beat that market.
OddsShopper’s Sports Betting Tools & Tips
New to sports betting? OddsShopper’s selection of Betting 101 articles is here to help. We even have a parlay builder and our guide to parlay betting. Check out our guide to finding positive expected value (+EV), and you can unlock more +EV plays by signing up for OddsShopper Premium!
