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8/1/05 Monday's August 1, 2005 MLB Picks (2)

Finally a winning day yesterday. Bounced back to the #2 ranking with decent 2-1 day yesterday winning both of our premium picks. Although we have had a bad week last week, so have many other handicappers. July was still a profitable month and we are excited about August and September.

Anyways, there is a small slate of games on tap for Monday but we still like 2 plays.

I am currently watching a re-run of the White Sox - Orioles game. I must admit, it feels good to finally have a winning day but that game in and of itself gives us another great play for Monday.

Chicago White Sox -1.5 RUNLINE +120 over Baltimore Orioles (1.5 Units) As I stated in yesterday's writeup, the White Sox are 110-69 (+33 Units) dating back to last year versus right handers. One thing I am noticing in last night's game was that the White Sox were extremely patient and got Lopez to about 30 pitches before even scoring any runs in the first! The White Sox eat up pitches really well and with the Orioles having pitched their bullpen 26 innings in their past 4 games, we see a beat up bullpen by the Orioles. We saw what happened this weekend with the Angels versus the Yankees after pitching those 18 innings against the Blue Jays. We had the Yankees against the Angels in the first game of that series for the very same reason but it did not pan out for us but we saw the Angels bullpen blow the next two games. Anyways, our reasoning really does not end there in this game. It gets better. The first thing a novice bettor would think when analyzing this game is: "The Orioles can't get swept at home". Well, one of the betting systems that I generally follow is that the road favorite in game #4 of a series looking for the sweep is 32-18 (+7 units) in the 5 years I am currently analyzing. The Phillies were in this spot yesterday and lost badly. I did not take the Phillies for two reasons: I never like to go against the Rockies at home and secondly the Phillies were coming off a 1-run-win. Of the 32-18 record, if our team won by 2+ runs in their previous two games, it improves to 23-9 (+11.5 Units). Improves to 16-3 if the team is a bigger favorite than -130 and 15-4 against the run line winning on average by 3.16 runs per game.

Oakland Athletics over Minnesota Twins (1.5 Units) The Oakland Athletics are just awesome. We do not need to get into how great their recent run has been. In fact, we should have went for them yesterday as small home favorites. Anyways, the Athletics are 7-1 in their L8 games versus lefties outscoring their opponents 66-27 in those games. Their run versus lefties could be better but I did not need to check further. They are 22-11 this season versus lefties. I admit Johan Santana is great but his name recognition will not do anything except give us better value.