8/2/05 Tuesday's MLB Picks August 2 (2) Great day with the Athletics and White Sox pulling through for us. The Athletics line opened up at +168 and as soon as I entered that into my program, it spit it out as a 2 unit play. I guessed the spread to be +135 and so I only called it a 1.5 unit play. We got 30% extra value than what I thought the line should be. Baseball is all about momentum and I cannot see any sane baseball bettor lay -180 on the Twins yesterday and really think it was a smart play. At -180, the Twins would have to win over 64% of the time which comes out to be 104-58 if projected out over a season. With as good as these Athletics have been both offensively and pitching, do you really believe they are a 58-104 team even against Johan?

On to my picks for Tuesday.

Oakland Athletics -125 over Minnesota Twins (1.5 Units) We are backing these Athletics again. Why not. They have been simply dominant lately and we see them coming into this game off a squeaker victory. We predict another win. The Athletics were very patient and took Santana to 100 pitches relatively fast after which they started smacking him for hits. With the Twins offense struggling (also no Torii Hunter), we see another strong pitching performance from Danny Haren.

Cincinnati Reds +125 over Atlanta Braves (1.0 Units) This spread is going to grow. As soon as I saw the Reds as a home dog, I knew my colleague Gaurav was going to be all over them. He loves the Reds and Indians even though the dude was born in San Diego. We suck this year betting on the Reds, going 3-7 proving you do not bet on teams you like. But anyways, there are plenty of reasons to like the Reds value today. The Braves are travelling off a home game to play a road game on zero days rest. Our analysis shows that this angle costs them about a 1.3% probability in winning. Anyways, we see the Reds as 53-44 (+12.4 Units) L2 seasons at home versus right handed pitching. Their offense is a big kept secret and is rolling right now. They scored a lot of runs at Petco and are off a 3-game road sweep which is not only rare but a rarity for a team more than 10 games below 500. This bodes well for them as we see such a situation historically boding well for the home team in Game 1 of this series.

We may be adding the White Sox -1.5 RUNLINE +120 to our arsenal today. Stay tuned for a follow-up email if we end up taking it.