Thursday June 30, 2005

Cincinnati Reds -110 over Houston Astros (1.50 Units) The Houston Astros are a great team to go against when they are on the road because they consistently lose. They are a 11-28 road team but again, as people fail to realize is that they are 3-12 this season on the road versus lefty starters! Over the past two seasons, they've averaged exactly 3.0 runs in this spot. This is including 18 games last season when they were much better offensively. I don't care who is pitching for them, if they only score 3 runs per game, they will lose. Eric Milton, the Reds starter pitched a solid 7 innings versus the Astros this season giving up only 1 run. The Reds, on the other hand, are a strong home team. This would rank as a 2 or even a 3 unit play if only the Reds had been playing well recently, or if they were dominant in the first game of a series (they are not), or even if they had a strong divisional record (11-22 is not). Nevertheless, because of this, we probably should drop this to a regular 1.0 unit play but it is okay because I am looking at a 40-27 system for poor teams that are good at home in the first game of a series at home. This is a system that has not done well the past two years.

New York Mets - Philadelphia Phillies OVER (1.0 Units) According to the National Sports Monitor, yesterday's total was a push even though I personally got the game at 8.5 and won it. Obviously, my book charged a lot of juice for it but I was willing to in that case. Anyways, the over/under is going to be low today because of Pedro Martinez. The Phillies are not great against Right-Handers like Pedro but we still like the over because we are looking at a really odd system that when a team is favorite of -200 or more and going against a team that has averaged fewer than 4 runs the previous 10 games is hitting 60%. There are a few more criteria necessary to make the overs 83-53 over 6 years. The average score in those 136 games was 10.2 versus an average over/under of 8.9.

Atlanta Braves +165 over Florida Marlins (1.0 Units) The Braves should have won yesterday but their bullpen continues to blow leads. We took them as a +185 dog and won. We still like the value with the Braves in this series.

San Francisco Giants +130 over Arizona Diamondbacks (1.0 Units) Nice win by the Giants yesterday. Cashing in our second +185 team in a row. Braves on Tuesday and then the Giants on Wednesday. We are still liking the Giants today as we can see the Giants pick up their bats today.

Chicago Whitesox -126 over Detroit Tigers (1.0 Units) The White Sox are 9-2 this season on the road versus lefties. We do not like playing -126 but we like Freddy Garcia pitching a great game. The Tigers have been struggling recently.