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April 2, 2008 Baseball Picks

Betting baseball early in the season is tough for any sports handicapper to gauge because there's very little to work with. There is no trend to draw upon to predict how a team's offense may or may not perform. Impossible to really know whether a pitcher will be at his peak or be a slop job like Barry Zito was for us in our Giants loss. But what the sports handicappers lack in data, so do the oddsmakers, and the goal is to really try and understand their rationale for making odds and getting the team with the value.

Today we have two favorites on tap and we have similar reasons for both games.

And one thing that we've noticed sportsbooks have trouble doing is dissecting and analyzing the performance of left-handed pitchers. Last season, bettors who put their money on the southpaws early in the year got butchered for 25 units if they took home favorites with a lefty on the mound going up against a righty in the first half of the season. But overall, that has been money at the bank. Over the previous 7 years, this system was a killer +86 units. Folks have short term memories with betting and may not find the value with lefties on the mound this year. We think they will be surprised.

I make it clear that the system above analyzes the performance of home lefty favorites in the FIRST half of the season because they have been paltry in the second half. In the past 9 season, this system would have gone -64 units if applied to the second half. As you can see, what happens is that batters start getting used to facing lefties by the time the second half of the season rolls around. The win percentage between the two halves is basically 60.3% (1st half) and 58.6% (2nd half) -- representing a very minor decrease in success but one that we shall capitalize early in the season.

We have three teams in such a predicament today. The Cubs, Tigers, and the Phillies are all home favorites with a lefty on the mound. The Phillies, though, we will not pick for the simple fact that the Nationals put up double digits in game 1. And if you followed us last season, going for teams off of a double digit performance was money for us. But when a team alternates from having to face a righty and then a lefty (or vice versa) their balance/rhytym could get stifled so we will negate both systems here with that team. Besides, we are not very keen on taking those Phillies at -215.

The Cubs and Tigers are the remaining two teams to look at and have become our two picks of the day as per the system above but also because each of them are coming off of one-run losses in their prior game. When teams have lost by one run, they have historically been more focused and more willing to play small ball in their next game with the whole understanding that every run counts. But blindly betting on that system would be foolish, we use it conjunction with our earlier system that suggests we have an opponent that has to face a lefty after having faced a righty to screw up their balance and rhythym all the while our team is anxious to squeeze every run out of their opponents, then you factor in we are taking some pretty good pitchers i.e. Kenny Rogers at home, and we're looking at teams with pretty good chances of winning today at least against the moneyline.

Also note that the two games we are picking are early morning games which bode well for strong pitchers that can take advantage of their opponents as they may not have had the time for sufficient batting practice.

So, we are taking...

Chicago Cubs -122 over Milwaukee Brewers (1.0 Units)
Detroit Tigers -190 over Kansas City Royals (1.0 Units)