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April 16, 2008 Baseball Picks

Seattle Mariners over Oakland Athletics (1.0 Units) -

First, let's focus in on pitching.. Felix Hernandez has had a decent season thus far. In fact, he gave up no earned runs in 15 innings across his first two starts but his team lost those games for him. Then his third appearance was mediocre but earned him a win... he will look to bounce back from an average start.

Now hitting. These Athletics are mired in an offensive slump. All they've scored over the past 3 games is 4 runs. They are lucky to be 1-2 in that span. With Felix looking to rebound, we expect the Athletics to be a perfect slumping team for him to face.

Then situational. The Athletics are having their first home game back in a while and they may be a bit more preoccupied with seeing their families, being at home, etc... Bad situation.

This pick is action on Felix pitching.


San Diego Padres over Colorado Rockies (1.0 Units) - The Padres shut out the Dodgers on Sunday and then shut the Rockies out on Tuesday. They have a moderately rested bullpen despite the need to put out 4 pitchers on Sunday in a 1-0 pitching duel with the Dodgers. And a rested bullpen helps them in a close contest if it gets to that. Second issue to note is the fact that these Rockies got shut out by Wolf, a lefty yesterday. Statistics show that when a team faces a pitcher of one orientation (lefty/righty) and struggle, they will struggle in their next game against a pitcher of the other orientation (righty/lefty) because of how they get off balanced in such cases.

As per the Yahoo Sports staff, this is what they say "The Colorado Rockies continue to have trouble scoring runs. With that in mind, Petco Park seems to be the wrong place for them to be." Our sentiments exactly.

The Padres are facing a lefty today and they are 0-2 this season in such a case... all that really does in our minds is keeps us from making them a stronger pick... because Redman is not really all that great of a pitcher. This pick is action regardless of pitcher.

Florida Marlins (147) over Atlanta Braves (1.0 Units) - When we bet on such heavy underdogs, we are doing so because we believe they are undervalued, not necessarily because they have the best chance to win. Tim Hudson at 2-0 for the Braves is what is driving these odds. But just as we stated yesterday on our site, the Braves are at a disadvantage in having to play their third consecutive road series and we were right because they got shut out. So if they got shut out yesterday, what makes us believe that they can bounce back offensively? Well, these Braves are [4-6, -4 units] as a favorite. They are [2-6, -5] units on the road so no way we think the Marlins should be +147. Keep in mind that these Marlins are +5.2 units on the season (+3 units as an underdog).

Boston Red Sox (142) over New York Yankees (1.0 Units) - These Yankees, despite sweeping the Devil Rays find themselves in a really tough spot. A two-game home series sandwiched between road series'. Much like the sandwich effect in football/basketball where the effects of the previous game and the next game is so resounding that it causes a team to struggle in the current game, these Yankees are going to be like, "this sucks". Going up against the Yankees as a -150 underdog will not cut it either. These two teams have as fierce of a rivalry as you can get in major league sports, and the underdog is almost always the smart bet. Blindly betting the underdog in every Red Sox-Yankees game over the past 8 years would have yielded you +40 units. Last season was the only loser of a season, it went 4-11. And thus far this season, it has gone 0-2 though. They've played three games this year but when both teams are less than even money, we consider the game to hold no underdog.

If you purchased our systems document, you would see that three of the above match one of our picks...

Today's Premium System Plays

• Marlins falls into the following premium systems: DC
• Red Sox falls into the following premium systems: CT
• Mariners falls into the following premium systems: DI