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April 25, 2008 Baseball Picks
Tampa Bay Devil Rays (107) over Boston Red Sox (1.5 Units) -
Statistics are in the Devil Rays favor for several reasons.
- Statistics show that in a divisional rivalry game, the team that is coming off another divisional rival series has the advantage over the team coming off a non-divisional rivalry series.. i.e. the Devil Rays played the Blue Jays while the Red Sox only played the Angels.
- Blindly betting on teams coming into a series with a win against a team coming into the series with a loss would have made you money the past 9 seasons.
- Home teams that swept its opponent in its prior series use that as big momentum builders.
- The Rays are in their third consecutive home series, and for game 1's, their home field advantage is a bit stronger than if it was their first home series' game 1.
- The Devil Rays are home dogs.
Tim Wakefield tends to have success early in the season because as a knuckleballer, the ball moves out of his arm different than it does for any other pitcher... and hitters get stymied. But his advantage wears off after time and will be tested by this Devil Rays ball club. The Devil Rays are coming into this game having swept the Blue Jays at home.
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Atlanta Braves (123) over New York Mets (1.0 Units) -
The Braves are completely and totally being undervalued here in this game! We understand that the Braves are 3-7 on the road this year but the Mets barely even have an advantage at home right now. If you look at the situation, you'd see that they are coming off of three consecutive road series' without rest to play at home. Traveling from Philadelphia to Chicago to DC and then back to New York without rest in the span of about 5 days is bad enough but couple that with the fact that they keep losing ball games. Statistics from past events show that teams in such a situation tend to falter and that the home field advantage is not as strong as you would expect it to be. The Braves' offense has been unpredictable as of late making this play a weaker one than normal.
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Arizona Diamondbacks (102) over San Diego Padres (1.0 Units) - As well as the Diamonbacks have played this season, they should not be underdogs today. We are not necessarily jumping on the Randy Johnson bandwagon but if he is to have a good game, it would be against these Padres -- who averaged just 1 run per game against the Giants at home. Now the Padres just lost 1-0 yesterday and going for teams in that situation do tend to be a decent bet but we just have to lay off of them because of their four consecutive losses. Check this out.
Teams are undervalued by about 13 points over the past 9 seasons if they are coming off a 1-0 loss and playing at home in the first game of a series. But if you were to couple that with them having two consecutive losses, meaning they were on a losing trend before that 1-0 loss, then they will have trouble righting the ship and the statistics prove that. They are overvalued by about 9 points in that case. One size does not fit all
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Houston Astros (117) over St. Louis Cardinals (1.0 Units) - The Astros have the longest win streak in baseball right now and we are betting on them to continue that trend. Houston has to travel but so does the Cardinals. The Astros are coming into this series with a win but so did the Cardinals. Many factors we look at in better the first game of a series are identical here on both sides. But the key difference is the fact that the Cardinals faced Gorzelanny yesterday. Facing a righty after having faced a lefty in your previous game tends to take your batters down a notch as they try to adjust to the different orientation in the pitcher.
Just look at the raw data.
A team that faces two right handed pitchers in a row has a win percentage of 50.6% but if they were facing a lefty their previous game, their win percentage drops down to 49.8%. Now of course if we remove duplicates, i.e. two teams facing each other in the same situation we'd find the difference to be much larger.
So let's say our team has faced LEFTY-->RIGHTY but the opponent has gone RIGHTY-->RIGHTY, then the win percentage drops down to 49%, a delta of about 2% from the other team. And this is very significant because we are talking about HUGE sample sizes that are very relevant. So with the Astros having that little bit of an edge with respect to pitcher orientation and the fact that they have won 5 games straight and are underdogs here today, we've got to bet them.
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Toronto Blue Jays (102) over Kansas City Royals (1.0 Units) -
At 9-6, these Royals showed some promise but at 9-13, they look like the Royals of old. No way they should be favorites today when you consider they played a doubleheader yesterday... one that they got swept! The good thing for them is that they don't have to travel following that performance and they get to face a Blue Jays team that is struggling as well.
These Royals fall into that pitcher orientation issue that the Cardinals find themselves in. In the second game of the double header, they had to bat against Cliff Lee, a lefty, and are now going to have to face a righty. Teams batting against a righty when they faced a lefty in their previous game wins at a 48.2% clip when facing an opponent that is facing a pitcher of the same orienation (LEFT-->LEFT or RIGHT-->RIGHT). And if it is the first game of a series, it worsens to 47.1%. Meaning the opponent has a win percentage of about 53%, a sum of 6 percent better. It is doubtful that fact was taken into account when calculating these odds or else the Blue Jays would never be underdogs!
Because it is not just the pitching dynamics going against the Royals but all of their consecutive losses and their getting swept in a doubleheader last night.
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