April 26, 2008 Baseball Picks
Tampa Bay Devil Rays (115) over Boston Red Sox (1.5 Units) - We are not afraid of taking these Devil Rays a second straight game against the Red Sox but the average bettor in Vegas is... and that's why you see the +115 number on these Devil Rays. One thing we watch out for when looking at young pitchers is how they do at home and on the road. Earvin Santana for the Angels was one such pitcher that did great at home but terribly on the road. This season, Buchholz has only given up 1 run in 12 innings at home. But on the road, he has given up 11 runs (10 earned) in 11 innings so as he faces the Devil Rays, we expect the latter to show up. The Devil Rays have been streaking as of late and their late inning victory last night should give them the momentum and confidence to take on Buchholz. As for Edwin Jackson, he's been very shaky in his past two starts and he's hardly worth any praise but we've just got to go with the value in this line and hope the Devil Rays pop points on the board to keep up with the runs the Red Sox are certain to score against Jackson. Could be a high scoring game. This game is action on Buchholz pitching.
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Chicago Cubs (-160) over Washington Nationals (1.0 Units) - The Cubs are facing left handed pitcher Chico but they are at a bit of an advantage because they faced a lefty yesterday! When a team is facing a lefty it matters a great deal the orientation of the pitcher they faced in their last game. If it was a righty, they are 48.6% (R-->L) but if it was a lefty then they are a break even 50%. So much of the advantage that left handed pitchers have is that they are able to catch batters off guard, take them out of their groove. But when a team gets to face a left hander twice in a row, that pitching advantage seems to be nullified based on data that spans the past 10 seasons. What's worse is that Matt Chico is not a very good pitcher!! And it is definitely hurting him that he's following Odalis Perez in the rotation. That Nationals coach should have done a better job. So these Cubs lost a very tight one yesterday but it was the Nationals bullpen that put out 4 relievers. In fact, these Nationals put out 4 relievers in each of the two prior games against the Cubs... So here's the more likely scenario that we envision this game will take.
Chico will get into a little bit of trouble early against the Cubs. Lacking the desire to go to his already depleted bullpen, the Nationals manager will keep Chico in the game leading to a big inning in the middle innings. By that time, Zambrano will have exerted dominance over the game and the Nationals will further rely on Chico to just eat up innings instead of using up his bullpen. The Cubs should be taking this game comfortably. We would never want our clients to take a -160 game unless we felt strongly that they would be able to win comfortably. And we do not bother with the run line because you lose juice on the moneyline to runline conversion everytime you play that. This game is action on a Zambrano vs. Chico matchup.
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Florida Marlins (150) over Milwaukee Brewers (1.0 Units) -The Brewers got shut out from a lefty yesterday and are now facing another lefty in Hendrickson. So as per the writeup in our Cubs-Nationals game, you'd say the Brewers are at an advantage for being able to play two lefties in a row. And if you ask that question, you'd be right! But what makes this different is the fact that the Brewers got shut out yesterday. When looking at how teams perform against a lefty when scoring fewer than 2 runs against a lefty, they win at a 46% clip, a sum of 4% worse than generically facing L-->L.
The other issue is that the Brewers have about the same odds as the Cubs but their pitcher Villanueva in no way compares to Zambrano. In fact, Villanueva has been very inconsisent this season. And despite the fact that they've been playing at home a long while, they are starting to have trouble scoring.
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Arizona Diamondbacks (-114) over San Diego Padres (1.0 Units) - The Diamondbacks are possibly the most undervalued team in baseball right now although you could make a similar case for the Marlins. These Diamondbacks are 17-6 this season which is good enough to be the best in baseball. And despite the fact that they are on the road against the Padres, these Padres hardly have much of a home field advantage right now, they are only 5-8 at home and are having trouble scoring runs in their Petco Park just averaging 1 run this home swing. The Padres struggled against lefty Randy Johnson and now have to face a righty in Owings. Owings is 4-0 and will easily take advantage of these Padres as they are in the L->R situation situation which causes them to lose about 1% in their win percentage.
So we say take the undervalued team on a roll against a struggling offense that is going to have trouble adjusting to 4-0 Owings.
Yahoo Sports accurately analyzes the game we see it:
"Micah Owings has reason to be excited after winning his first four starts. He may be even more thrilled about Saturday’s opponent. Owings and the Arizona Diamondbacks will try to hand the reeling San Diego Padres and their anemic offense a sixth straight loss, while also extending their league-leading and franchise-record start."
Judging from all the positive PR that these Diamondbacks are getting, it is doubtful they are going to be undervalued for long.
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Oakland Athletics (135) over Seattle Mariners (1.0 Units) - We are utilizing a variant of one of our simplest systems ever. It basically just says to take any road underdog of about 135 or more that has won 6+ games last 10 and going up against a team that has won 5 or fewer games last 10. You can basically ignore home field advantage, pitching, hitting, all sorts of stuff because you are betting on such a heavy underdog. Let's assume you are taking a +135 underdog, you'd only have to win about 42.5% of the time to break even. So when you consider that you are taking a team that has won 6+ games L10, you've got an extreme amount of value if they are able to continue that momentum into their "11th game".. And with baseball we know it to exist.
By the way, the mini system that we mentioned above was +56 units over the past 2 seasons and a total of +96 units over the past 9 seasons with only 1 losing season! Yup yup, a good value bet.
