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May 10, 2008 Baseball Picks
St. Louis Cardinals (163) over Milwaukee Brewers (1.0 Units) -
The Cardinals really blew it for us yesterday by giving up 2 unearned runs and then their closer blowing his fifth save. But at least with all of that, we still only lost by 1 run with our underdog... Meaning that they won against the run line. Does us no good but at least that is some semblance of positive for us to take into this game. We have to take them knowing the Brewers have Ben Sheets on the mound and that there's a chance that the Brewers offense has finally woken up thanks to those runs scored on the errors and the game winning hit but we are getting them at +163 and they are are still 22-15 on the season nevertheless.
Our stats show that divisional rival underdogs that have more than 5 wins last 10 but are coming into the game losing 3 straight are undervalued by about 20 points. There's just too much of a concentration on the losses by bettors that they undervalue them. These Cardinals could easily be +143...
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Los Angeles Angels (122) over Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1.0 Units) - Just as the Cardinals pick goes, this is kind of an honor pick. We respect the Angels at 22-15 that we are willing to put a unit on them when they are +122 underdogs.
Blindly betting on underdogs that have a better than 55% record has gone +65 units dating back to the past 8 full seasons... going [81-91, +11 units] this season. So yes, we take certain teams just because they are an underdog knowing full well that there are a lot of reasons that make a team win than just the starting pitching. This same system holds true for the Cardinals above.
These Angels have lost 2 straight games and if you factor that into the system above, it is still +27 units.
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Pittsburgh Pirates (-110) over Atlanta Braves (1.0 Units) -
These Pirates have won 4 straight games... all at home! And the Braves had a bit of a winning streak of their own that was snapped last night in a tight 2-3 game.
Ian Snell had his best pitching performance of the season last night.
Chuck James for the Braves will be pitching for the first time since April 24... he's only had one road start this season and it was not a very good one so we expect him to get shelled on the road against a home happy Pirates team.
