We won 3 of 4 games yesterday and cleaned up our 2.0 unit and 1.5 unit plays. Life is good when you win.
We chose yesterday as the "day" that we would go against the grain with our picks and try to project end of the season trends because it is the middle of August. This is around the time when teams that are out of it stop playing, and teams with nothing to play for revel in being a spoiler. The first games of a series are the best for spoilers because they tend to be overlooked in general.
When we wrote our writeup yesterday, we had a little blurb about needing to know at what percentage a team is going to win if they are at -140. They wondered how it was possible to know.
There's two things that we do. First of all, we estimate the margin of victory a team is expected to have. We have a table of odds ranges and expected margins of victory. So if we know a team's margin of victory then we can know what odds they should be...
Another thing we can do is look at relevant systems that the teams fall into and see if teams tend to win at a higher or lower percentage. That helps too.
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Los Angeles Angels (-147) over Baltimore Orioles (2.0 Units) -
The Angels are kind of an obvious pick for anybody to make. But I think we like them mostly because they are 23-11 against lefties this season and they are a banging 53-26, +29 units when playing a team out of the AL West. This does not mean we'll go for them in EVERY game they play against a lefty or outside the AL West. But definitely today now that they are off a double digit loss revenge!
With them scoring 6 runs per game L5 and 6.75 runs per game L20, we think they are just going to explode today against lefty Matusz. If the Angels had a lefty on the mound, we'd bet this game as a game of the year.
But Lackey will do. The Angels have lost his last two starts so I think they'll come to back him up too....
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Arizona Diamondbacks (113) over Los Angeles Dodgers (1.0 Units) -
This might be a risky pick. I mean who goes against the Dodgers twice in a row and expect to win both games?
But here's the thing.
The Dodgers are just 4-6L10 and 8-12L20. So if you look at how they've played in their last 20 games, you'd say they weren't really that good of a team. So that's how we have to treat them. And because of that fact, a team like the D'backs are going to take advantage as much as they can.
The Dodgers are struggling to score and that's not good for them today. They are a below 500 team if facing a lefty in a game after having faced a righty. They struggle. And they should struggle today.
Take the D'backs in yet another spoiler role.
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Atlanta Braves (102) over Philadelphia Phillies (1.0 Units) -
Don't really think we need to get into a whole analysis here on why we're taking the Braves. It is kind of an easy pick for us to make. The Braves are dogs at home against a divisional rival and they have 7 wins L10. It does not matter who they are playing, that fact alone means they are good value.
