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Picks for 5/9/09: Reds in a Pickem With the Cardinals
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Rivalry Page: Reds vs Cardinals
Result: +1.00 units
Cincinnati Reds (-103) over St. Louis Cardinals (1.0 Units) - This is pretty much a pick'em game between two divisional rivals. The division leading Cardinals are 19-11 on the season and tied for second best record in baseball with the Red Sox.
When the spread is near pick'em, home teams tend to have an advantage in baseball when the road team has a lot of hype surrounding it. There's a vacuum around the pick'em. If the line was set at Cardinals +115 or so where it should be, too much money would be flying on the highly respected road team. This is why the sportsbooks hedge against that and make the game a pickem.
To test that theory, I plugged in the following information into my program. I look at home teams with a winning percentage less than 45% who were playing at home with a spread in the -101 to -109 range. They actually are +8 units this season. +29 units the past 10 season with only two losing seasons. The system gets much stronger when you hone in on the road team having a win percentage greater than 55%, just as we had said earlier. The home teams would be undervalued by about 14 points in those scenarios. The teams are undervalued by an even greater 20 points when we narrow it down further to look at only divisional rivalry games. So yes, we expect the Reds to use this to their advantage.
In fact, adding 20 points to the Reds spread would put them at about -120 and the Cardinals at about -115 as we had stated earlier.
The Cardinals are only 1-game above 500 on the road this season. The Reds do not have much of a home field advantage themselves anyways but their pitcher Aaron Harang is so much better at home than he is on the road. In 2008, the Reds were 8-7 in Harang's home starts but 3-9 in his road starts. That's a difference of about 6 units throughout the season. And when a team is in a prime position for a home win, there's nothing better than getting a homer pitcher.
These Cardinals have not been so hot offensively lately. They are averaging about a full run less the past 10 games than they are on the season. The Reds are the opposite, they are averaging about a half run better in the L10 games than as compared to how they are doing the whole season.
So there are plenty of signs to see value in these Cardinals today.
