System Play has Nats in nasty spot

The Washington Nationals are like the dimmest bulb on a set of outdoor lights, they standout for not shining brightly. While the Nationals have a comfortable lead as the worst team in baseball with 43-76 record (-24.1 units), they do deserve props for playing like paid professionals and not throwing in the towel. Even with last night’s loss, Washington has won eight of 12, thanks to a potent offense that has average 6.6 runs per game, compared to season average of 4.5 runs per contest.

In spite of playing better baseball, the Nationals have earned their stripes as the worst team in the game. Washington has the highest earned run average in the National League at 4.98. When the starting pitchers fail, which is often the case, a collection of less than desirable relievers take their place, with an even worse ERA (5.07). Washington’s non-starters have brought little relief as 17-33 record proves and the recent spike in run production has helped the closers get over the .500 mark (.533) since the first week of the season.

The Nats were 4-3 losers to Colorado last night in Game 1 of the series and will face the ace of the Rockies staff, Jason Marquis (13-8, 3.55 ERA). The veteran right-hander has embraced pitching for Colorado and has spearheaded a staff which has contributed mightily to the Rockies leading the wild card race in the senior circuit, while within striking distance of the division leading Los Angeles Dodgers.

Colorado (66-53, +10.6 units) is giving no indication of fading away, winning seven of last 11 and continuing to play surprisingly well on the road with 34-30 record, despite a team batting average of .238.

Colorado is 30-14 (+21.5 Units) against the money line after three or more consecutive road games this season and will face starter Collin Balester (1-2, 6.00), who has been allowing the long ball early and often. The rookie right-hander has surrendered three homers and five runs in each of his last two outings. Washington comes into this contest 13-34 revenging a one run loss to opponent over the last two seasons.

If this doesn’t sound like a great situation for Washington, it’s not and Colorado is a -160 money line favorite at DiamondSportsbook.com. Here is the situation the Nationals face tonight.

Play Against home underdogs with a money line of +125 to +175, who are ordinary offensive team scoring 4.3 to 4.8 runs per game, against a good NL starter (ERA of 3.70 or less), after a loss by two runs or less.

This system has been a reliable winner for a dozen years at 52-14, 78.8 percent. For the most part, these games have not been close, opening the door for potential run line action, with a score differential 2.6 runs. Take a closer look at this contest, the odds lineup in the bettor’s favor on the road favorite.

L.A. favored over soaring Redbirds

Last night’s St. Louis and Los Angeles contest had all the drama and intensity of a playoff game, with the Cardinals coming out on top 3-2 as -160 money line road favorites behind Chris Carpenter. This evening, the roles will be reversed, with the Dodgers the larger favorite and trying to find magic formula that worked earlier this season.

The Dodgers (70-49, +11.2 units) have lost seven of 10 games, seeing their lead in the NL West dwindle to 4.5-games and now have the same amount of losses as Philadelphia in the National League, jeopardizing their hold of the best record in the senior circuit.

It’s been an impotent offense that has hurt the Dodgers. Take away the two nine run explosions that resulted in victories and L.A. has totaled 20 runs in the other eight games (2.5 runs per outing). Matters have been made worse with starting pitchers being mildly ineffective and injuries creeping up.

Tonight’s starter, Chad Billingsley (11-6, 3.73 ERA) hasn’t pitched in 11 days due to left hamstring strain and will have to be watched cautiously. Billingsley hasn’t had much success against St. Louis with 0-2 record, with a 5.23 ERA in four starts, including being rocked for six runs and walking six in 5 2/3 innings of a 10-0 Redbirds whitewashing. The Dodgers have lost Billingsley’s last four home starts against teams with winning record.

St. Louis (68-52, +6.2 units) is making all those trade deadline pickups work and has won nine of last 10 contests. Manager Tony LaRussa’s offense has been improved with Matt Holliday and Mark DeRosa, however the pitching has been brilliant in allowing just over three runs per game during this stretch.

It was evident in last night’s contest the confidence the Cardinals are playing with and tonight’s starter Mitchell Boggs (1-1, 3.78) has given the Cards a chance to win. Though he was roughed in suffering first loss of the season last week against Cincinnati, the 25-year old right-hander has kept his team in the game and they have won five of his six starts in 2009. Boggs would become a permanent part of the rotation, but as has been the case in the past, 20 walks in just over 33 innings has made him less than trustworthy.

The Dodgers are 12-3 revenging a one run loss this season and sports bettors have moved them from -160 money line favorites at Bookmaker.com to -180, with the total Un8.5. L.A. has won 60 of last 86 games as a home favorite and is 12-4 OVER after allowing four runs or less four straight games this season.

St. Louis is decided underdog, yet is 14-3 on the road when the total is 8 to 8.5 and has the same record when they have on-base percentage of .375 or better over their last five games this season.

This battle of division leaders is set for 7:10 Pacific and is available for viewing in local markets and the Cards are 16-6 UNDER after a win by two runs or less this season.

Wagering on Quality Pitchers after poor outing

We have all been there as sports bettors, an attractive wager has been made on the team ace and he’s shelled and gone by the fourth inning, causing wagering accounts to decline. You understand as baseball bettor, the good pitchers are going to get beat, but when they are battered like the heavy bag at the gym, that is more gut-wrenching. After taking such a loss, is it a good or bad idea to follow up with that same pitcher in his next start?

The first order of business was to determine what makes a quality pitcher in 2009 and decided a minimum of 10 starts had to be made, with a personal winning percentage of 60 percent or higher. This pitcher had to be active or not injured, since it would do us no good to follow somebody who wasn’t pitching to begin with.

A bad outing was determined to be five or more earned runs in a single start. There were a couple of instances where particular hurlers fit the criteria in surrendering five or more runs with one or zero being earned. The argument becomes where to draw the line, thus settled on five earned and disregarded everything else.

Of course many of the names are quite familiar, like a who’s-who in baseball with Tim Lincecum, Josh Beckett, Roy Halladay, Johan Santana and Felix Hernandez to name a few all making the list. As always, confounding pitchers have big years out of nowhere. A Matt Palmer from the Angels, Tim Wakefield, Matt Cain, Scott Feldman and Kevin Slowey all pop up unexpectedly. Even discarded Jason Marquis, who is baseball’s first 12-game winner, finds a home in Colorado of all places.

In trying to learn how top notch hurlers would pitch after being cuffed around, the categories were broken down into favorites, underdogs and pick, with the end result of the game, not the pitchers record what we were seeking.

When a pitcher is tattooed (possibly poor word choice in today’s world) and favored in next game, his record is well above average, but not a great help to the sports bettors. The pitcher’s team is 33-21, 61.1 percent, not bad, however not the best bet one could find at +3.9 units of profit.

How would a capable thrower of the horsehide do when the game could go either way with a money line of -105? It turned out to be about as expected with 6-5 record and squeaking out a slight profit.

Where the real money can be found, is when this pummeled pitcher takes the mound as an underdog in next start. Most baseball players could tell you the spread of a football game or even basketball contest before they would know the money line on a game they were playing. In many cases, the pitcher is likely to know he has to bare-down more off a substandard outing and would have a sense what his team needs based on opposing team and opposition pitcher.

In this spot the underdog chucker is 19-9, 67.8 percent and baseball bettors pick up a sweet +16.35 units.

When you add all the numbers together, the total arrives at 58-35, +21 units. The 62.3 percent winning percentage is nothing special, which is not that far above the minimum requirement.

Nevertheless, place our roughed up delivery man in the miscast role of underdog and watch him deliver a profit worth crowing about.

Baseball Betting in the Second Half

With the All-Star game behind us and three well-deserved days away from wagering on Major League Baseball, it’s time to get back in the saddle and continue the delightful daily grind. If you have had the good fortune of making a solid profit like this reporter betting baseball, it is time to consider a few adjustments for the remainder of the regular season. What could change in three days with no games played, a lot!

Playing Favorites is more costly

Remember when the New England Patriots were in the midst of unbeaten regular season and were 9-0 and 8-1 ATS? The very next week oddsmakers had enough of squares and sharps kicking their behinds and made the Pats 16-point road favorites at Buffalo. Their thinking was you want to play them, go ahead, beat this number and it continued the rest of the season. Though, not to that extreme because of pitching matchups, the same thing occurs in baseball the rest of the season. Boston, the Yankees and the Dodgers will see ever increasing prices if they continue to win, making them poor risk-reward choices. The same will be true on the opposite end of the spectrum, with baneful teams like Washington and San Diego, helping inflate numbers of their opponents.

My advise on money line wagering is stick to certain limit (I use -175, normally about -155 otherwise) on favorites, since virtually anything above that number means you have to win two games for every loss.

Find bad teams playing well

It’s impossible to determine at the moment, however a few sub .500 teams are going to play unexpectedly well for long stretches and can be real bankroll builders. The absolute best recent example is the 2005 Houston Astros. At the end of July, Houston was 47-56 and going nowhere. Phil Garner was brought in as interim manager and nothing happen at first, then the Astros sky-rocketed, winning 42 of last 59 games and made the playoffs as wild card team before losing in the World Series to the Chicago White Sox. Keep antennae on high alert for this opportunity.

Ride Streaks Good and Bad

Just like in surfing, it’s not easy to catch the right wave. Too often, we as sports bettors are leery of streaks. We pay attention when a team wins or loses five in a row and often lack the confidence to “ride the tide” figuring the game we choose will be the loser. I’m not advocating “chase systems”, rather finding teams that have won possibly three in a row, are scoring runs like people flocking to a Harry Potter movie opening weekend and the right pitcher is starting. Play that team and who knows, they could have streak of seven or eight wins and you profited each time. One other piece of advise, think about playing that team one more time after a loss, since like many streaks, its not always consecutive wins, but winning nine of 11 or 12 of 15, those add up quickly also. Do the 2007 Colorado Rockies jog the memory, winning 11 in a row and 13 of 14 starting in mid-September? The exact method works for Play Against teams on losing binges.
Bullpens still matter

As innings start to mount on starting pitchers, the significance of the bullpen increases. Teams that have their house in order can see ERA of bullpen drop a half a run or more from here on out. This collection of relievers can provide a number of winning bets, saving small leads or games that are tied in the middle innings. Watch these numbers carefully.

Follow home/road records

By now, most teams have set up a pattern of playing tangible baseball home or away. The Red Sox, Dodgers, Tigers and Giants are all strong home wagers, while the Phillies, Rockies and both Los Angeles teams are the most profitable bets as visitors. Knowing this enhances chances to cash winning tickets more frequently.

September can be scary

For most sports bettors, once football starts, baseball is either finished or put on the back-burner. This is not a bad strategy for a number of reasons. Start with what teams care about winning and those waiting for the season to end. Contending teams offer little value unless they are playing each other, which is more a crap shoot late in the season. Expanded rosters, means more research to check who is or isn’t playing and being unfamiliar with called-up pitchers adds to the quandary.

Don’t blindly bet just to do so, since a bankroll that took five months to build can disappear quickly in 30 days. Be extremely judicious and only play games you feel are next to “locks”. Otherwise, set aside a few days to do baseball exclusively. An extremely successful bettor friend of mine bets baseball just on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in September, giving him what he feels is ample time to prepare for football weekends.

Rockies in Great Betting Spot

The Colorado Rockies return to action with a four-game road excursion to San Diego to start the second half of the season. Colorado is solidly entrenched in third place in the NL West and is two games behind San Francisco for the wild card spot. The Rockies have just completed a 10-game homestand that was mildly disappointing with series records of 1-1-1 for a total of 6-4 record.

Long known for home/road dichotomy, Colorado (47-41, +6.6 units) has made tremendous strides this season with 24-22 mark as visitors and they are the third best bet in baseball in the traveling uniforms at +8.3 units.

In their opening game against San Diego, they will send their ace Aaron Cook (8-3, 3.98 ERA, 1.390 WHIP) to the mound. After a sluggish start to the season, Cook has been cookin’ with 5-0 record in last seven starts, only conceding more than two earned runs twice in that time.
The sinkerball specialist has always enjoyed facing Padres hitters, as they continually beat the ball into the ground against him. This has led to Cook posing 12-4 record versus San Diego, with sparking 2.71 ERA. With the Rockies having defeated Atlanta last Sunday to end the homestand, Cook and Colorado are 10-3 in road games after a win over the last two seasons.

San Diego (36-52, -12.1 units) has hit the skids and about the only thing that is going to change their luck is cloning Adrian Gonzalez. The Padres are dead last in the Major Leagues in scoring, averaging meager 3.8 runs per game. Gonzalez is the only effective run producer on a team that has lost 21 of last 29 games and is 11-26 in July the last two years.

The Friars will start Chad Gaudin (4-7, 5.03, 1.409), who is a pitching rollercoaster. Throughout most of the season he’s alternated good and bad performances and is off one of the better ones, allowing one run in 6 2/3 against Arizona, which resulted in no-decision for him.

Bookmaker.com has Colorado as -135 money line favorites with total Ov7, which fits very comfortably into a system supporting the Rocks.

Play On road favorites with a money line of -125 or more after seven or more consecutive home games, in July games.

There is no mystical reason why this superb system works; it just does with 51-12, 81 percent record since 1997. These matchups tend to one-sided as well, with teams like Colorado winning on the road by 2.7 runs per game. With San Diego really finding it challenging to scratch in the win column and 9-25 having lost two of their last three games this season, consider this exceptional situation.

Every last thing you need to know about the Super Bowl 43

I had a very clear understanding of who I thought would win and cover the Super Bowl, what total to take and what props to play. After doing research for this article, I’m more confused about what to do next than Megan from “The Bachelor”.

I started by going to Sportsbook.com to get a feel what the wagering public was thinking and 52-55 percent of the quote-unquote “squares” are on Arizona to cover the spread. Based on recent history, this made sense to me taking the points, especially if the line holds at Pittsburgh -7. Over 60 percent of these same people that place bets at this book like the total to Over, this also made sense to me since the logical conclusion would be the Cardinals and Over and the Steelers and Under.

The money line action has steadily grown towards the Cardinals all week, up to 89 percent of all bets placed was on Arizona. From a value standpoint, this has merit and talking to Doug from 3Daily Winners, he believes many of the same lemmings (my term not his) that cashed on the Giants last year have returned believing the same thing could happen again.

I read where last year was supposed to be the big bonanza, with an estimated 100 million bet on the SB 42. It ended up being a little too optimistic for the perfect storm to occur with the perfect Pats and confident dog Giants, settling at 92M plus. Because of these recessionary times and the less than glamorous Cardinals in the game, this year’s number has been downsized to no more than 85 million and probably less.

Another factor of the decrease of the number is the rebirth of the local guy taking bets. Many bookies went out of business or were cut so severely because of the offshore internet sites that opened up. Once the government snuck in the bill about offshore betting being illegal, this opened up a whole new ball game for these fellas.

Most of the smart ones embraced technology and now have websites set up just like the offshore books and run very much the same way. The beauty for them now is instead of fielding phone calls or sending emails what the current lines are, they just have their “customers” login and view the lines themselves. This has also aided them in their ability to do prop bets for the Super Bowl and take in even more money, as long as they can cover the losses. These guys work less and are making more money then they ever did before. It’s sure is good the government ended up helping those in the United States keep the money here instead of letting in go abroad. (Wink)

To get a feel for what handicappers are thinking about the Big Game, I went to The Spread.com where they always have people posting Free and paid picks. Here the views of who will cover are different from the wagering public. At last count over 60 percent of the cappers were on Pittsburgh, including most of the big names in the business. Having once been in the business myself, I was surprised to see touts giving out a favorite, especially with a touchdown line. They were dead even on the total.

Next I went to every major sports website and read every article they had posted. ESPN.com tends to be more serious, while Fox Sports.com blends in more goofy stories, searching too hard it seems to have that “different angle”. The rest off the sites were somewhere in between. For all the stories on Al Gore’s information highway (You didn’t know he invented the internet and found global warming also?), there was very little I already didn’t know.

I was shocked and dumbfounded to see Brenda Warner (Kurt’s wife), remembering her when she had the spiked-hair which made her look, you know, like a switch-hitter. Now she has that blonde hair and looks sort of hot (especially compared to before). Speaking of hot, what about Big Ben’s either current or possibly former girlfriend? Google her up.

My search for newsworthy trends, angles or what I thought was different info yielded the following.

*Kurt Warner could become the first quarterback to win the Super Bowl with two different teams.

*No Super Bowl team had ever been beaten by more than 21 points twice during the regular season, Arizona was defeated on four occasions in this manner.

*The team with the most sacks has won 12 of last 13 Super Bowls and is 8-3-2 ATS.

*Losing Super Bowl teams that fail to score 21 points are astonishing 0-31 and 3-28 ATS.

*Teams in their first Super Bowl against a team with previous experience (of any kind) are 4-12 and 5-11 ATS.

*The outright winner of the Super Bowl is 34-8 ATS.

*Teams off consecutive upsets are 4-2-1 ATS in the Big Game.

*Pittsburgh is attempting to be the first team to ever have six Super Bowl trophies.
*Teams that win the turnover battle are 30-3 and 27-6 ATS.

*For total players consider the referee. Over the last three years, Terry McCauley’s games have averaged 39.3 points per game, the lowest among all NFL referees.

*Kurt Warner has gone seven years between Super Bowl games, Ben Roethlisberger is try to join Tom Brady as the only quarterback with two rings by age 26.

*Arizona allowed 426 points during the regular season; the previous worst for a Super Bowl team was 360.

*Pittsburgh is 10-0 and 8-2 ATS if they out-rushed their opponent this year and Arizona is 9-0 SU & ATS if they did so.

Made calls down to Tampa area and it resembles Steel City South. As many as 30 or more bars have been designated as Pittsburgh bars. The number for Arizona, well that would be about as many as people who saw there stock portfolio grow in 2008, none.

When I spoke to Doug (who lives in Phoenix area) he told me something I found humorous. The day after the Arizona beat Philadelphia, the different news stations in Phoenix were reporting Cardinals fans were actually going to travel to Tampa even if they didn’t have tickets. Obviously the news people there are dolts and what sounds like a few hundred at most fans from the Grand Canyon State will be outnumbered 30-1 by those in black and gold.

After all this research, my head was spinning and I felt like Paris Hilton at physics convention. (That would be stupid) Decided to go back to my original belief that Pittsburgh played the toughest schedule in the league all season, had few letdowns and for my money was the best team in football since Week 7. I just can’t shake the thought of all those horrific Cardinals losses and maybe it’s all in the past, but like their forever cheap owner Bill Bidwell (Oh do I have stories about him and his father) I find it impossible to believe they will play well enough to win.

Put me down for Steelers 31-20 and I hope I’m right.

These were the thoughts of one Red Wydley.