Miracle Covers

Reverse Run Lines – Baseball Bets

I’m looking to point out that pinnacle only has run lines up for favorites on their primary MLB Bet page.  This was a little trippy fact for me to clue-in on as it highlights how sneaky odds can be.  If you were making a list of People with Exceptional Observational Skills, I would not be among the leaders.  Makes me feel a bit like

Me = the mouse

Pinnacle = scientist

Favorite run line = slightly moldy cheese stuck right in front of me

Alternate run line = better quality cheese placed off to the side behind the paper mache curtains?

This might not be entirely accurate, but it is interesting that not only are the alternate run lines not on the main MLB page, but at this moment, 9 EST, the alternate run lines are still not up yet.  They are in the “Betting to Be Available Soon” section.  Do lines like these require extra work to figure out, or does pinnacle hold off putting them up because they are much shakier business for The House?  This seems like a question for Dr Lou so I’m going to see if we can get him on here to discuss this.  While doing 34 seconds of research on this issue I came across an internet thread “Does anyone know of a reliable book where you can parlay alternate run lines in baseball?”  I like where all of this is headed.

• 20 Units on Baltimore -1.5 +131
• 17 Units On Red Sox -135
• 19 Units on Tampa Bay +150

Only one winner yesterday.  946.97 is where things stand

UPDATED NOTES AND PICKS…As of 2 EST the Alternate Run Lines were up on pinnacle.  I have enough time on my hands to keep up with this over the next few days and try to figure out when these lines usually go up and attempt to get a reason for the delay.  You would think it would be pretty much a set formula once the run lines are established.  And now essentially obligated to insert reverse run line picks tonight, we’ll go with…

• 15 Units on Seattle -1.5 +175
• 12 Units on NY Mets -1.5 +197
• 33 Units on Colorado +1.5 -308
• 9 Units on Tampa Bay -1.5 +249

Baseball Bets

This series of articles is growing decidedly boring.  Something like this is really interesting if the picks end up being 90% right or 95% wrong, all I’m doing is slowly pissing away fake money.  Dullllllllllll.  I’ll try to get more imaginative or scrap this idea, but until then.

• 22 Units on Red Sox -118
• 17 Units on White Sox +142
• 14 Units on Mariners -102

-14.67 Net on my last series of picks bringing my total down to 972.24

Baseball Bets

Net of -6.33 last entry.  Slowly but surely losing money to The House, just the way God intends it.  Let’s go with…

• 20 Units on Mariners -120
• 16 Units on Mets +161
• 14 Units on A’s +137

Net of 986.91.  All games must be completed, if the Rapture happens all bets are off.

Baseball Bets

Won with the Sox on the 16 Unit bet but lost on the other two for a net of -18.44 Units.  Let’s see what is happening tonight…

• 18 Units on D-Backs/Padres under 9.5 -112
• 14 Units on Brewers/Dodgers under 7 -120

All for now, may try to sneak in a few more before first pitches…

Current Unit Count 993.24

Baseball Bets

Realized a while back that the Tag Line on this site is “Winning at Sports.”  Sheen owes us some royalties.  On 11/27/09 (older entries), VT had recommended we change the name of the site to “Losing at Sports” during a cold streak for Louis.  I can’t believe we missed the obvious that we could have changed the site name to “Lousing at Sports.”

Won with SF a few nights ago.  16 Unit bet on -137 kicks us off to 1011.68.  Today we will go…

• 18 Units on Twins +114
• 16 Units on Red Sox -118
• 14 Units on Rangers/Angels under 8.5 -113

Current Unit Count 1011.68

1,000 Unit Baseball

Coming up on a quarter way through the baseball season.  Starting off with 1,000 units.  I can make any baseball bet I come across on pinnacle; run line, over/under, prop…whatever.  Let’s see what happens.  Today we will do…

• 16 units San Fran -137 money line

Worst Team in MLB

In his most recent post, Lou writes, “I’d…like to take the Astros for fewest wins in MLB this season if that’s available someplace.”  I made a half-assed attempt at seeing if any line like this exists, if it does I cannot find it.  So, let’s try to figure out what the line would be.

The Astros over/under this year for wins was 71.5.  We are only going to focus on teams with a projected win total of below 76, Baltimore and everyone above are excluded.  I know normally there would be a “Field” option, but I am going to ignore that for this.

1. Arizona 72.5
2. Houston 71.5
3. Washington 71
4. Cleveland 71
5. Seattle 70
6. Kansas City 69.5
7. Pittsburgh 68

Seven teams in this group.  So if I were to look at this, my first thought would be, “Well there are 7 teams, so Houston has to be around 7:1.  Plus, they are better than most of the teams on the list, so to account for that, I’ll pump them up to 9:1.”  And that would probably be my offer to Lou.  But that aint’ the issue.  What we are trying to figure out is what would be the Vegas Line on this thing.  And now that I think about it, it seems borderline naive to think that Vegas would offer 9:1 odds on this when Houston is only projected to have 3.5 more wins than the worst team.  So we gotta come up with something better.  I think a good way to figure some odds on this are to compare these numbers with something we do have, odds to win divisions, combined with projected win totals.  The NL West…

1. San Francisco – 88 – 1.4:1
2. Colorado – 86 – 1.9:1
3. Los Angeles – 84 – 3.4:1
4. San Diego – 76 – 14:1
5. Arizona – 72.5 – 23:1

As a starter this is OK.  San Fran is a little better than even money to win a division where they are 2 full games clear of Colorado.  But there are all kinds of problems doing things this way.  The most obvious is that this division doesn’t breakdown anywhere close to our fake division.  The NL West isn’t made up of half a dozen teams that are projected to finish within 5 games of each other, and that’s going to make things weird and skewed.  But let’s keep going and throw another division up for some more comparison and info.  AL West.

1. Texas – 86 .5 – 1.2:1
2. Oakland – 83.5 – 2.1:1
3. Los Angeles – 83 – 2.5:1
4. Seattle – 70 – 24:1

This example gives a pretty good demo of how Vegas works when the odds are tight like our worst team question.  Again, Texas slightly better than even money, a full 3 games clear of Oakland.  But this division kind of sucks because there are so few teams.  Some might suggest here that we go to the odds to win the pennants in both leagues since it involves more teams.  In doing so we see that…

1. Boston – 95 – 2:1
2. New York – 91.5 – 3:1
3. Chicago – 85.5 – 7:1
4. Texas – 86 – 7:1

This leads to some serious dead ends too since these odds are largely based on the divisional odds we’re struggling through, and that only adds more layers of headaches.  For example Tampa is listed with a higher win projection than Oakland, but Oakland is listed with better odds of winning the pennant.  But what this case does do is show that a 3.5 game projected win difference is only a difference btw 2:1 and 3:1 when there are a lot more than 2 or 3 competitive teams involved in figuring a winner of something.  Obviously, if these four teams were a division, these odds would not be the same in picking a winner, our AL West example tells us that.  So somewhere in between is what we are looking for.

The following then is where all this leads us in my opinion.  With some fudge math, taking everything into account that we’ve been doing…

1. Arizona 6.25:1
2. Houston 5:1
3. Washington 5:1
4. Cleveland 5:1
5. Seattle 3.5:1
6. Kansas City 3.5:1
7. Pittsburgh 2.75:1

This would definitely be different if I had included “The Field,” and I have no idea how wrong or right this is.  But, I went from offering Lou 9:1 on Houston with the worst record to 5:1, so if nothing else, it’s right for me.

For schlitz and giggles I am going to write down here the number of wins for the worst team in the last few years, not sure why I am doing this, or if this will be enlightening…57, 59, 59, 66, 61, 56, 51, 43, 55.  So since the 2002 season the average wins by the worst team in baseball is about 56.  Doesn’t really tell me anything other than Vegas is going to be substantially wrong on at least one of these teams if this year follows suit, and if Vegas doesn’t know, it’s anybody’s ballgame!