Miracle Covers

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!

Pat’s MLB Over/Unders

Let’s get into it. The contest is to pick 10 teams against the Vegas over/under totals.  The #10 is your top confidence pick, with #1 your shakiest.  Without further ado…

10)  Chicago White Sox (over 85.5)  –  This pick is more an indication of my disregard for the competition in the AL Central than with the White Sox, though they themselves certainly seem to have a good thing going this year.  Adam Dunn obviously is a big acquisition.  John Danks is their listed 3rd, but at an age where another year will only help him, he could turn into a legit #2 during the course of the season.  And that depth enables them to have Edwin Jackson towards the back end of the rotation where he probably belongs at this point until he consistently proves himself.  Similar thoughts on Mark Teahen, great extra OF, IF guy coming off the bench, or more accurately, just not starting.

9)  Boston (over 95)  –  Red Sox won 89 games last year while suffering an avalanche of injuries.  They add Adrian and Crawford, which will more than compensate for the loss of Beltre.  Patently explosive offense, and the pitching should be good-borderline-spectacular in stretches throughout the year.  This is the team the Yankees used to be when they were dominating baseball in the late 90s, early 2000s.

8)  Baltimore (over 76)  –  The O’s are a team a lot of people are hot on after years of meteoric mediocrity.  They remind me of the Cincy Reds going into last year.  Lots of subdued but persistent talk and expectations in the background.  If Adam Jones has a real break-out season, and Derek Lee and Justin Duchscherer (The Duchsch) stay healthy, they should clear this number.  Definitely helped by weaker Yanks and Rays teams.

7)  Kansas City (under 69.5)  –  I don’t love this pick, any time you are picking a professional team to win less than 70 games you are on suspect ground IMO.  But Kansas City failed to clear this number last year when they had Zack.  Instead they go into the season with #1 pitcher Jeff Francis, or as espn describes him, “a sleeper starter in AL-only (fantasy) leagues.”  Yikes.  As a side note, at this exact moment in time, espn has Melky Cabrera listed as Kansas City’s Opening Day center and right fielder, which cannot be good for business.

6)  San Diego (under 76.5)  –  Wow.  That lineup…goodness.  Their centerpiece is Ryan Ludwick.  Soon to be 33, career 104 HRs, Ryan Ludwick.  This team had the 28th rated slugging percentage in the league with Adrian Gonzalez.  Obviously not a hitter’s park, but did they play all their games there last year?

5)  NY Yankees (under 91.5)  –  Don’t like that this means I’m betting on the Yanks to essentially finish with a win total in the 80s.  Ehhhh.   But Pettite is gone, and if you don’t think that makes a difference you are nuts.  I was just about to write how the back end of their rotation is a disaster with Burnett and Garcia only to click on their depth chart to see that Burnett is the listed #2.  Burnett cannot be as bad this year as last, but that is far from a rave endorsement.  In addition, the Yankees do not have their typical 1-7 lineup of ridiculousness.  They have three hitters that scare you and a whole lot of OK after that.  And the AL East is stronger at the bottom this year.

4)  Houston (over 71.5)  –  I actually started this thinking of taking the under.  But this number is just a little too low.  Some people might say, ‘well, they sucked last year, and now they don’t have Oswalt.’  But it is the Astros horrifying offense that is the issue, not the pitching.  And this is what the argument boils down to.  No matter how disastrous (just learned how to spell that) the hitting can and will be at times for Houston this year, this rotation just isn’t the type that leads a team to 60 something wins, as a unit they are too good for that.  And it should be noted that no matter how anemic the Astros offense has been over the last few years, they never dropped below 73 wins.  Let’s go over.

3)  Arizona (under 72.5)  –  As in essentially every bet, it would be great if this number was a little different.  Aaron Heilman excluded, Joe Saunders is the wily veteran among the starting pitchers and he isn’t 30 yet, which means this group is dominated by potential.  Their numbers 1, 3, and 4 starters do not have a combined 50 decisions in the majors (49) by my count.  At 3B, Melvin Mora is 39, assuming Venezuela doesn’t have those birth certificate problems baseball seems to like, and he somehow managed to hit only 7 HRs last year playing 113 games for Colorado.  Still, as noted, they are young and potentially talented in a lot of places, would love this at 76.

2)  Cincinnati (over 84.5)  –  Last year, got lucky with these guys taking the over simply because of the enormous amount of chatter that was surrounding them.  So what the hey, let’s take them again.  And this pick is based almost entirely on the Reds offensive potential.  They have five players with easy 20+ HR pop and that is not including Scott Rolen, who hit 20 himself last year.  Their division is certainly not the strongest thing going.  The Cards number is 84.5 also, this is essentially a vote for a St Louis under.

1)  Oakland (over 83.5)  –  Where the Cincy pick comes down to offense, this comes down to the idea that, when healthy, the A’s probably have the best pitching in the AL West.  They certainly do not have the best hitting, but they did add Matsui, and I think a huge X factor this year is 3B Kevin Kouzmanoff (pretty sure it is a contract year, 29 years old).  If the Angels pitching was even fractionally better I’d have them here, but it isn’t.

MLB Over/Unders

These are the win totals according to pinnacle.  For spreads where one side is -120 or higher I will note so accordingly.  We will get into analysis, predictions, and occasional reminders of how badly I kicked Lou’s ass in this contest last year in upcoming entries.

• Atlanta  88
• Arizona  72.5
• Baltimore  76
• Boston  95  (over -128)
• Chicago Cubs  81.5  (over -131)
• Chicago White Sox  85.5
• Cincinnati  84.5  (over -146)
• Cleveland  71  (over -132)
• Colorado  86  (over -136)
• Detroit  83.5  (over -131)
• Florida  82
• Houston  71.5
• Kansas City  69.5  (under -131)
• LA Angels  83
• LA Dodgers  84  (under -120)
• Milwaukee  85.5
• Minnesota  86  (under -129)
• NY Mets  77.5  (under -136)
• NY Yankees  91.5  (under -130)
• Oakland  83.5
• Philadelphia  97  (under -137)
• Pittsburgh  68  (under -129)
• San Diego  76  (under -148)
• San Francisco  88
• Seattle  70
• St Louis  84.5  (under -141)
• Tampa Bay  84.5  (under -127)
• Texas  86.5  (over -120)
• Toronto  76.5
• Washington  71  (over -144)