Lori MLB thread.

[Lori]

YTD 0/0 0.00

Will probably be only an occasional post in here, but in a post-Crockpot wasteland I'd appreciate any feedback on my picks now that Crock is no longer a nice saftey net for me.
(By the way Crock, it was very appreciated)

Anyway, I'm not going to hassle people with my minor plays. I think they're winners, but I'm not really very happy with them and they're not very interesting. As a result, I'll probably only post twice a week or so, but who knows.

Okay, onto today's "problem"

DET/CLE (Bonderman/Sowers)

Detroit are +105 for this game. Bonderman is better than Sowers in any stat I can find, that's any stat, predictive, actual, anything.

Well, that's weird, usually when I fancy a pick, the predictive stat is way ahead of the reality, but Sowers sucking at both doesn't really explain the line to me.

Oh hang on, Sowers had a 3.57 ERA last year, but his BABIP was ridiculously low at .257, could this explain the line?

Also Detroit were 1-7 in their last eight before today, so they were slumping.
Of course they're slumping, they scored 9 runs tonight in a win, they scored 33 runs going 1-3 in their four games before that and 15 runs in four games going 0-4 in the four games before that. I make that 57 runs in 9 games, not exactly a crisis when you have a decent pitcher.

Neither side has an injury that I can find, so I'm going to bet Detroit here. It will be counted as 1 unit for the purpose of the thread, but that's not a 'normal' unit for me [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Detroit +105

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

Lori

[TomG]

I agree Bonderman is better than Sowers... but is he that much better? I give Cleveland the edge on hitting, relief bullpen, and home field advantage. Good luck though. FWIW, I'm on the other side.

[Lori]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree Bonderman is better than Sowers... but is he that much better? I give Cleveland the edge on hitting, relief bullpen, and home field advantage. Good luck though. FWIW, I'm on the other side.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agree with all three of those although I have the hitting as almost negligable. Relief is a concern, but I'm going for Bonderman being significantly better.
Either way I appreciate the comment, it helps to narrow down the areas in which I disagree with the book (seemingly relative strength Bonderman/Sowers)

Lori

[New001]

I like this play a lot. Good luck.

[TomG]

The market hath spoken. Detroit is now -112 fav and Cleveland is the dog. Nice pick, Lori. You now have a premium line for the game.

[coversspread]

Nice call with your Detroit play !

[crockpot]

is this thread really dead already?

[Lori]

YTD 1-0 +1.05

[ QUOTE ]
is this thread really dead already?

[/ QUOTE ]

I know you can't wait for my hot tips crock... patience please [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

So here I am again, to show off my fundamental lack of knowledge at baseball betting. Something which is only beaten by my near-total lack of understanding of baseball in general.

Anyway, today I'm having problems with Toronto (Halladay/Schmidt) at evens.

At first glance, this seems a complete misprice. Toronto are just better than the Dodgers in everything (level on bullpen, although I'd take Toronto there too if pushed), as well as being in the stronger league as far as I can see.
So, as usual, there must be some reason. Random baseball n00bs don't destroy Vegas markets, so there's something going on.

Aha... Halladay has been injured and chronically out of form. Okay, that's bad.

Looking at the game logs though, he's only had three bad games all season (all in his last four) and only had two games back from his operation. One of which was a disaster.
Meanwhile Schmidt has come back off the DL himself and pitched 6 shutout innings.

Well, that's all good enough for me. Halladay has enough class to try to put stuff right and six scoreless innings is all very nice, but that happens when good pitchers have a good game. The two pitchers couldn't have had more extreme games last time out. So at least that's the line explained.

So what happens if Halladay has another donkey-day? Well, then we're in trouble, but we're not dead. We have the third best bullpen by ERA in baseball to help us try to get lucky, and a bit of a better offense. We're not 100% dead if it goes wrong.

I'm going with the premise that the perfect storm for these prices won't continue and that over time Halladay would pitch better than Schmidt here.
From time to time I could imagine losing a blowout on this one, but I'm going to take a chance that Halladay is good enough to put things right... that one good start since the operation shows that he can do it.

1 unit TOR evens.

Lori

[4Tay]

I was on Toronto before reading this post (I'm such a homer).

[4Tay]

Nice call. Jays crushed the Dodgers.