Thursday MLB 26-06-2008

Unicorn

Unicorn

NHL Enthusiast
YTD 139-145 -19.84 Units
(since 15-06: 20-14 +51.80 Units)

Hey everyone! It's been extremely HOT lately and I can tell you - it's the same near the sea and here where I live, inside the country.

I've been on business trip for the last several days so I haven't been betting anything. For today I've got exactly 5 plays but I'm going to post only the earliest so far and add the rest with the write-ups later, g2g out now.


BALTIMORE (Liz) @ 2.35 for 3 Units
Orioles will be facing another familiar pitcher today - Jason Marquis and so far Millar, Payton and Scott have combined for .333 BA (15-for-45) with 6 doubles and 4 homers against him in their careers. Marquis has been enjoying excellent June so far (4-0 3.20 ERA 1.12 WHIP .209 BAA) but I'm hoping that Baltimore's Radhamez Liz will be able to keep as much as possible a close game and hopefully, O's offense may be able to build another comeback against the Cubs struggling pen (6.26 ERA L10 games). They've outplayed the Cubs in series opener, I don't see why they shouldn't do it again today. Their pen has been unbelievable, posting a 2.77 ERA over their L10 games and overall, 3.20 ERA with 71% save pct on the road. As for Baltimore's 7-18 record in day games, it's important to note that 1-11 record is on Sunday while they've been 6-7 in weekdays day games. Also, 5-16 in 3rd game of a series - 1-11 Sunday record (with most of the 3rd games coming on Sundays), and O's are now 4-5 in that situation, while the Cubbies are only 4-7 in 3rd game that way. But these are all just trends, I'm betting on the team mind-set here anyway... ;)

(4 more plays coming around 9pm along with write-ups)
 
i like how you think, but you're not worried about a tired O's pen? First 5 may be safer... GL
 
gl ......

8ud22.jpg
 
CHICAGO WS (Danks) -1.5 @ 2.50 for 3 Units
While the one may think that the Sox could maybe overlook this game because they'll be hosting Cubs tomorrow, I hope that's not the case. Considering the Cubs just swept them several days ago, they should be looking for a momentum before going home. And there is nothing better for gaining momentum than winning a series. A series opener win was only the first in the last 11 for the Sox while the win the Dodgers posted last night was only their 4th in their past 11 games. So either club hasn't actually been so much successful lately in their current positions (road/home). Anyway, while the Dodgers will count on youngster Clayton Kershaw, who's been solid in June so far - going 0-1, 3.72 ERA and .246 BAA but with not so good 1.57 WHIP, for the Sox will start one of their most undervalued starting pitchers - John Danks. My opinion is that this guy has fit perfectly into the White Sox organization and the team just loves to see him pitch. Although his record for the season is only 4-4, the White Sox are 8-7 in his starts. Danks has been especially tough when pitching on road (2-1 1.69 ERA 1.05 WHIP and .222 BAA) and in day starts (2.54 ERA 1.09 WHIP .227 BAA) while lately, he's been as good as ever but with 3 no-decisions in a row. I believe this spot today may be the perfect spot for him to get a win and here's why. The Sox are facing another fairly unknown pitcher, so he shouldn't expect a lot of runs to be scored for him. And not only that the Sox will see Kershaw for the first time, he's a leftie and although they're 14-12 vs LHP this season, their offensive road numbers haven't been so great against them - only .229 BA with .324 OBP and around 3.4 runs score per game. However, Danks himself is a leftie too, and the Dodgers have had even more difficulties against soutpaws themselves, especially lately - they've been batting only .241 BA with .252 OBP and 1.7 runs per game over their last 10 games against LHP. Another reason for liking Danks in the current situation is the home umpire for today, Dana Demuth.

Dana DeMuth was BHP on 2 occasions for John Danks:

29-05-2008 in Tampa when CWS won by 5-1 while Danks went 6.0 innings, allowed 1 earned run while posting 1.17 WHIP and 8 strikeouts.
09-05-2007 in Minnesota when CWS won by 6-3 while Danks went 6.2 innings, also allowed 1 earned run and posted 0.97 WHIP with 4 strikeouts.

So, he had quality starts both times this umpire was behind the home plate. Also, both times his skipper, Guillen praised his stuff and his mental-approach to the game.

All I'm saying is that from my point of view this game should be important for the White Sox and hopefully they along with their SP realizes that - he's been great in the past in this spot so hopefully he'll do it again.
 
JD Sports said:
Yea W/Sox...Lets cash this....Your write ups are great
Click to expand...

Thanks, man - so far so good :) BOL to you!

OFF TOPIC:
Just finished watching the semi-finals of European Championship. Those lazy Russians costed me several units, I hate when I lose on a team who stopped trying when being down 0-2 and with 20 minutes to go. I haven't seen this amount of stupidity for a long time, I mean they've made every single one action on Spain's half complicated - every idiot could end up realizing if they really wanted to score, they should have made a shot at the goal from a distance, I'm sure at least one would make it inside the opponent's net! Grrr...

Anyway, back to baseball plays.

PITTSBURGH (Maholm) @ 2.15 for 3.5 Units
I'm aware this play isn't so popular tonight, but I really really like the Pirates here. I know that Yankees completely shut the Pirates down last night and unlike the first 2 games where we've seen each team dominating the other team, my bet is that we may see a close game tonight. Yankees will surely give their best effort to win this series if nothing else but to wash out the bad taste of that series with Cincinnati last weekend. But Pirates - they also got something to play for - and I'm sure they will also give all they have because it's not like they get to play Yankees every month. And what exactly is how they feel about it could be actually seen in after the game comments from series opener.

Here's just a short reminder about that 12-5 win on Tuesday:

"It was perfect," Jason Bay said. "We got a lot of hits, scored a lot of runs, had a great crowd. That was a blast."

Playing before only their second home sellout this season, the Pirates enjoyed the same kind of setting the Yankees experience nightly in Yankee Stadium.

"There was no special pixie dust for this one," manager John Russell said. "But it was a great night. The fans were into it, they had a lot of fun and the players fed off that."

"It was a different atmosphere," Bay said. "That doesn't happen here a lot and it was pretty neat to play in."

"Every time we seem to have a (big crowd), we end up playing well," Wilson said. "Everybody knows this is a sports town, and they would go crazy if the Pirates were in some sort of race at the end."

See my point? The same happens when some large sports event (football, handball, basketball) takes place in my hometown - people go crazy and everyone are cheering and rooting for our guys and they feed of that, just like the Pirates do. That amount of energy the players gain by the public is just amazing!!

On to some stats to confirm my theory about the possibility of a close game here tonight.

First, Mike Mussina. Pitching on the road (3.50 ERA 1.11 WHIP) and in a night game (3.77 ERA 1.29 WHIP) and on 6 days rest (3.21 ERA 1.32 WHIP) - so far this has been his perfect spot. Also, Moose has been so far 2-1 with 3.21 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in June - his best month (stats wise) so far. At the same time, big minus for him is the fact that his opponents were batting from .265 to .280 off him in each of these situations

Second, Paul Maholm. He's been awesome at home, going 4-1 this season so far with 3.47 ERA, 1.22 WHIP along with only .259 BAA while his team is 10-2 in his last 12 home starts, dating back to last season's end. Not only that but Maholm has been pitching well of late, going 1-0 4.12 ERA and 1.37 WHIP over his last 3 starts while also pitching deep into the games and compiling a total of 19.2 innings over that span. His night starts haven't been so good, not because he's 4-4 with 4.06 ERA in that spot which is let's say - solid, but because 1.44 WHIP and .305 batting average allowed to the opponents (everything over .265 BA allowed is not good and everything over .300 BA is really bad).

Another useful information - for Yankees, Damon is day-to-day (foot) while Matsui is doubtful (knee). For Pirates - Nady is probable (shoulder) while Bay is questionable (groin). I'm sure everyone are well aware of the meaning of those guys to their clubs.

Last but not the least important thing to note. While Yankees may have a slight advantage by having a better bullpen at the moment (averaging 4.18 ERA over their L10 games compared to Pirates 8.31 ERA), the thing is - Mussina have had the worst start of his career with tonight's umpire behind the home plate. The date was 20-05-2008 when Yankees hosted the Orioles and lost 2-12! Moose lasted only 0.2 innings while surrendering 7 runs (1 earned though) on 5 hits! His comments about that were the following:

"I never got my level of comfort, and it was just bad," he said. "This is the same place we were a year ago. It feels a lot worse than that."

It's good to know that he won his previous 5 starts in a row before suffering that ugly loss. Also, he allowed 2 free passes and had thrown 41 pitches in that 0.2 innings so his control was next to non-existant. Of course - Jeter who made that costly error has his share of responsibility but Mussina and the strike zone provided by this home umpire - that should be taken into consideration, too.

A few trends to conclude this long write-up;

NYY 17-4 in 3rd game overall and 7-2 after a win
PIT 14-8 in 3rd game overall and 8-4 after a loss

So far, both teams have managed the same record of 7-4 on Thursday.

I've made my call about the possible winner, let's see what happens ;)
 
HOUSTON (Rodriguez) -1.5 @ 2.70 for 3.5 Units
Another low-to-medium stake play. I haven't invested a lot of money today because I had a 3-days off and actually haven't felt the games played over that span like I usually do so I've decided to bet with some caution tonight.
This is probably my game of the day. A 5 games ago, the Astros managed to end their 8-game losing streak by winning a series opener in Tampa. They've lost game 2 in that series but came back to win a series by taking a W in game 3. They had the Monday off and then started the current series with the Rangers with a win. Both this win and win in Tampa were close games and both were featuring the same score: 4-3. Game 2 in both series was lost by the very similar way: the final score was close, being 3-4 vs Tampa and 2-3 vs Texas. Interesting but everything could be seen from their post-game comments in both this series and series vs Tampa. Another interesting fact is that different pitchers stepped up in each of those last 3 wins - first it was Oswalt (team's ace), then it was Brandon Backe on Sunday and finally, Hurley on Tuesday. With the ace losing game 2, it's time for greatly undervalued Wandy Rodriguez to step up tonight. I wrote some time ago about Rodriguez and his lifetime home stats. In short - since his first 30+ starts season (2007), this guy has profiled himself as a typical home pitcher. In 2007 he had 2.94 ERA, 1.11 WHIP and .220 BAA at home compared to 6.37 ERA, 1.55 WHIP and .287 BAA on road - the numbers don't lie.

Wandy has faced the Rangers twice in his career, at both home and in Texas and both times fared well, compiling a 2-0 record. From their current lineup, Bradley is hitless, Byrd .125, Young .167 while Ian Kinsler has been the only Ranger to actually HIT him - he's a lifetime .833 hitter against him.

Also with Rodriguez being a leftie - it's good to know the Rangers were struggling against southpaws so far into the season, by going only 8-15 while lately, they've been hitting the lowest spot in their batting stats vs LHP: .176 BA .252 OBP and 3.5 runs per game!

Rodriguez will pitch on a regular, 5 days rest tonight and in that spot he's been next to perfect so far - posting a 0.00 ERA 0.57 WHIP and .143 BAA!
Also, in June so far, he's been 1-2 with 2.70 ERA 0.82 WHIP and .227 BAA. I like when the pitcher is doing well but got zero or only a few wins to show for it. His time will come, I'm sure about that.

As for Kevin Millwood, not any disrespect for the man but he's been just "bad" old Millwood. His prime is way past him now and the last time he actually pitched well on the long run and posted good numbers was back in 2005 when he was with the Indians. Since joining Texas the next season, Millwood is combined 31-29 with 4.78 ERA and 1.47 WHIP (the actual numbers are 467.2 innings, 540 hits, 149 walks, 248 earned runs so who likes to check my counting just in case...). This season, road starts along with night starts have been his weakest spot considering the Rangers are only 2-5 in his road starts while he was averaging around 1.70 WHIP and over .300 BAA in both situations along with around 5.00 ERA.

Milwood has actually fared well against the Astros in his career but most of the "good part" of the numbers came from his days in NL. Overall, he's 7-3 with 3.18 ERA and 0.99 WHIP against them but it's interesting to see the numbers their current lineup posted vs him:

Ausmus .308 in 13 AB
Berkman .273 in 22 AB with a double and a HR
Loretta .353 in 34 AB with 2 doubles and a HR
Pence/Lee combined .333 in 6 AB with a double
Wigginton .318 in 22 AB with 4 doubles
Blum .240 in 25 AB with a double and 2 HRs

Only Erstad (.222), Newhan (.222) and - Tejada (.158) haven't fared well against Milwood but with all those AB their crew collected vs him, they should pretty much know what to expect from him - his stuff hasn't changed almost at all.

With all that said, hopefully the Astros may be able to improve their latest batting stats against RHP they usually hit pretty decently.

Only pens are left for analyzing and it's been well known that Rangers have the worst bullpen in the Majors. Period.

On this page are the current numbers and I'd like to point out a few interesting and important parts:

http://www.covers.com/pageLoader/pa...stics/2008/bullpenstatistics_mlb_regular.html

1. Saves- Blown saves: 19-15. So they're 19-for-34 (only 55.8%) with save percentages. Comparing that to the Astros pen who've been so far 21-for-28 (75.0%) but are still only 23rd on the list (ERA-wise).

2. Walks (BB) and Hits (H) allowed: 143+280 in 278.2 innings - good for a 1.52 WHIP. Comparing that to Astros' 97+233 in 235.2 innings - 1.40 WHIP - still not great but at least a little better.

Expecting a good game tonight with Astros (hopefully) winning another series. Took a run line because Rangers are only 6-16 on RL in their road losses while Houston is 13-5 RL in their home wins. So from pure mathematical standpoint, the Astros would win with 2 runs or more 72.5% of the time (29-for-40) ;)

(one more play to come shortly...)
 
My last play for tonight is actually a 2-team parlay to lower the juice. I really feel like both of those teams may have similar chances of winning tonight so that's why I've played the previous 4 separately.


A 2-TEAM PARLAY:
CINCINNATI (Volquez) & CLEVELAND (Lee) @ 3.04 for 2 Units

First something about the Reds. They've done well against the Yankees over the weekend and managed to split the series against Toronto with yesterday's win vs their ace, Roy "Doc" Halladay. Quite an impressive feat, the way they've played those 2 series. After pretty much dominating the NL teams, Edinson Volquez has continued his great pitching against the AL clubs. I'm especially glad to see him done well against Red Sox and Yankees, the 2 very patient ball clubs filled with veteran players. He'll face another possibly tough lineup tonight, the Jays. I'm not writing this with any irony on my mind because I really believe those guys can explode offensively any time and without any previous "signs". Just like they did on Tuesday. Hopefully Volquez, who'll be pitching in 2 from 3 his favorite spots (road/night game but unfortunately not on 5 days rest where he's been the best so far), will be able to contain their bats for one more night. The Reds are 12-3 in his starts so all trends about them should be taken with a dose of salt because they've done well with him on the mound so far. For Jays will start Jesse Litch, usually a good young pitcher but he's been struggling lately. So far in June, Litsch has posted a 0-3 record with very ugly 6.46 ERA, 1.64 WHIP and .330 BAA. He's been especially bad during the night games, by posting similar numbers while the Jays are only 2-6 in those starts. Cincinnati has been 7-4 so far in an inter-league games while Toronto has collected only a 5-9 record so far so hopefully that trend continues tonight.

As for the Indians - who can blame them for losing to Zito last night? Following Zito and his mental state of mind, I'd lie if I wasn't going to admit something was cooking inside his head for a while now. "What doesn't break you, makes you stronger" - I believe that was the story for him so far and we've seen the result of it last night. But I know it's easy to play a general AFTER the battle, so I'll focus on tonight game. The Giants have been a little road warriors this season so far, managing a 20-20 record away from their home park. They've also been a lot better in night games (25-24 vs 9-20 in day games) and when facing a LHP (12-13 vs 22-31 vs RHP). Although their offensive numbers vs lefties are terrible lately (just .227 BA and 1.9 runs per game over their L10 games but with very good .331 OBP which means only one thing - they've had problems with runners in scoring position). Matt Cain will start for them tonight in one of his favorable spots - a road start (4.14 ERA but with only 1.24 WHIP and .247 BAA) and a night game (where he's 4-2 with 3.32 ERA 1.23 WHIP and .235 BAA). Also, Cain has pitched really good this month, going so far 2-2 with 4.10 ERA, 1.19 WHIP and .255 BAA. He's 2-1 over his last 3 starts while pitching deep into the games (7 IP per start). But the thing is - Cain will start on 6 days rest - which has been his worst spot so far this season because he's only 1-2 with 7.36 ERA, 1.63 WHIP and .298 BAA when pitching on longer rest. Cliff Lee on the other hand will pitch in all 3 of his best spots - a home start, a night game and going on 6 days rest. Lee has been hit at the start of June but seems to find his good old stuff from the first 2 months of the season so he's now 1-0 with 2.41 ERA and 1.23 WHIP over his last 3 starts while the Indians are 2-1 over the same period. Just like Cain, Lee has also pitched deep into the games.

Interesting to point out that with tonight's home umpire - Dan Lassogna behind the home plate - Lee has compiled a 5-1 lifetime record (while the Under is 5-1 in those starts).

Hoping to see the Indians avoid the sweep tonight with their best pitcher on the mound. Hopefully their bats will be able to give Lee enough support - as they've been doing in the past.


Best of luck everyone and read you on Friday!

:cheers:
 
Thursday recap:

BALTIMORE (Liz) @ 2.35 for 3 Units WON
CHICAGO WS (Danks) -1.5 @ 2.50 for 3 Units WON
PITTSBURGH (Maholm) @ 2.15 for 3.5 Units PPD
HOUSTON (Rodriguez) -1.5 @ 2.70 for 3.5 Units WON
A 2-TEAM PARLAY: CINCINNATI (Volquez) & CLEVELAND (Lee) @ 3.04 for 2 Units LOST

3-1-1, +12.50 Units

YTD update: 142-146, -7.33 Units
(since 15.06.2008: 23-15, +64.30 units)

:cheers:
 
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