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Mets resume rough road trip in Washington

Baseball Betting Lines

09/06/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - After breaking out of a prolonged slump with four solid starts, New York Mets hurler Mike Pelfrey fell back into his struggling ways last time out.

That is sort of how his team has been all season long.

Pelfrey will try to get back on track today against a club he has struggled against in the past as the Mets visit Washington to begin a three-game series at Nationals Park.

A 10-game winner by June 25, Pelfrey then endured a seven-start stretch in which he went 0-4 with a 9.00 earned run average over seven starts. The right- hander then rebounded to win three of his next four starts, yielding just four earned runs in that span, before taking a loss in Atlanta on Wednesday after giving up four runs on nine hits over five innings of work.

"Obviously I have to get back to executing pitches," said Pelfrey after the setback. "That is the name of the game. I didn't execute very many pitches tonight. That's a good team over there."

Pelfrey dropped to 13-8 with a 3.72 ERA on the season, and his next victory will set a new career high. However, while he is 1-0 with a 4.63 ERA versus the Nationals this season, he is just 4-5 with a 4.02 ERA against the club lifetime.

New York can make things easier for Pelfrey today if it can continue to swing hot bats. The Mets pounded out a season-high 21 hits in Sunday's finale with the Chicago Cubs, avoiding a three-game sweep with an 18-5 triumph.

Ruben Tejada drove in five runs and hit his first career homer, while Ike Davis drove in three runs and scored three times, finishing a triple shy of the cycle. Jon Niese gave up five runs over six-plus innings in the victory, just the Mets' second in seven games so far on a 10-game road trip.

"Obviously my numbers don't look good on paper, but I'm thankful that our offense did a great job today," said Niese.

The Nationals have won five of their last eight and are also coming off a victory on Sunday, as they notched an 8-1 triumph over the Pirates in the rubber match of a three-game series.

Ryan Zimmerman drove in four runs for Washington, while Adam Dunn hit a solo homer and drove in two runs on the day. Jason Marquis gave up just the one run over six innings for the victory.

"Start by start I feel I'm getting closer to being consistent," Marquis said.

Jordan Zimmermann is also taking a start-by-start approach as he makes his third tonight since returning from Tommy John surgery. The right-hander was tagged for five runs over four innings in his return versus St. Louis on Aug. 26, but then limited Florida to just a hit over six scoreless innings on Tuesday. Zimmermann struck out nine without a walk, but earned his second no- decision of 2010.

"It's probably the best I've felt in a long time," Zimmermann told Washington's website. "I kept the ball down and actually got some fastballs inside, which I didn't do in my first start."

The 24-year-old is 1-1 with a 5.23 ERA in two career starts versus the Mets.

The Nationals have won seven of 12 versus the Mets this year, with the clubs splitting six meetings so far in Washington.


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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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