Mets hope to find their road game in Arizona

Baseball Betting Lines

07/20/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The road hasn't been too kind for the New York Mets and last night's embarrassing loss in Arizona was proof. The Mets will try to regroup on their 11-game, three-city tour out west tonight in the second portion of a three-game series against the Diamondbacks at Chase Field.

New York was pummeled, 13-2, in Monday's series opener and fell to 1-4 on the road trip. Mike Pelfrey must have been bothered by neck stiffness and lasted just 1 1/3 innings, allowing six runs and seven hits. Fern6ando Nieve did no better in relief and gave up five runs in two innings.

"I'm going through one of the worst stretches of my life. I don't know if I've ever had four starts in a row without getting out of the fifth inning," Pelfrey said. "I think tonight was definitely the shortest outing of my life, it's frustrating."

Jose Reyes and Angel Pagan drove in the only runs for the Mets, who have lost seven of nine overall and are 4-10 in the last 14 road games. New York has been held to four runs or less in 10 straight games, going 3-7 in that span, and will also visit Los Angeles for four games on the road swing.

R.A. Dickey will try to get the Mets back in the win column when he makes his 12th start of the season tonight. Dickey opened the 2010 campaign 6-0 over his first seven starts, but is 0-3 with a 3.16 ERA in the past four trips to the hill. Dickey has dropped back-to-back starts and pitched well enough for the win in last Thursday's 2-0 loss at San Francisco.

Dickey limited the Giants to a run and five hits in seven innings, falling to 6-3 to go along with a 2.63 ERA this season. The right-handed knuckleballer has never faced the Diamondbacks.

Arizona is playing out the string and managed to end a four-game slide with last night's 11-run rout of the Mets. Mark Reynolds hit a three-run homer and had an RBI triple, while Miguel Montero and Adam LaRoche both ended with three hits, two runs scored and an RBI for the D'Backs, who got two RBI apiece from Justin Upton and Gerardo Parra to make life miserable for Pelfrey.

"For whatever reason we've done well against him," Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson said. "Guys were just picking the ball up well and we struck the ball well tonight."

Chris Young got into the act with three hits and three runs scored. Ian Kennedy started for Arizona and earned the win by permitting just a run on four hits and two walks through five innings.

The D'Backs, who will also host the Giants for four games, will hand the ball to rookie Barry Enright on Tuesday. Enright is 1-2 with a 3.45 ERA in his first three major league starts and has lost consecutive starts since winning his MLB debut on June 30 at St. Louis.

Enright previously took the hill in a 2-0 loss to Florida on July 11 and was dealt the loss for giving up both runs and four hits in five innings. The righty out of Pepperdine will face the Mets for the first time, and is 0-2 with a 4.22 ERA in two starts in the desert.

New York and Arizona are meeting for the first time since the Diamondbacks won five of seven meetings a year ago.

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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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