Sunday in the American League

Apparently, Grover hasn't got his computer issues figured out, because I still haven't heard from him today. I feel like Daniel Day-Lewis' son in There Will Be Blood: "I've abandoned my boy!" I was planning on playing Cain again today (hopefully, against a lefty), but they keep changing the pitching matchups around. I might add it later, but for now, just these 3 in the AL, all lines from Matchbook:

Twins +177, 1 unit to win 1.77 units

All 3 of Perkins' appearances have been quality starts this year, including games against the heavy-hitting Red Sox and Rangers. Verlander may be coming out of his funk, but Minnesota hitters have performed well against him in the past, and with this huge line, I'm willing to take a chance on the kid.

Orioles +148, 1 unit to win 1.48 units

Don't tell Grover I picked against his favorite futures bet team. I see this matchup as very close, so getting +148 sounds like value to me.

Red Sox +103, 1 unit to win 1.03 units

I'm not making this pick because Bud Smith pitched a brilliant game in his next start after his no-hitter in 2001. And I'm not making this pick because I spent the time to write a post about not automatically picking against Lester today. I AM making this pick today because I am a sucker. This line is too good to be true and the sportsbooks have reeled me in like the big fat fish that I am. Good luck today, everybody.

Lester Letdown? Don't Bet On It.

Or, at least, don't bet against Lester just because you think he has to be overvalued today following his no-no the last time out. Being a contrarian bettor, who likes to bet "against the public" on a regular basis, I have to admit that when I saw the highlights of Lester's no-hitter in his last start, my first thought wasn't "Wow, what a great performance!" or "Wow, what a great survival story!" My actual first thought was "Wow, the line on that guy is going to be WAY overinflated in his next game!" They call me Mr. Sensitive.

Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the last 10 no-hitters and how those pitchers performed in their next start. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), if you had wagered on all 10 of those pitchers in their next start, you would have gone 9-1. 9-1! All 9 of those winning performances were quality starts (at least 6 innings, and no more than 3 earned runs). And, really, that should probably be 9-0 if you leave out the bizarre situation with Clay Buchholz at the end of last season. Buchholz throws a no-hitter and then is used out of the bullpen in his next appearance? Incidentally, he actually did pick up the win in that relief appearance (3 innings, 0 ER, 3 K), but since he didn't start, there's no real way you could have wagered on that. In his next actual start, TWO WEEKS AFTER his no-hitter, he got the loss, but pitched well (4.2 innings, 1 ER, 5 K).

So, it would appear that there was no post-no-hitter-letdown for any of the no-hitter pitchers over the last 7 years. And, looking at the lines from those games, it also doesn't appear that there was much over-inflation in the lines. The only line over -175 in the next appearance for any of the last 10 no-hit pitchers was a -210 for Derek Lowe and the Red Sox in 2002. But, that line wasn't out of whack from the lines the Red Sox were getting anyway that season. In the game before Lowe's next appearance, the line on Burkett was -185, and in the game before that, Pedro Martinez was -360. In 2001, A.J. Burnett was +100 in his next start for the Marlins following his no-hitter. Today, in fact, Lester and the powerhouse Red Sox are somehow only -102 against the powerless Oakland A's.

I was planning on writing a post about how you should look to fade Lester after the no-hitter inflates his value, but this strategy would have lost you a lot of money over the last several years. I'm not advocating you play on Lester today based on the performances by other no-hit pitchers described above, because obviously the way Hideo Nomo or Anibel Sanchez or Randy Johnson performed in their next start has no relation to how Lester will pitch today. But, I wanted to point out the importance of doing your homework on each game the same as you always would before betting, and not necessarily trusting your knee-jerk reaction to unusual circumstances. It's a mistake I came very close to making today.

Saturday Night Fever

My blog partner is having some computer issues at home, so you're at my mercy for tonight's picks. All lines from Matchbook:

Rangers +170, 1 unit to win 1.70 units

With Josh Hamilton and Milton Bradley hitting 3rd and 4th, the Rangers have more crackheads in their lineup than a soup kitchen, and that's gotta count for something.

Giants +121, 1 unit to win 1.21 units

Knowing Grover, if he were online he would be touting Matt Cain tonight. His man-crush on Cain is second only to the one he has on Ian Snell.

Cardinals +131, 1 unit to win 1.31 units

I got this in this morning at +144, but it's been dropping steadily all day. Brad Penny has completely fallen apart the past couple of weeks. I don't know if he's hiding an injury or not, but something's definitely not right.

Our Hero

When you use a guy as an example of an unfairly maligned pitcher in a post AND you bet hard-earned money on the guy as a big underdog, you really hope he pitches a nice game and makes you look smart. Thank you, Mr. Zito. We never doubted you.

Friday Night Addition

One more for tonight:

Nationals +110 (Matchbook), 1 unit to win 1.10 units

Grover is always a little uneasy about playing one of his local teams, but we both agree that this play is not based on his homerism. The Nats play better at home in their new stadium, and they get to face Mr. Suppan, who is terrible. And while the Brewers hitters usually perform well against lefties, they have not had any success against Odalis Perez in limited appearances. Better pitcher + home team + underdog line = Pick. Good luck everybody.

Don't Believe the Hype

It's not just a great track from the best rap group ever, it's also a solid handicapping lesson. As I was doing the homework for tonight's games, I noticed something I found interesting about a couple of tonight's starting pitchers. When trying to anticipate a pitcher's performance in a game, there are some statistics that can be heavily dependent on factors other than the ability of the pitcher. For example, a pitcher's win-loss record is pretty much a useless way to measure a pitcher's ability. Whether a pitcher gets a win or loss in a game often depends less on the pitcher's performance in that game and more on the run support, fielding, and bullpen effort in that game. A pitcher's ERA can also vary depending on the quality of the defense behind him, among other factors. Outfielders who have speed and strong throwing arms, and/or shortstops who can make difficult catches and tough throws either to first to get the hitter out or to second to start the double play, can keep a significant number of runs off the board, thereby reducing a pitcher's ERA.

On the other hand, as my blog partner, Grover, has pointed out before (and provided links to articles by smart folks who are much better at math than we are), there are several statistics which are solely based on a pitcher's performance, and are not dependent on his team's defensive ability at all. Such defense-independent statistics include home runs allowed, strikeouts, walks, and hit batters. The number of hit batters is usually not high enough to be a big factor by itself, but since the hit batter results from a similar lack of control and produces the same result as a walk (batter gets a free pass to first base), I'm going to add walks and hit batters together for purposes of this post.

Now, borrowing a gimmick popular with fantasy baseball writers, compare the 2008 defense-independent statistics of these two pitchers (both starting Friday night):

Pitcher A: 5 home runs allowed, 22 strikeouts, 27 walks & hit batters
Pitcher B: 6 home runs allowed, 22 strikeouts, 25 walks & hit batters

That's pretty damn close. So, obviously, these two pitchers are having similar levels of success this season, right?

Wrong.

Pitcher A is Gavin Floyd, who has a record of 4-2 and an ERA of only 2.92.

Pitcher B is Barry Zito, who has a record of 0-8 and an ERA of 6.25.

The point? Most importantly, the win-loss record is garbage when evaluating the performance of pitchers. Although the defensive fielding numbers (fielding percentage, errors committed) are virtually identical, Floyd has the advantage of an offense that has scored a lot more runs than Zito's team, and the White Sox bullpen has performed much better than the Giants this season. That doesn't make Floyd a better pitcher than baseball's poster boy for ridiculous contracts; it just makes him lucky. Similarly, the difference in ERA between the two starts to make sense when you compare their BABIP numbers Just because the batting average on balls in play for the hitters Floyd has faced so far (a ludicrous .193) has been unsustainably low when compared to Zito (.359), doesn't mean Floyd has pitched better. It just means he's been lucky so far. And luck doesn't last. Don't accept the stats displayed on ESPN's scoreboard at face value. Scratch beneath the surface to find out if a pitcher really deserves the praise (Floyd) or scorn (Zito) that he's getting from the folks at SportsCenter before you put any money into play.

Note: The points I make in this post only apply to predicting a pitcher's likely performance going forward or in a particular upcoming game. Of course, the pitching performance is not the only factor involved in deciding whether to bet on (or against) a particular team. All the factors discussed above, which can artificially skew a pitcher's statistics, are still extremely important when handicapping a game and all have an important effect on whether a team wins or loses. But, when you're focusing on the pitching part of your analysis, make sure you're not overvaluing or undervaluing a particular pitcher based on factors he can't control.

An Early Play

San Francisco Giants +151 (Matchbook), 1 unit to win 1.51 units.

Wagerline shows this line dropping steadily since it opened at +166. We want to get this ine before it moves any further. The worm may have finally turned on Barry Zito. No, we don't mean he's going to suddenly become a good pitcher. We mean that he's gotten so much negative publicity that he may now represent good value, instead of being a quality fade due to name recognition that far exceeded his ability.

On the flip side, Scott Olsen's stats this year seemingly defy statistical analysis, not to mention common sense. Somehow he is 4-1 with a 2.82 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP. But he's walking everyone. No way this continues. The Giants' anemic offense might not be the one that finally roughs him up, but at +151 we're willing to take the chance.

For those of you that put stock in these sorts of things: the line is moving in favor of the Giants despite bets (not money, the number of bets) coming in at a 3-1 clip for the Marlins.

Detroit Rock City

Steven A. Smith said that the Celtics can't win a game on the road (their 33-10 road record during the regular season apparently means nothing), so I guess the Boston/Detroit series is over and our series bet on the Pistons is a winner. Whew. That was easy. I wonder if our bookie will go ahead and pay us now..........

Dice-K In Progress

A snapshot of today's action:

Through four innings, Daisuke Matsusaka has already walked 5 batters (and given up 3 hits). Somehow, some way, our man has only allowed one run.

How is this possible? Maybe he pitches out of the zone on purpose and trusts that major league lineups will have enough impatient hitters to bail him out? Maybe his famed gyroball somehow outsmarts all SABR-metric analysis of baseball and pitching over the last twenty years? Maybe he has some sort of deal with the devil?

Dice-K is making me question everything I know about pitching.

Thursday Picks- Happy Dice-K Day

Around these parts we've commented on more than one occasion about the fact that Daisuke Matsusaka's scorching April was mostly a mirage and would present some prime gambling opportunities as the season wore on.

Kansas City Royals +198 (Matchbook), 1 unit to win 1.98.

Rather than waste multiple paragraphs on this subject again, we will simply point out that Matsusaka has been walking far too many hitters and has gotten way too lucky on balls in play to sustain his numbers. The Red Sox have every reason to be favored here, but +198 is way too good a price against a decent but unspectacular pitcher.

Texas Rangers +105 (mult. sites), 1 unit to win 1.05 units.

Padilla has looked great this year. We're not suggesting he's on his way to a Cy Young campaign, but he's facing Livan Hernandez, so we give a slight edge to the Rangers there, especially if you consider Padilla's numbers against these Twins hitters and Livan's against the Rangers' lineup. A small sample, but again, when you add in what we consider to be a decent advantage for the Rangers at the dish, it looks good.

Interestingly, the Rangers are about 3 games better than the Twins in Baseball Prospectus's Third Order Wins standings, which take into account a team's runs scored and runs against as well as their strength of schedule. This is a useful tool in May and June, when some teams are off to misleading "hot" or "cold" starts and many teams have not played a schedule that is as balanced as it will eventually be later in the year. In this case, we're getting a slightly better team with the slightly better starter and a great, if limited, history in the individual batter/starting pitcher matchups. We'll take +105 on that any time.