Friday Baseball Picks

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After a slow day yesterday we're picking up the pace with four baseball plays today:

Tampa Bay Rays +170 (BetUS), 1 to win 1.7.

Simple value play- tough pitching matchup, but this number is just way too big for a quality baseball team. The public apparently doesn't think the Rays are for real. We do. So do PECOTA and any number of less well-known predictive tools. We'll side with the computers, thank you.

Cincinnati Reds +119 (Matchbook), 1 to win 1.19.

This may be the start of a consistent fade of the Braves. They still appear to be trading off their name and reputation at the books. This is simply not a very good team. Their bullpen is in shambles. As for their offense, it's halfway decent, but if you've got the best hitter in baseball for the first month of the season (you can expect Chipper to come back to earth as the season progresses) and you're still well under .500, it's not a good sign. We'll play underdog odds with a decent starter on our side (Volquez) against a mediocre baseball team all day. Always an adventure to bet a Dusty Baker team, but hopefully he won't get the chance to screw this one up.

Chicago Cubs +107 (Matchbook), 1 to win 1.07.

The pitching matchup is even. The Cubs have the better lineup and have hit right-handers very well over the last two weeks. Hambone sent me their batting average vs. RHPs to back this up, but I told him he was living in the past and started throwing around some crazy new dorky statistics that I found on Baseball Prospectus. He beat me up and took my lunch money.

Royals +194 (Matchbook), .5 to win .97.

Our first less-than-one-unit play of the season illustrates an important concept- when you're getting ridiculously high underdog numbers on the moneyline, you don't need to bet as much to come away with a nice profit. In this case you're getting almost 2-1 on your money. Sure, Sabathia looked good in his last outing and has a high BABIP that would suggest he'll continue to improve on his early season starts, but the same could be said for Hochevar. Just because your idiot friends at the bar recognize one name but not the other doesn't mean the Royals should be almost +200 tonight.

Playing the Royals as road underdogs over the last three seasons would have led to a healthy winning margin, even as the team was mired in mediocrity. This is probably because the public was afraid to play a perceived "crappy" team on the road. No reason the profits can't keep coming in 2008.