Thursday Afternoon Picks and One to Watch Thursday Night

Two Thursday afternoon picks to help you procrastinate at work. Both lines from Matchbook:

Atlanta Braves +100, 1 unit to win 1 unit.

Hambone is in charge of tracking our daily balance, so he likes the easy math here. Those darn decimals always give him trouble. Plus this gives us a chance to check in on the Braves. About two weeks ago we did a piece together in which we stated that there will be value in this team in the mid-season. Hambone wrote that their road record was a statistical aberration that would almost certainly correct as the season wears on. We haven't really had a chance to check that out yet, as they were at home until this current Milwaukee series. I added that their third-order record as calculated by Baseball Prospectus (basically just their expected W-L based on run differential and adjusted for quality of competition) suggested that they were a better team then their .500 record at the time indicated. Here we get to put both our arguments into play.

Washington Nationals +106, 1 unit to win 1.06.

We've pretty much given up our earlier promise to avoid the Nationals because it's hard to lay off a team that gets such overly generous numbers all the time. The Nats and Padres have almost identical records- the Padres are slightly better in third-order wins (my theme for May and June), but the difference is only a game or two. However, the Nats' rotation set up well this series with Hill, Perez and Lannan on the mound, while they ducked both Chris Young (DL) and Greg Maddux (started the game just prior to this series). Taking them in all three games will ultimately result in either a substantial profit (winning two out of three at underdog money) or a small loss (winning one out of three, ending up down a half-unit or so). Not a bad strategy for long-term success.

We're also keeping an eye on Zito again tonight. You may remember that we wrote about how his negative putblicity has gotten to the point where he has value, since the public is loathe to bet in him. The Vegaswatch guy posted something similar a couple days later in a Covers.com column. The number tonight on Zito has been moving around a lot today, but seems to be settling around +180, which sounds great to us. We'll post this pick later today, but if you see a good price (above +185), grab it.