A's attempt to narrow gap in West in finale with Rangers

Baseball Betting Lines

07/29/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - After coming through with a much-needed victory on Wednesday, the Oakland Athletics will try to gain further ground on the American League West-leading Texas Rangers when the divisional rivals wrap up a three-game series tonight at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

The Athletics lost 3-1 to Texas in a 10-inning thriller on Tuesday, but were able to avenge that defeat with a dominant performance from Trevor Cahill last night. The All-Star hurler delivered eight shutout innings and Kurt Suzuki knocked in a pair of runs as Oakland evened this key set with a 3-1 triumph.

Cahill (10-4) limited a potent Rangers offense to a mere two hits and walked three in outdueling Texas starter Colby Lewis, who gave up just one run and five hits while registering eight strikeouts over his seven innings of work.

"He was outstanding," A's manager Bob Geren said of Cahill. "When you think about the environment he was pitching in, the weather, the team, it was about as good as you can do."

Lewis held his own as well until the sixth inning, when Suzuki snapped a scoreless tie by hitting his team-leading 12th homer of the year. The Oakland catcher later added an RBI single during a two-run eighth that gave his club a 3-0 advantage.

"[Lewis] left one pitch up to Suzuki, and when you make a mistake to that kid he usually doesn't miss," Rangers manager Ron Washington remarked.

Nelson Cruz, who had the game-winning homer in the 10th inning of Tuesday's opener, had one of Texas' two hits of Cahill to extend his hitting streak to 16 games. The standout outfielder is batting .403 (27-for-67) with three homers and 16 RBI during his career-best tear.

Oakland now has won 10 of its last 13 contests, but still trails the front- running Rangers by 7 1/2 games in the AL West standings. Texas had won four of five prior to Wednesday's setback.

The Rangers will attempt to bounce back behind C.J. Wilson, who's been as good as any pitcher on a Texas staff that also contains former AL Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee over the past few weeks. The converted closer comes in having won six of his last eight decisions and has yielded two runs or less seven times in a nine-start span dating back to June 9, producing an excellent 2.33 earned run average over that stretch.

Wilson has been especially strong since the All-Star break. After permitting just one run and three hits and racking up a career-best 10 strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings to defeat Boston on July 18, the left-hander fired eight shutout innings to lead Texas to a 1-0 victory over rival Anaheim this past Friday in his second start of the second half.

The 29-year-old is also an impressive 7-2 with a 3.18 ERA in 12 outings at hitter-friendly Rangers Ballpark for the year, and allowed one run in a seven- inning no-decision against the A's in Arlington back in May. Wilson had faced Oakland 30 times in relief prior to that start and went 1-3 with a 5.08 ERA and five saves in those games.

The Athletics counter with a pitcher who's on quite a roll of his own in Vin Mazzaro. The young right-hander enters the finale with a 4-0 record and an outstanding 2.12 ERA over his past five assignments and has lasted at least six innings in each of his six most recent starts.

Most notably, most of Mazzaro's success has come on the road, where he's compiled a 4-1 mark along with a 3.13 ERA in seven games (five starts). The second-year major-leaguer has emerged triumphant in three straight away starts, including a July 17 clash at Kansas City in which he surrendered one run in a career-best 7 2/3 innings of work.

Mazzaro followed up by holding AL Central-leading Chicago to two runs and three hits in a sharp six-inning stint on Saturday, which ran his season record to 6-2.

The 23-year-old did not fare well in a meeting with the Rangers on May 4, however, with Mazzaro reached for four runs and issuing four walks before exiting after three innings.

These divisional foes have split eight meetings thus far in 2010, with the Rangers having prevailed in three of the five matchups held in Arlington.

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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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