Upstart Nats try to keep rolling in Colorado

Baseball Betting Lines

05/14/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Runs may be scarce in tonight's matchup between the Washington Nationals and Colorado Rockies, as two of the top ERA leaders get together in the second portion of a four-game series from Coors Field.

Rockies ace Ubaldo Jimenez is 6-1 with a 0.93 earned run average, while Nats veteran Livan Hernandez sports a 4-1 mark and a 1.04 ERA.

Jimenez is attempting to do something he isn't used to Friday, and that's rebound from a loss. He was 6-0 with an 0.87 ERA over his first six starts of the season and had been a recipient of great run support until squaring off with the Dodgers last Sunday. In the 2-0 setback at Chavez Ravine, Jimenez suffered the tough-luck loss for allowing just a run and two hits through seven innings.

One of the NL's top hurlers so far this season, Jimenez has allowed two or more runs just once in 2010 and has lasted at least six innings in each of his appearances. The hard-throwing righty, who tossed a no-hitter in Atlanta a month ago, beat Washington on April 22 with 7 1/3 shutout innings and allowed five hits in the 2-0 victory. Jimenez is 3-1 in five career starts against the Nationals.

Washington hopes that Hernandez can go toe-to-toe with Colorado's emerging staff ace when he takes the ball this evening, one night after the Nationals claimed a 14-6 victory that was called after eight innings due to inclement weather in the series opener . Hernandez did not record a decision his last time out in a 3-2 Nats' triumph over Florida on Sunday, when he held the Marlins to a run and five hits through seven innings.

Hernandez, a right-hander, remained at 4-1 this season and had his ERA raised slightly from 0.99 to 1.04 in his sixth start of 2010. He pitched well in the aforementioned loss versus Jimenez and the Rockies in late April, allowing both runs and four hits in eight innings of work.

The Nationals continued their climb up the NL East standings and pulled within one game of idle Philadelphia with last night's rain-shortened victory. Ryan Zimmerman homered twice and drove in a career-high six runs while Cristian Guzman had a three-run double for Washington, which has won two straight and five of its last six games.

"It was a real offensive game, both clubs getting after it," Nationals manager Jim Riggleman said. "But the conditions got real nasty after a while. The umpires made a good decision to get us off the field."

Nats starter John Lannan surrendered four runs on six hits with four walks in 4 2/3 innings for the no-decision. Doug Slaten recorded two outs in the seventh inning to get the win.

The Nationals are 3-1 thus far on a nine-game road trip against the Mets, Rockies and Cardinals.

Colorado fell six games off the lead in the National League West after yesterday's eight-run loss and has dropped three of its last four games. Miguel Olivo ended 2-for-3 with a homer and three RBI, one day after going 5- for-5 with a game-winning home run in the bottom of the 10th inning of a 4-3 win over the Phillies on Wednesday.

Troy Tulowitzki and Ian Stewart both finished with two hits and an RBI for the Rockies, who got a rough outing from losing pitcher Jhoulys Chacin. The rookie was reached for six runs and six hits in five innings. Matt Daley allowed four runs and Randy Flores surrendered three in relief.

"While we were hitting our way back into the game, the field conditions kept getting worse," Rockies manager Jim Tracy said. "We never got completely over the hump."

Washington and Colorado split a four-game series from April 19-22 at Nationals Park, but the Rockies have won 11 of the last 14 meetings between the teams.

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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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