Royals start homestand with Oakland in town

Baseball Betting Lines

07/16/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Two teams trying to climb into contention in the American League start up their post-All Star break schedules this evening at Kauffman Stadium, where the Kansas City Royals open up a six-game homestand with the first of three consecutive meetings with the Oakland Athletics.

Both clubs enter this series on the outside of the AL's playoff picture. The Athletics presently sit in third place in the West Division, eight games behind first-place Texas, while the Royals -- a team which hasn't reached the postseason since 1985 -- are 11 games in back of the Chicago White Sox in the race for the top spot in the AL Central.

Oakland will be heading into the second half carrying a bit of momentum after taking the final two tests of a three-game home set with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim this past weekend. In Sunday's rubber match, All-Star selection Trevor Cahill delivered seven outstanding innings to win his ninth game of the year and lead the A's to a 5-2 triumph.

Cahill (9-3) limited the Angels to one unearned run and five hits to close out an excellent first half for the sophomore hurler. He received support from a two-run homer by Jack Cust, with Adam Rosales also knocking in a pair of runs for Oakland with a sixth-inning single.

Cust finished 2-for-4 with two runs scored and Kurt Suzuki went 3-for-3 with an RBI single for the Athletics, who had lost four in a row prior to a 15-1 shellacking of the Angels on Saturday.

"Sometimes things go bad in this game, but you have to keep on grinding away," said Suzuki after Sunday's victory. "We're not that far behind. We've got a lot of games left."

Cahill was not eligible to participate in the AL's 3-1 loss to the National League in the All-Star Game because he had started the first-half finale. Teammate Andrew Bailey, a late addition to the AL squad, did work one-third of an inning in Tuesday's Midsummer Classic and picked up a save by throwing a scoreless ninth in Sunday's victory.

Kansas City went into the break on a down note, suffering a three-game sweep by the resurgent White Sox in Chicago over the weekend. The team's pitching was hit hard in Sunday's finale, as the Sox belted five home runs and pounded out 18 total hits en route to a 15-5 rout.

Emergency starter Anthony Lerew (1-3) served up four of Chicago's homers and was rocked for eight runs and nine hits before exiting after only 2 2/3 innings. Relievers Dusty Hughes, Victor Marte and Kyle Farnsworth were each reached for two or more runs in the Royals' worst pitching performance of the season.

"It was just one of those days," manager Ned Yost told Kansas City's official site. "We got balls up and [the White Sox] hammered 'em. They've got good power and they're hot. Put that combination together in this ballpark where the ball flies anyway. When we got the ball up, they didn't miss it."

Jose Guillen went 2-for-3 for the Royals and hit his 15th homer of the season, a two-run shot in the top of the fourth.

Lerew was handed the start when Kansas City scratched ace Zack Greinke prior to the game because of mild discomfort in his throwing shoulder. The move was clearly precautionary, as the 2009 AL Cy Young Award recipient will get the call for the Royals in tonight's opener.

Greinke has been on a roll lately after a frustrating beginning to his 2010 season. After losing eight of his first nine decisions and often being plagued by a lack of offensive support, the standout right-hander has gone 4-0 with a 3.00 earned run average over his last five starts and has lasted at least seven innings in each of those games.

The 26-year-old was last in action on July 6, when Greinke yielded one unearned run and a mere two hits while striking out nine Seattle batters over seven innings to best the Mariners.

Greinke also won his only start against the A's during his Cy Young campaign of 2009, allowing three runs through seven innings last August at Kauffman Stadium, and sports a 4-0 record with a 2.88 ERA in 11 career encounters (seven starts) with Oakland.

Gio Gonzalez will oppose Greinke this evening and aims to build off a solid first 2 1/2 months of the season. The young left-hander produced a 7-6 record and a 3.79 ERA in 18 starts and has held opposing hitters to a .238 average at the plate.

Gonzalez did struggle his last time out, though, surrendering five runs and eight hits while issuing five walks in a four-inning loss to the New York Yankees on July 7. That put an end to an outstanding three-start stretch in which he permitted only two runs -- one earned -- over a span of 19 2/3 innings.

The 24-year-old is 0-1 with a subpar 7.71 ERA in two previous starts against the Royals. That one loss took place at Kauffman Stadium during September of 2008, with Gonzalez giving up four runs (three earned) and a pair of homers in just four innings.

Tonight's matchup marks the first meeting between these teams of 2010. Oakland won six of eight bouts with Kansas City last season, including two of three games held at Kauffman Stadium.

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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.”

To visit this internet sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your sports betting needs and World Series odds.

MySportsbook.com and Kentucky Derby Offer Bonuses
The 2008 Kentucky Derby has announced a $1-million bonus for this weekend’s 134th ‘Run for the Roses’ and MySportsbook.com is doing the same.

Well, not quite $1 million, but MySportsbook.com is offering a 75% rebate for Kentucky Derby lines. Check out the exclusive horse racing bonus for all the details.

According to MySportsbook.com, the favorites for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky are: Curlin (+250); Street Sense (+500); Scat Daddy (+700); Circular Quay (+750); and Nobiz Like Shobiz (+800).

Derby organizers announced this week that there will be a $1-million bonus at the 2007 Kentucky Derby odds if the first-place horse wins by more than 6 1/2 lengths – the margin of Barbaro's victory last year. The bonus would be divided Saturday among the winning trainer, jockey, owner and a charity, with each receiving 25 percent. The designated charity is the Barbaro Memorial Fund.

''It's certainly creative, it's certainly fun and it has something for the horsemen, which we always want to embrace,'' Churchill Downs president and chief executive Robert Evans said at a news conference. ''What's really cool is it will force us to remember Barbaro.''
    
Meanwhile, the Derby favorite – Curlin – is going against the odds this year. It's been 125 years since Apollo won after skipping his 2-year-old season, and not since Regret in 1915 has such a lightly seasoned horse worn the blanket of red roses.

Arkansas Derby winner Curlin – unbeaten in three career races – tries to overcome both those obstacles in Saturday's 133rd Derby.

''We're not running against history,'' trainer Steve Asmussen said Monday. ''We're running against who they load up.''

Six other horses have run in the Derby without benefit of 2-year-old races and with three or fewer starts. The best any of them managed was a sixth-place finish by Showing Up last year.
   
Asmussen dismissed suggestions that Curlin's lack of racing experience could keep him from the winner's circle.

”He exudes confidence and he's got a great presence about him,'' the trainer said. ''I feel great about the position we're in. He's not worried about anything, why should you be?''
   
The Kentucky Derby is at 4:04 p.m., ET Saturday.

For complete odds on the Kentucky Derby, visit MySportsbook.com. Mysportsbook.com online sportsbook accepts Visa and Mastercard credit cards.