Originally Posted by
toddorts
Ahhh, back to baseball after a few days of nothing but hockey. Not exactly the world series I was hoping for (I thought it would have been great to see the Brewers and Tigers), but I still love the world series, no matter who's playing. With these two teams, I see real potential for it to go all the way down to game 7. Should be a good contest. For the first game, I have two plays:
Rangers @ CARDINALS RL -1.5 +185
Rangers @ Cardinals OVER 8.5 -113
Rangers @ Cardinals
My numbers indicate to me that this is going to be one hell of a close game. Wilson is the slightly better pitcher, but not enough to make that decide the outcome of the game. Both are relatively good pitchers. Homefield advantage plays a small factor here, but the truth is, the Cards haven't scored much better at home this year than they have on the road. There is a slight edge there, but all it really does is cancel out the small edge that Wilson has over Carpenter. So, we're back to even. That brings us down to offense. Here, the Cards have an ever so slight advantage. But it really is slight. I see the likely outcomes of both teams to be between 4-5 runs. The Cards are just a bit more likely to hit 5 than the Rangers. So, why am I taking the -1.5 RL on a game that I'm predicting to be so close? As usual, because of value. Yes, it is almost a toss-up on who wins this game, and it is likely to be close, but the RL on the Cards is posted at +185 at 5Dimes, and +175 at most other books. Those are incredible odds. I calculate that the Cards win this game by at least 2 runs about 40.5% of the time. That would make the RL worthwhile at +155 or better. So, great value here. Do I expect to win it? No, but I expect to win it enough times to make it a profitable wager over time. And that's how you make money betting on sports. On the total, I like the over. Yes, there is a bit of concern about the wind in today's game, with it possibly pushing some balls foul that would normally go over, but I see enough of a delta between my calculated total and the posted total to make it worthwhile. I calculate the total at 8.7, and the books are offering 7.5. Don't take it at anything worse than -120, though. I got -113 on the reduced juice lines at 5Dimes, and that's definitely worth it.