Posey's Pick Of The Day

[mitch51]

Yeah, I know, I am late. Sorry guys, made a mistake, but back again. Won't do this again.
2-12, +1.47 u.

Overall:
2-0, +2.7

I haven't got enough time today for an in-depth write up, so I gonna continue tomorrow. Stay true and clean.

Welcome back, Posey. Don't let the hammer come down on you again. I got banned once for saying the word...ummmm....never mind.

[posey]

Thanks! Didn't say a word, didn't insult anybody, made another mistake. But it's in the past so now let's look forward.

[2buckluck]

Yeah, I know, I am late. Sorry guys, made a mistake, but back again. Won't do this again.
2-12, +1.47 u.

Overall:
2-0, +2.77 u.

I haven't got enough time today for an in-depth write up, so I gonna continue tomorrow. Stay true and clean.

Welcome back man, looking forward to more great insight!

[escism]

Thanks! Didn't say a word, didn't insult anybody, made another mistake. But it's in the past so now let's look forward.

Welcome back!

[mdunlap3]

Glad to have you back brother! Missed you in the miners thread

[Jerm3085]

Glad you're back posey! Wishing you continued success! ��

[Big Bear]

good luck

[poirot86]

I'm looking forward to your analysis. Greetings from another European

[Logan Five]

GL to you..

[buddha]

Yeah, I know, I am late. Sorry guys, made a mistake, but back again. Won't do this again.
2-12, +1.47 u.

Overall:
2-0, +2.77 u.

I haven't got enough time today for an in-depth write up, so I gonna continue tomorrow. Stay true and clean.

Good to have you back, most of us didn't know about 7 day bans, figured it was permanent and no one chooses to clarify via post re: less than forever bans but whatever...good to have you back.

Getting near to time where factoring in umpires even keying plays offa such is worth considering as a serious capping tool. Have you used Umpire considerations in the past as a capping tool?

[acehole]

glad your back man

[paed]

Good to see you back Posey. Good luck.

[FlyinAir]

Wish you continued luck my guy

[posey]

Thanks all!


On my writeup right now. Stay patient.

[posey]

5/12
Red Sox (J. Masterson) – Athletics (D. Pomeranz)
Red Sox +110

Starters:
Masterson (5.18 ERA, 2-1 W-L, 1.58 WHIP) vs. Pomeranz (5.12 ERA, 1-3 W-L, 1.39 WHIP). Two gas cans… yeah maybe, but look at the following. While Mr. Masterson has a 5.18 ERA, all of his runs were earned (19 in 33 IP), so his RA is exactly his ERA. Look at Pomeranz, he has a 5.12 ERA, but he also allowed 5 unearned runs (23 in 31.2 IP), this makes up for a RA of 6.63. This is more than bad. This is ugly. More comparison: Drew Pomeranz started the season really well, pitching 7 flawless innings against the Rangers and leading the As to a 12-0 shutout. Since then he wasn’t able to get out of the 6th inning, he pitched 5.0 innings 3x, 5.1 innings 1x and 4.1 innings 1x. And all of those starts were rather bad. He has allowed at least 3 runs in all of them. So when you take out his first start, his last 5 show an ERA of 6.60 and a RA of even 8.40. On the other side Masterson’s starts were different. While he had two really bad games, in which he didn’t get out of the 5th inning (9 IP and 11 ER combined), his other four looked solid (6.0 IP, 2 ER; 5.0 IP, 1 ER; 7.0 IP, 3 ER; 6.0 IP, 2 ER; 24 IP and 8 ER combined, so a 3.00 ERA). Pomeranz has allowed a homerun in 4 of his last 5 games and is rather a flyball pitcher. Masterson is, for one more time, the opposite, being a sinkerballer who has only allowed 2 homeruns in this season thusfar (more on that later). All in all you can’t say that any of the two guys had the tougher schedule. So I am highly confident in Masterson being the better pitcher here. This is also supported by the fact that Crisp, Reddick, Sogard, Butler, Fuld and Lawrie (these are the As who have at least 10 career PAs against him) combine only for a .222 BAA against Masterson. Pomeranz hasn’t faced the Red Sox enough to draw final conclusions, but the small sample size doesn’t show much promise for him. So all in all Masterson is the starter who has the better chance of doing well tonight. Masterson’s teams are 3-11 with him starting against the As over his career, but this doesn’t mean anything. But since 2013 he (or they) is (or are) 2-2 against the As and even this doesn’t mean much. The last As lineup he faced consisted of Crisp, Lowrie, Donaldson, Moss, Cespedes, Jaso, Reddick, Callaspo and Sogard. As we all know, 6 of those 9 guys aren’t playing for the As anymore. So I really don’t draw any conclusions from Masterson’s stats against the As, why should I?

Batting:
On paper, the Red Sox have one of the best lineups in the AL or in whole baseball. But several of their guys have underperformed thusfar. Napoli, Victorino, Craig and Nava (talking about guys with at least 30 PAs this year) are batting .169 or worse, besides Hanley (batting .381 vs lefties) all qualified Red Sox had problems against lefties thusfar, too. But here come the interesting things. While the Red Sox are batting a league worst .190 as a team against lefties, you will notice that this number will improve a ton over the next few days, weeks and months. The parameters which show this are the league lowest BABIP against LHP (.208, compare that to a .390 of the Cubs or a .361 of the Marlins) and the second best BB/K ratio of all MLB teams against LHP (0.62, only topped by the Indians with 0.67). While they are averaging a mediocre 20.9% strike out pct against LHP, their BB% is at 13% against LHP and by far the highes in the league. This is ideal against Pomeranz, because either he has problems with his command or he gives up too many hits. So either the Red Sox should get enough walk opportunities (like yesterday against Kazmir) or start hitting against a lefty. The Red Sox were abysmal over the last 7 games on offense, batting only .196. But again, the BABIP was very, very low (.209), they walked a lot (10.6% BB%), didn’t strike out much (15.9% K%) and have homered 6 times. The last two games showed an uptrend, as they scored 11 runs. Their batting with RISP has also been problematic all season long, but this can be explained by being unlucky (very low BABIP). The Red Sox are better, much better than their stats show to date.
The As offense has been revamped for 2015 and to be honest I don’t like it thusfar. They do average 4.6 runs and 9.1 hits per game, but with 5 runs or less their bad record gets even worse, right now it stands at 3-18 with scoring 5 runs or less. In my opinion a really big problem is that they had some problems with the bullpen, but speaking about the offense the bigger problem is their performance with RISP, which is combined with another problem. Home runs. Although the As have ´only´ hit 31 home runs (´only´ because that’s still good for 0.9 HR/game), 12 of them have come with RISP, which makes them league leaders in this category. But as I have explained above, Masterson doesn’t allow many homeruns and this smells like trouble for the As. The As are 3-12 this season without hitting a homerun. And I think the chance of them not hitting one are quite good. With hitting 1 homerun their record is 4-7, so slightly better, and with 2 or more they are 5-3. This isn’t a good sign going against sinkerballer who has been able to avoid giving up the long ball. Over the last 7 days the As offense has also gotten in a little slump, batting only for a .227 AVG, although their BABIP wasn’t too low (.268). Additionally they had major trouble with the plate discipline, striking out for 21.5% and only walking 5.5% of the time. Masterson had some trouble with striking guys out and avoiding walks, but the As look like a team he should be able to handle very well, since he has also a good track record against them (see above). Vogt (.337 AVG, .417 OBP), Reddick (.323 AVG, .407 OBP), Semien (.295 AVG, .340 OBP) and Ike Davis (.284 AVG, .351 OBP) were their best hitters thusfar, but Vogt (.200 AVG, .227 OBP / L7) and Reddick (.148 AVG, .258 OBP) have been slumping a little bit lately.
Overall I like the Red Sox lineup against Pomeranz much more than the As lineup against Masterson.

Bullpen:
Even if Masterson is slightly off or Pomeranz does well, there is still a major factor in this game, the bullpens. The Red Sox bullpen has a W-L record of 6-4 to date, the As an abysmal 2-10. The Red Sox bullpen has the 4th best LOB% in the MLB, the As bullpen the 3rd worst. Both bullpens have a reliable BABIP, so we can take ERA into account. And there the Red Sox 3.78, although being not elite, does look much better than the 5.18 of the As. Both teams have already suffered a lot of blown saves by their bullpens and both teams‘ relievers have already done a lot of work this season. Neither bullpen is elite, but I like the Red Sox bullpen more this season.

Fielding:
Generally I don’t look too much into fielding stats or sabermetrics. But the As defense has been worse than everything thusfar, so that you can’t overlook it. With 34 errors in 24 games they have made the most errors of all teams thusfar (17 by the Red Sox). A major part of it has been Marcus Semien. While he did do well on offense, he made already 10 errors alone, which is nearly as much as the whole team of the Marlins, Rays (both 11), Dbacks (12) or Tigers (13). When not conceiding an error, the As are 6-5. But with an average of 1.42 errors/game, you see, that it’s likelier that they will be making an error than they don’t. And if they make at least 1 error, they are 6-17.

Some more facts:
- The As have lost 6 straight and are 7-18 in their last 25.
- The As are 4-10 at home and 1-8 in their last 9 home games.
- The Red Sox are 3-7 over their last 10, but won the last two games.
- The Red Sox are only 7-9 at home, but 8-8 on the road.
- Homeplate umpire is Larry Vanover. It’s his 6th game this season and home teams are currently 4-1. But don’t overstress that. The matchups were Elias (A) v Deduno (H), Gee (A) v Cosart (H), Hamels (A) v Fister (H), Bumgarner (A) v Shields (H) and Weaver (A) v Hernandez (H).

Normally I do include trends queries to support my pick, but I think I have given enough reasons and explained my pick enough. Please forgive me any spelling mistakes, I didn't read my text for correction.

[mitch51]

Brilliant write-up, Posey.

[FlyinAir]

I cannot back masterson on the road I just can't, beautiful write up tho

[inZane]

Damn, Posey, you could do this for a living... Good job

[posey]

Red Sox lose.


Worst pick of the year thusfar, yesterday was a bad day in general for me.

Nearly everything went wrong, despite the As making an error.

That happens.

Record:
2-1, +1.77 u.

[Big Bear]

shake it off pal

u will get the next one

[posey]

Thanks, yeah, days like yesterday happen. I am not afraid of it. Baseball is too close to avoid things like that.

[italianbandit]

shake it off pal

u will get the next one

Bear are you a life coach?

[Big Bear]

Bear are you a life coach?

yes

[2buckluck]

Hey Posey, You going to have a play today (or any looking good this coming weekend?) Looking forward to more great insight when you have the time , cheers

[posey]

I am in a little slump lately and until it's over I won't post any plays as far as I don't find a real bomb. Don't want to hurt anybodys bankroll.

[jailbait7127]

ty bro

[posey]

Damn, I won't have the time to keep this thread going the way I planned to. Too much work and too little time to cap and write. So I will simply post all my plays. I will therefore use my current SDQL-record as a base. I have played much more this season and are up a little bit more units but my SDQL-record is proven and I don't want to make things up. And all my picks of the day where somehow in this thread, too. All bets flat 1 u, always with listed pitchers.

Record: 37-28, +12.47 u. (http://www.sportsbookreview.com/foru...l#post24107771)

6/6
Angels @ Yankees Under 8 -117
Rays +1.5 -140
Rangers @ Royals Under 8 -113
Rangers +145
Giants -1 -143
Astros +133
Orioles +132

Normally I don't lay so much juice like on the Giants, but trends are to strong not to do so.

[posey]

6/6
Angels @ Yankees Under 8 -117, 2-7, L, -1.00 u.
Rays +1.5 -140, 1-2, W, +0.71 u.
Rangers @ Royals Under 8 -113, 4-2, W, +0.89 u.
Rangers +145, 4-2, W, +1.45 u.
Giants -1 -143, 7-5, W, +0.70 u.
Astros +133, 2-7, L, -1.00 u.
Orioles +132, 1-2, L, -1.00 u.

Yesterday: 4-3, +0.75 u.

Record: 41-31, +13.22 u.

[posey]

6/7

Dodgers -1 +101
Giants -1 -107
Angels +105
Rangers +109

[card complete]

[VegasPlayer]

6/7

Dodgers -1 +101

[...to continue...]

Sorry to impose, but I can't seem to find a -1 RL calculator. Anyone got a link? Used to have one, but it's on another hard drive somewhere.

[posey]

I play my bets at Pinnacle and they offer -1 (and other handicaps like -2 or -2.5 or +1, +1,5, +2, +2.5) directly, so I don't have to calculate them myself.
So I am sorry, but I can't help you with a resource or formula, since I never needed one.

[VegasPlayer]

Thanks. Books I use here in Vegas don't offer -1. Have to calculate it yourself. I'll remember it eventually or figure it out. Just being lazy.

[posey]

I googled a little bit out of curiosity but couldn't find one either. Maybe open a thread. BOL.

[Big Bear]

Posey you are my new favorite poster.

keep up the good work.

[44 Mag]

Yesterday: 4-3, +0.75 u.

Record: 41-31, +13.22 u.

Nice work.