Giants close out title defense vs. Rockies
Baseball Betting Lines
09/28/2011 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Try as they might, the San Francisco Giants just couldn't overcome injuries and an inconsistent offense.
The defending World Series champions will at least try to end their season on a high note with an eighth straight victory over the Colorado Rockies in the regular-season finale today for both teams.
Coming off their first championship since 1954, the Giants lost catcher Buster Posey to a broken leg in May after a collision at the plate, the biggest of a handful of injuries the club would have to deal with all season. San Francisco never led the National League West after Aug. 9 and only an eight-game win streak from Sept. 11-18 pushed it back into the wild card race.
However, the Giants lost five of six after that and were officially eliminated from postseason play last Saturday with a 15-2 loss to Arizona.
Eric Surkamp got the start in that big game and was charged with six runs on three hits and four walks while failing to get out of the first inning in his fifth career start.
"That game started out bad and gradually got worse," said Giants manager Bruce Bochy.
The 24-year-old will try to rebound this afternoon and put his name into the discussion for a rotation spot next year. Surkamp is 2-1 with a 5.32 earned run average on the year and faced the Rockies on Sept. 17. The left-hander got a no-decision, giving up a run on three hits and six walks over 4 2/3 frames.
The Giants extended their franchise-record win streak over the Rockies to seven straight games with last night's 7-0 victory, getting three hits and a two-run homer from Brandon Belt and an inside-the-park home run by Conor Gillaspie.
San Francisco's 13 victories over Colorado is also a club single-season best in this series.
Madison Bumgarner tossed seven innings of two-hit ball to end his 13-13 season on a winning note.
"It's good to play well this last series," said Bochy. "We're out of it but the guys continue to play well and they're trying to reciprocate their appreciation to the fans."
The only two hits the Rockies managed off Bumgarner came in the second, as Kevin Kouzmanoff led off with a double and moved to third on Jordan Pacheco's single. Bumgarner settled though, striking out the side to escape the jam.
Alex White surrendered three runs on six hits in a four-inning start for Colorado, which has lost 11 of its last 13 and is playing out the string without Troy Tulowitzki (left hip), Carlos Gonzalez (right wrist) and Todd Helton (back).
"Any time a manager is walking out there in the third or fourth inning of a game, or after four innings you don't see a starter return, the chances of winning that game are not too good," Rockies manager Jim Tracy said.
Both White and Drew Pomeranz were acquired by the Rockies in the deal that sent Ubaldo Jimenez to Cleveland, and each starter figures to factor into the club's long-term success. Pomeranz will try to take another step forward in his career today in his fourth career start.
The 22-year-old won his MLB debut on Sept. 11 over the Reds with five scoreless frames before getting a no-decision versus the Giants six days later with 5 2/3 frames of two-run ball. The southpaw then suffered the first loss of his career on Friday in Houston, getting drilled for six runs over just two innings to up his ERA to 5.68.
"He just didn't have it," Tracy said. "The ball was flat."
Today's meeting could be the last of the career of Giants outfielder Pat Burrell, a 12-year veteran who helped San Francisco win its World Series title last year. Bochy will give him a start today in left field, just his third since coming back from the disabled list on Aug. 31 due to a foot injury.
"I don't know what's going to happen after this year," Burrell told San Francisco's website. "Obviously, if there was something at stake, like the playoffs, I wouldn't ask [to start]. Now that we're kind of out of it, I politicked my way into it. ... I just want to play. My foot's not really better, but it's one game. I appreciate the chance."
Burrell, who also won a World Series with the Phillies in 2008, owns 292 homers and 976 RBI over 1,639 major league games.
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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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