Red Sox shoot for third straight win against battling M's

Baseball Betting Lines

07/24/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Boston Red Sox try to make it three straight wins this evening when they continue their four-game set against the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field.

The Red Sox will turn to Jon Lester to keep them in the win column, as the southpaw will take the hill trying to rebound from his fourth loss on the season. In the 4-2 setback to Texas on Sunday, Lester surrendered four runs -- three earned -- on nine hits, but he also struck out six batters in eight innings.

The loss halted Lester's personal three-game winning streak.

Lester has been solid throughout the season, especially on the road where the Washington native is 5-2 in nine starts, and that comes with an impressive 2.78 earned run average.

However, Lester has endured struggles against Seattle in his career, posting just a 1-1 mark with a lackluster 4.55 ERA in five outings.

Taking on Boston will be a former player from the organization in David Pauley. Pauley, who participated in nine combined games for the Red Sox in 2006 and 2008, will be making his third start on the season since being called up from Tacoma back on June 27th. Both of Pauley's starts have come at home, but in both matchups the right-hander was defeated.

The last time Pauley took the hill he surrendered three runs on eight hits in a 6-1 setback to Chicago.

Last night, Bill Hall hit the go-ahead home run in the seventh inning and Josh Beckett pitched into the sixth in his first appearance in over two months as Boston edged the Mariners, 2-1.

Beckett had been sidelined with a lower back strain. In his first game since May 18, the right-hander went 5 2/3 innings, yielding one run on five hits with three walks and five strikeouts. He threw 98 pitches, 62 for strikes.

The Red Sox blew a five-run lead in the ninth inning on Thursday, but managed to win the opener of the four-game series, 8-6, in 13 innings. Jonathan Papelbon, who was part of that ninth-inning collapse, escaped a jam in the final frame Friday for his 22nd save of the year.

The Mariners not only suffered their eighth loss in 10 games, but tempers boiled over in a skirmish in the team's dugout in the fifth inning apparently over a lackadaisical effort in the top portion of the frame by second baseman Chone Figgins.

Josh Wilson was already warming up to replace Figgins when Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu told Figgins that he was being removed from the game.

"I don't think you can point a finger at anyone," said the Mariners' Russell Branyan. "I just think that Wak walked down there and told Figgy that he was done and Figgy wanted to explain his side of the story, how the play went down. That was pretty much it and I think that some tempers flared a little. That's about it."

Lopez had his jersey pulled over his head as a cluster of players came together in the dugout. Figgins and Lopez were being held back by teammates on one side of the dugout, while Wakamatsu appeared to be at the other end and also part of the argument.

"In the fifth inning I didn't think there was much effort on that back-up," Wakamatsu said. "One thing people have to understand, everybody in that dugout cares and tempers fly a little bit. What happens in there stays in there."

Boston is 9-4 in the past 13 contests in this series.

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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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