Davis goes for seventh straight win in Baltimore

Baseball Betting Lines

09/05/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Wade Davis has been awfully tough to beat over the past two-plus months. Against the Baltimore Orioles, the Tampa Bay Rays pitcher has been just about invincible during his brief tenure in the majors.

Davis tries to extend a club rookie record for consecutive victories and lead the Rays to a series win over the Orioles when the two American League East inhabitants play the rubber match of a three-game set this afternoon at Camden Yards.

In an eight-start stretch beginning on July 3, Davis has won six times without a loss and posted a solid 3.66 earned run average over the course of his unbeaten run. The young right-hander has allowed two runs or less in each of those six wins and now owns an 11-9 mark over 23 outings during his first full season in the big leagues.

The soon-to-be 25-year-old wasn't slowed down by a brief stint on the disabled list last month due to a strained shoulder. Davis has won both of his two starts since being activated and pitched very well in Monday's home triumph over Toronto, yielding just two runs on six hits over 7 2/3 innings.

Davis' best work has come against the Orioles, however, and especially so on the road. He's 3-0 in three career meetings with Baltimore and permitted a mere two runs over a combined 24 innings versus today's opponent, while holding the O's to one run over eight stellar frames in a July 19 matchup at Camden Yards.

The Florida native's first major league win also took place in Baltimore during September of last season, with Davis surrendering just four hits and striking out 10 batters in a complete-game shutout that night.

Tampa Bay has also fared quite well as a team against the Orioles in 2010. The Rays have prevailed in 10 of 14 matchups between the clubs this year and are 6-2 at Camden Yards for the season.

Baltimore was able to best the playoff-hopeful Rays on Saturday, though, with the Orioles pounding out 15 hits and receiving seven strong innings out of Jeremy Guthrie to come through with an 8-4 verdict.

Nick Markakis belted a two-run homer in the first inning and Matt Wieters knocked in two more men with a double during a three-run third that gave Baltimore an early 5-1 advantage. Both players finished with two hits on the night, with Felix Pie going 2-for-5 with two RBI to aid the Orioles as well.

Guthrie (9-13) didn't need all that much support, as the right-hander limited Tampa Bay to two runs and struck out seven to improve to 6-2 in 10 starts since the All-Star break.

Baltimore halted a three-game losing streak with last night's result and is now 5-3 over its last eight contests overall.

"It's been going good so far," said Markakis after the game. "We've just got to keep it going against the teams that we're going to be facing for awhile."

The loss was a costly one for Tampa Bay. With the Yankees defeating Toronto earlier in the day, the Rays fell to 2 1/2 games behind New York in the battle for first place in the AL East. The team still managed to lengthen its lead over Boston in the league's Wild Card standings, though, after the Red Sox lost both ends of a doubleheader with Chicago on Saturday.

Matt Joyce ended 2-for-4 with a homer and two RBI and recently-acquired Brad Hawpe also went deep for Tampa Bay, which had won five of its last six coming in.

Rays starter James Shields (13-12) struggled through 4 1/3 innings, with the right-hander reached for six runs on eight hits.

"I don't think I did a very good job of getting ahead in the count today," he stated afterward.

The Rays will attempt to bounce back in today's clash with O's rookie Chris Tillman, a pitcher whom the club battered in a showdown at Camden Yards earlier in the year. The highly-regarded rookie was rocked for eight runs on seven hits and issued four walks in that loss, while lasting only 2 2/3 innings.

Tillman was sent down to Triple-A Norfolk immediately following that disaster and received a promotion when rosters expanded in September. The young righty finished with an 11-7 record and a 3.34 ERA in 21 starts with the Orioles' International League affiliate.

The 22-year-old also took a loss against the Rays last season and is 0-2 with a 7.04 ERA over three career encounters with Tampa Bay. Tillman has also lost all three of his Camden Yards assignments this season and given up 15 runs (14 earned) in just 10 innings, with the opposition batting .435 against him.

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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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