A's try and put dent in Angels' division lead

Baseball Betting Lines

07/12/2008 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Winners of two straight and four of their last five outings, the Oakland Athletics continue their push towards the top of the American League West standings tonight when they play the second of a three- game set against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at McAfee Coliseum.

Despite being just 13-16 against the rest of the division with the first half of the season nearly wrapped up, the A's are still very much in the hunt for the top spot in the standings and are now just four games out of contention.

On Friday Oakland dropped six runs on the visitors in the third inning on its way to a 9-2 win. Jack Hannahan finished up 3-for-4 with a two-run homer for Oakland, while newly-acquired Matt Murton knocked in two runs and Emil Brown collected three hits and drove in a run. Kurt Suzuki, Jack Cust and Carlos Gonzalez each tallied a pair of hits for the victors as well.

Hurler Sean Gallagher made the most of his Oakland debut after coming over from the Cubs in the Rich Harden trade earlier this week, as he allowed just two runs on two hits and three walks, while striking out seven in as many innings.

On the other side it was Jon Garland who suffered the loss for the Angels, giving up seven earned runs on 10 hits and a pair of walks. Garland, who struck out just one, made it through a mere 2 2/3 innings.

Chone Figgins and Erick Aybar each scored a run for the Angels, the former finally hitting his first triple of the season and plating the latter in the process.

Getting another crack at the A's tonight, Ervin Santana heads to the hill for LA. The four-year vet, who was named to his first All-Star game earlier in the week, is already 1-0 versus Oakland this season and has a remarkable 8-1 mark against the club in his career, sporting a minuscule 1.48 ERA in 12 games.

Santana was roughed up a bit in his most recent outing on Monday, permitting six earned runs on 10 hits, two of those being home runs, and yet he still managed to record a win over Texas on the road. Over the course of seven innings the right-hander also logged six strikeouts, giving him a total of 112 K's in just 122 1/3 innings so far this season.

As for the A's, they are turning to Dana Eveland, as he shoots for his first career win against the Angels. The left-hander has had some issues with control this year, yet has still strung together three wins in as many decisions for Oakland.

On Monday the four-year veteran failed to fan a single batter for the first time this season and was charged with four walks in 5 1/3 innings versus Seattle, yet still lasted long enough to come up with the victory for the club. The Mariners managed nine hits off Eveland, leading to three runs in the 4-3 decision.

Oakland has made this last push towards first in the division despite hitting a collective .236 over the last seven games. Suzuki has helped hold it together with his eight hits in 21 at-bats and the same goes for Hannahan who also has eight hits and has scored four runs in his last seven games. Lost in the shuffle has been Mark Ellis, the second baseman hitting a feeble .103 in his last 29 at-bats.

The Angels have connected on nine home runs over the last week of play, with four players accounting for two long balls apiece. Howie Kendrick is one of those, pacing the club with 10 hits and six runs scored, thanks to a hefty .750 slugging percentage.

The Angels pitching staff appears to be having some problems with the break just days away. The squad has a 5.60 ERA over the last seven games and has allowed opponents to hit .300 against them, yet they still have a pair of complete games (Garland and Joe Saunders) to show for their efforts.

The Angels have won six of 11 versus the A's this season, taking two of three in Oakland from last month.

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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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