King Felix goes for M's in series capper with Tribe

Baseball Betting Lines

09/05/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Felix Hernandez will attempt to atone for a recent loss to the Cleveland Indians and help the Seattle Mariners earn a split of a four- game series with that above-mentioned opponent when the ace pitcher toes the rubber this afternoon at Safeco Field.

Hernandez's only setback over his past five starts took place against the Indians in Cleveland on August 15. The All-Star right-hander had a shutout after six innings of that contest, but was tagged for six runs -- all of which were unearned due to an error by teammate Chone Figgins -- in the seventh and served up a game-breaking grand slam to the Tribe's Travis Hafner.

The 24-year-old has bounced back quite well from that performance, however. Hernandez yielded just two runs -- one earned -- over a combined 15 1/3 innings in back-to-back road victories over the New York Yankees and Boston in his next two starts, then delivered seven scoreless frames in a tough-luck no- decision against the Angels on Tuesday.

Over his last five assignments, Hernandez has let up a mere one earned run and struck out 47 batters over 37 innings while posting a 3-1 record. His 2.38 ERA and 200 strikeouts for the season are both the second-best marks in the American League.

The native Venezuelan, who sports a 2.29 ERA at Safeco Field this year, is 3-3 with a 3.22 ERA in five career starts against the Indians.

Cleveland has won two of the first three tests of this September set between last-place teams and came through with a 4-2 decision on Saturday behind 6 2/3 strong innings from starting pitcher Mitch Talbot (9-11). The rookie right- hander yielded just one unearned run and struck out six Mariners to end a nine-start winless streak in which he went 0-5.

"It was nice to see Talbot come back and have a good outing," Indians manager Manny Acta said. "He's been struggling a little bit since he came back from the DL. [Saturday] he was very good, threw a lot of first pitch strikes, had that good changeup and a good cutter and gave us seven solid innings."

Cleveland gave Talbot an early cushion by scoring four unanswered runs off Seattle starter David Pauley over the game's first four innings, with Hafner, Asdrubral Cabrera, Shin-Soo Choo and Michael Brantley all coming through with RBI singles.

Pauley (2-7) did last six innings and surrendered the four runs on seven hits while striking out five.

"I think Pauley wasn't as sharp as he has been," said Mariners manager Daren Brown. "I thought he left some pitches in the middle of the plate, he had trouble getting his breaking balls over early and they just sat on the fastball and took the sinker away from him."

Ex-Indian Russell Branyan had a solo homer for Seattle, his second of the series, and finished 2-for-3 in Saturday's loss.

Acta will hand the ball to Jeanmar Gomez in this afternoon's finale, with the rookie filling in for originally-scheduled starter Justin Masterson due to the latter having to attend to a family matter.

Gomez has made seven starts for the Indians this season and gone 3-2 with a very respectable 3.08 ERA, though he's 0-2 with a 5.52 ERA over his last three times out. The young right-hander did pitch decent in an August 28 matchup against Kansas City, allowing two runs on six hits over 5 2/3 innings while not receiving a decision in his team's 4-3 win.

This will be the first-ever appearance against Seattle for Gomez, who's just 1-2 with a 5.79 ERA in three starts on the road this year.

Though these teams have split six meetings this season, Cleveland has taken seven of its last eight games against the Mariners held in Safeco Field.

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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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