A's hope to build a win streak versus Mariners

Baseball Betting Lines

09/08/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - At seven games off the pace in the American League West Division, time is running out on the Oakland Athletics and their hopes for a postseason berth. The A's will try to get a winning streak going tonight in the finale of a three-game series versus the Seattle Mariners at the Coliseum.

After beating Seattle in Monday's series opener, the A's dropped a 7-5 decision last night behind starting pitcher Dallas Braden. The left-hander was torched for six runs and nine hits in five innings to absorb the loss.

"It's big, just as far as perseverance is concerned. There's an old saying, 'Try hard and work hard, even when no one is looking,'" Braden said of the team battling back. "I think that flows over into what we're doing."

Kurt Suzuki and Coco Crisp both had two RBI, while Steven Tolleson finished with three hits for the A's, who have lost six of nine games and hope that first-place Texas continues to falter down the stretch. The Rangers have lost five straight.

The Athletics are 3-2 on a nine-game homestand and will send Gio Gonzalez to the hill Wednesday night. Gonzalez has won three straight starts and is 6-2 with a 2.05 earned run average in his last 10 starts. He threw six shutout innings and allowed four hits in an 8-0 triumph over the Angels last Friday, improving to 13-8 in 28 starts to go along with a 3.12 ERA.

Gonzalez is 1-0 in two starts against Seattle this season and 2-1 in seven career games, five of which have been starts, in this series.

Seattle has alternated wins and losses over its last six games and ended a six-game slide by the Bay with Tuesday's win. It set the tone with five runs in the second inning and got a home run from Adam Moore.

"We talked about putting ourselves in good offensive situations," said Mariners interim manager Daren Brown. "I thought we were able to string some hits together in the five-run inning, and I know that's something we haven't seen a lot since I've been here, but it was good to see it tonight."

Moore and Casey Kotchman both ended with two RBI, while Ichiro Suzuki recorded a pair of hits and knocked in a run for the Mariners, who got five innings of two-run ball out of winning starter Doug Fister. David Aardsma later posted his 29th save by getting the final out of the game.

Ichiro is riding a nine-game hitting streak in which he owns seven multi-hit performances.

Taking the mound for the Mariners this evening will be Luke French, who has won back-to-back and four of his last six starts. French pitched seven scoreless innings of one-hit ball in Friday's 1-0 win over Cleveland to even his 2010 mark at 4-4 in 11 games (8 starts) this season.

The left-hander recently lost to Oakland on August 11 and is 1-2 with a 5.89 earned run average in five career games (3 starts) against the Athletics.

Oakland has won six of eight meetings with the Mariners held at the Coliseum this season, as well as eight of 14 overall matchups between the two clubs.

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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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