Pujols, Cards resume set with Braves

Baseball Betting Lines

07/21/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Albert Pujols is getting hot and will try to lead the St. Louis Cardinals to a victory tonight when the club plays the third game of its four-game set with the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field.

Pujols homered for the fifth time in eight games following the All-Star break with a solo shot in Friday's 4-2 win over the Braves, giving him 21 on the season. He has driven in seven runs during the stretch and lifted his batting average to .319 on the season.

Juan Encarnacion drove in the go-ahead run in the eighth inning of yesterday's victory, plating Pujols with a single, as the Cardinals won for the fourth time in six games and improved to 4-4 on their current 10-game road trip.

Adam Wainwright (9-7) allowed one run on six hits with two walks and seven strikeouts, while Jason Isringhausen worked out of a ninth-inning jam to earn his 19th save in 21 chances.

Scott Rolen, though, missed his third straight game due to a left shoulder injury and is listed as day-to-day.

The Cardinals will send Braden Looper to the hill tonight, and the right- hander is coming off a win at Florida on Monday. Looper limited the Marlins to two runs on five hits over 6 1/3 innings to move his mark to 7-7 on the year with a 4.60 earned run average.

The victory halted a six-start losing streak (0-4) for Looper.

A former closer, Looper has never started against the Braves but has faced them 53 times out of the bullpen. In that span, he is 4-2 with eight saves and a 4.07 ERA.

Buddy Carlyle aims for his third straight winning decision when he toes the rubber for Atlanta. The 29-year-old twirled eight solid innings in a victory over San Diego on July 6 before besting Pittsburgh on Sunday behind eight innings of one-run, four-hit ball. Carlyle is 4-2 with a 4.00 ERA, and is undefeated over his last four outings (3-0).

The right-hander has made just one career appearance against the Cardinals, facing them in relief back on September 26, 2000. He threw a shutout inning, walking one and striking out a batter.

Carlyle will hope to get the Braves of their current skid, as the club has dropped four of its last five games. Chipper Jones went 2-for-3 with an RBI, and Edgar Renteria also had a pair of hits in Atlanta's setback on Friday.

Rafael Soriano (2-2) absorbed the loss, allowing a pair of runs on four hits in the eighth. Starter Chuck James tossed seven frames, allowing one run on six hits with two walks and four strikeouts.

The defeat moved the Braves to 4-4 on their current 10-game homestand and has the second-place squad 3 1/2 games behind the Mets for the top spot in the National League East.

This series marks the first 2007 meeting between these teams. Atlanta won four of six matchups with St. Louis last season and is 5-2 in its last seven games against the Cardinals at Turner 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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