Really A Very Tough Card Today

5 Inning POD  

Nationals -220 (Pomeranz / Strasburg)

I will be surprised if I don’t get crucified for this because it just does not fit the Covers description of value. 99% of Covers posters simply can not accept the concept that value is a matter of probability versus payback. At -220 the Nationals and Strasburg pay back 45.5 cents on the dollar of risk and require a 68.8% probability of a win to pass the break even point. I compute an extremely high 93% probability and an edge of 24.4% in this business is huge. Here is some more good news. The margin I have computed is not just Strasburg over Pomeranz. The Nationals also have a huge offensive edge. The Rockies are reeling and ready to collapse. They are looking forward to the break because that will give them three less days to lose games. This team stinks. They have been passed up by San Diego for God’s sake! They have lost 7 of their last 10 games overall and 15 of 20 to right handed starters and over the course of 20 games you can figure pretty average pitching. Just to save you the trouble the 5 they beat were Worley, Lewis, Jackson, Marquis and Kelly. That is not exactly a murderer’s row. Over the course of their last 15 versus righty they have established a 3.23 offensive era. The Nationals are improving rapidly on offense and have established a 7.17 offensive era versus the last 15 lefties they have seen. Pitching, offense and home field versus a team that just wants a holiday as soon as possible make this line cheap, not expensive. How many other investments do you have that are going to make 45.45% profit in just a few hours today?   

Full Game Plays

Nationals -213 (Pomeranz / Strasburg)

The principle is exactly the same, so this is a good point to segue into………

95% of Covers viewers considering this play will think in term of “Gee, I hate to risk $433 on one game to try to make $200, Key’s other plays may not cover that.” Here is where I will state, possibly for the last time since noone listens, adding the juice to favorites is not necessarily correct. There has never been a documented study that proved that. It is traditional only because the math is easy and the books post the lines that way. Is it possible the books never encourage a player to do it any other way because they really like the results? Well, the standard line given is that it is correct because of the higher probability of the favorite winning. Oh? Is that right? What is a favorite? Not necessarily the better team on any given day, they are just the side the public favors to win the game. That is where the term favorite comes from. If it were true a bettor should only bet $114 on his favorites and $86 on his underdogs. Why? Because over the long haul the favorites chosen by the public will only win 57% of the time. There is a reason why with a 95-84 record in 9 inning plays I am up 2,587 and part of that reason is that I do not lose added juice on favorites. If I were a $100 player I would play these two picks for $100 each and accept $92.40 profit on the $200 risk if both won, but not bust the bankroll with a $433 dollar wager that would be much harder to recover later if it lost.

Kick that around a while, I will be back with more.