Thursday Atlanta Braves PK

Sometimes with the grueling job of posting lines on games every day odds makers make mistakes and I think they may have made one here. With that being said it gives me as player a chance to make a play Thursday loaded with value. In my opinion here is why this line may have been as off as it is with the wrong team favored.

First of all is the old  tactic of looking at the win/loss and ERA of a particular pitcher. In the Rockie's case they send 23-year old right-hander Jhoulys Chacin to the hill on Thursday.  Chacin leads the Rockies, who are out of playoff contention this season, in wins and ERA. Odds makers have a tendency to overvalue the pitcher with the best numbers on a bad team.  When I take closer loot at Chacin I find a different story.

Jhoulys Chacin has been far from effective for the Rockies and will take the mound tonight. He is 0-3 with a 5.10 earned run average in his last five starts and did not record a decision in Saturday's 8-7 loss to Milwaukee. He allowed five runs and seven hits in 6 1/3 innings. He lost to Atlanta on July 5 allowing four runs in five innings.

He is showing obvious signs of fatigue that are often associated with young pitchers after throwing a lot of innings and carrying a load they are not accustomed to. In his lat four starts he has walked 11 batters while only striking out 18. He has 106 strikeouts on the season (leads Rockies) yet has failed to strike out more than five batters in any of his previous four starts. That stat along with the added walks are strong signs of fatigue. When young pitchers become fatigued over the course of the season they often start overthrowing and thus the walks increase while the strikeouts decrease.

Braves right-hander Tommy Hanson has been a rock for the AL East contenders. He is 10-5 with 2.73 ERA and an impressive 117-37 strikeout to walk ratio. Prior to a rough outing vs. Washington in his last start Hanson had held seven straight opponents to three runs or less. In his last five starts he has 42 strikeouts! And only nine walks for a ratio of almost 5-1 Hanson pitched 202 innings last season and has only pitched 108 thus far this season after spending some time on the DL earlier in the year. He appears to have a fresh arm and his strikeout to walk ratio has improved over the past month unlike Chacin's who has drastically gotten worse.

The Braves swept a four game series from Colorado from July 4-7 and despite dropping two of the first three of this series, they have had a lot of success vs. Colorado recently.

I Moved on the Braves

BOL As Always 17-6 on Write ups 

even has a phils fan

the braves win today

Did you write this yourself, LVTruck?

As for the Rockies, they are anything but eliminated from playoff contention.  And as for the pitchers' stats for the last couple starts... you really have to disregard them. 

 Anybody who watched and bet baseball in April and May can easily see that some shit was going down in July.  What I mean by that is the damn umpires had a strike zone half the size of an ordinary strike zone.  Constantly, hitters were in hitters counts.  So it doesn't matter who was on the mound... you weren't going to get half of the calls you will get in September...  So throw all those damn numbers out cause plain and simple, they're cooked.

Exactly, so just take my word for it.  How do you think teams come back down from 8 runs, 5 runs...??  Hitters were put into hitters counts.  I don't care who was at the plate.  It was 4th of July weekend, going into the week prior to the all-star break.  You got fans coming out, it's hot, and nobody was going to enjoy themselves all drunk and shit with a pitchers duel.  The fuckin' memo was sent out and I was late.  Next year it won't happen.  That's why I'm saying disregard pitchers' stats from the last week of June up until recently.