Mariners, Blue Jays try to get offenses going at Rogers Centre

Baseball Betting Lines

07/22/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Shut out for the fourth time this season, the Seattle Mariners try to bounce back this afternoon as they challenge the Toronto Blue Jays in the finale of a three-game set at the Rogers Centre.

On Saturday the Seattle offense fell silent in a pitchers duel that ended up 1-0 in favor of the Jays.

Josh Towers pitched 6 2/3 shutout innings for the home team, giving up just three hits while striking out four and walking two for the Blue Jays, who have won two of three after a three-game slide.

Toronto's bullpen closed out the game with 2 1/3 innings of hitless relief, with Jeremy Accardo getting the final two outs in the ninth for his 15th save of the campaign.

Aaron Hill plated the lone run of the game for the Blue Jays with an RBI single in the second inning.

Jeff Weaver was the hard-luck loser, dropping to a dismal 2-8 on the season, after pitching eight solid innings. The right-hander gave up just the one run on four hits with four strikeouts and no walks.

Jose Vidro hit a pair of singles for the Mariners, while Jose Lopez posted a single as well.

Setting up to take the hill for the visiting Mariners this afternoon in the Great White North is right-hander Felix Hernandez. The three-year veteran made it through six innings against the Baltimore Orioles in his most recent outing on Tuesday, giving up three runs on eight hits and three walks, but he was still saddled with the loss in an 8-3 final at home.

As for Toronto, they go with former Cy Young winner Roy Halladay, who has been credited with just one win in the last four outings.

On Tuesday the 10-year veteran permitted only a single run on five hits and three walks, while striking out six over seven innings, and still that failed to get him and the Jays over New York in a 3-2 setback.

Halladay entered this season an even 3-3 versus Seattle all-time, but he took the loss in his previous start versus the Mariners, dropping him below .500 against the club.

Over the last week of action Vidro has a team-high eight hits, doing his damage in just five games while Ichiro Suzuki has seven hits and five runs scored in six outings. While he has one of the team's four home runs in the last week, Adrian Beltre has been anything but a reliable hitter, posting a .125 average in six starts for the Mariners, who are now just a game behind the Angels for first place in the AL West.

As for the Blue Jays, three games under .500 overall and 11 out of first in the AL East, they are hitting a collective .244 over the last seven games even with Alex Rios coming in at a .345 clip with a team-high four runs scored for a squad that has plated a total of only 15 runs in the last week of action.

Seattle, which had won a total of just 10 games against the Jays over the last three seasons combined, has already swept Toronto at Safeco Field and is 4-1 overall in 2007.

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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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