Dodgers hope to gain some ground in San Diego

Baseball Betting Lines

07/27/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - After stumbling out of the gate to begin the second half, the Dodgers have finally started to turn things around. It's a good thing, because the National League West-leading Padres have had no such troubles since the All-Star break.

Los Angeles will be trying to close the gap with San Diego, starting tonight with the opener of a three-game series at Petco Park.

The Dodgers lost their first six games to begin the second half, but have won four of five since. That has them six games behind the first-place Padres.

Los Angeles took three of four from the Mets over the weekend despite scoring just seven runs. Russell Martin drove in the lone run in Sunday's 1-0 triumph, backing Clayton Kershaw's eight scoreless innings in which he gave up seven hits with one walk.

"Clayton is something special," said Dodger's skipper Joe Torre. "He stays focused and knows how to pitch under pressure. He's learning to pitch instead of overpowering people."

Kenley Jansen earned his first career save in his second big league outing by retiring the side in order in the ninth.

Chad Billingsley started the Dodgers' recent stretch by beating the Giants on Wednesday. The right-hander hurled the second shutout of his career in that one, a five-hitter in which he gave up two walks and struck out three.

"I stuck with my game plan and stayed down in the zone," Billingsley told Los Angeles' website. "I always try to do that, but some days it just doesn't happen."

Billingsley is 8-5 with a 4.22 earned run average on the season and 9-4 with a 2.51 ERA in 19 career games (15 starts) versus the Padres. The 26-year-old beat them on May 16 with 7 1/3 scoreless innings, yielding four hits and a walk to go along with six strikeouts.

Jon Garland will try to prevent Billingsley and the Dodgers from getting closer to the Padres in the standings. The right-hander is coming off a no- decision in Atlanta on Wednesday as he allowed four runs on six hits with a walk over five innings.

Garland has enjoyed Petco Park so far this year, going 5-1 with a 2.51 ERA in 10 starts at home. He got a no-decision versus the Dodgers as the hosting pitcher May 14 after allowing two runs over six innings. He then beat Los Angeles five days later on the road despite getting charged with four runs over five innings.

In his career versus the Dodgers, who he went 3-2 with a 2.72 ERA in six starts with last year, Garland is 2-1 with a 3.75 ERA.

The Padres have won eight of 10 since the All-Star break and return home after a 4-2 road trip. That trek was capped on Sunday with a 6-3 victory, capping a three-game sweep for San Diego.

Chris Denorfia and Adrian Gonzalez both homered for the Padres. Denorfia's home run was is sixth in 11 games, a span in which he is hitting .341 (14- for-41) with 12 RBI.

Wade LeBlanc got the victory on Sunday, yielding three runs over six innings to earn his first win since June 12.

"The big thing was establishing strike one later in the game," LeBlanc said. "It takes away some of their aggressiveness."

At 58-39, the Padres are 19 games over .500 for the first time since the conclusion of the 1998 season, which also marks their last World Series appearance.

Los Angeles has won four of five over the Padres this year, including a three- game sweep at Petco Park from May 14-16.

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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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