Angels' home run parade leads to rout of Yankees

Baseball Betting Lines

07/20/2010 - Bronx, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Mike Napoli, Maicer Izturis and former Yankee Hideki Matsui each hit a two-run homer to lead the Angels to a 10-2 win over New York at Yankee Stadium.

Napoli finished with four RBI for the Angels, who captured the opener of this brief two-game set and have won four of their last five games overall.

Sean O'Sullivan was recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake late Monday and pitched six strong innings. O'Sullivan (1-0) replaced Scott Kazmir, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list due to a strained left shoulder, and allowed two runs on two hits with four strikeouts to earn the win.

Phil Hughes (11-3) suffered the loss after he yielded six runs on nine hits in five-plus innings for the Yankees, who lost for only the fourth time in the month of July (11-4).

Nick Swisher hit his 17th home run of the season in the losing effort.

The Yankees grabbed an early lead with a pair of runs in the first inning. After Swisher's one-out solo homer, Mark Teixeira drew a walk and moved to third on a double by Alex Rodriguez. Robinson Cano then walked to load the bases and a groundout to the right side of the infield by Jorge Posada allowed Teixeira to cross the plate.

An RBI single by Izturis in the top of the second cut the Angels' deficit in half, and another RBI base hit -- this one off the bat off Torii Hunter -- in the third knotted the score.

In the top of the fourth, Juan Rivera laced a one-out single before Izturis stepped to the plate and belted his third home run of the season over the wall in right field.

In the sixth, Napoli turned on a Hughes fastball and blasted it over the right-field wall. The two-run shot also scored Matsui, who led off the frame with a walk.

New York manager Joe Girardi was ejected in the bottom of the sixth because he argued with umpires after Teixeira was called out on a close play at first base.

The Angels gained a bit of insurance in the seventh. Hunter drew a two-out walk and Chan Ho Park entered from the New York bullpen. Matsui greeted him with a home run to right field for an 8-2 advantage.

Los Angeles reliever Scot Shields worked around a first-and-third situation by inducing an inning-ending groundout off the bat of Brett Gardner in the seventh and Francisco Rodriguez did the same in the eighth. With runners on the corners and two outs, Rodriguez got Cano to fly out to left field.

A two-run single by Napoli in the top of the ninth capped the scoring.

Game Notes

Hughes is now 3-1 lifetime against the Angels (four starts)...The Angels outhit the Yanks, 14-6...New York was 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position...Swisher now has 54 RBI in 2010...Angels outfielder Bobby Abreu was thrown out twice trying to steal by Posada.

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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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