GREG SHAKER
Leans
San Francisco Giants -125 (Lincecum/Oswalt) A couple of things to cover before we get to the plays today. Number 1: The Plays here are not always going to be High Percentage Plays for Baseball because of the nature of this sport but it will always be what I think are the best plays on the board. Number 2: Writeups are going to be more brief as I am not going to use stats and percentages as I do in the other sports. Baseball is all about putting one's self in the best winning position possible and sometimes we will play into streaks, by pitchers and teams. Most always there will be an intangible that puts the play over the top. My MLB Model has the Giants winning this contest at just under 59.5% of the time and while I am not too high on SF having a banner year, they do have The Big Boy on the mound. In addition to that, the Pen is coming off a great year, ranked number 2 in all of baseball. Bullpens are very important and especially in the first few weeks of the season when Starting Throwers are finding their groove and throwing fewer innings. Oswalt is not getting any younger, coming off his worst year to date, and already has shown some "Old Man Body Not Working Like It Used To" stuff in spring training with a strained hamstring on 3/26. He has not thrown much since then and perhaps not as sharp as he would want to be. With Berkman on the DL, Houston's O is likely to be poorer than usual for a few weeks and and usual is not too spiffy. Some have picked Houston to contend with Washington for the worst team in the National League this year and today we might see some of the reasons why
Florida Marlins +107 (Johnson/Santana) I am posting an average line and it can be had upwards to +110 at some shops. This line opened much higher than this, around the -132 level and has drifted downward from there. Does that make this a public play? In some cases yes, but there are reasons to back the visitors today. Obviously the first is the fact that Florida has and does hit lefties well.The second is the fact that the Mets are beginning the season without some key players, Beltran, Reyes, and Murphy. Young Arms like Johnson usually do very well in the early part of the season, Johnson has always thrown well at the Mets and the visitors are very excited about their team this year which is likely to give them a good Mindset Jumpstart. I have to lean here to Florida with what I think is a good betting number and I also have a smaller lean to the Team Total Marlins Over 3.5 Runs.