A-Rod hits grand slam as Yankees overpower Indians

Baseball Betting Lines

05/31/2010 - Bronx, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Alex Rodriguez hit a grand slam to highlight a six-run seventh inning and ended with six RBI, as the Yankees closed out a four-game series against the Indians with a 11-2 victory.

Andy Pettitte (7-1) rolled through Cleveland's lineup for seven innings, allowing just four hits -- one a Jhonny Peralta solo homer -- with five strikeouts and zero walks.

Robinson Cano extended his hitting streak to 14 games with a solo home run and later chipped in a two-run single.

Rodriguez finished with three hits -- the others an RBI double and run-scoring single. It was his 20th career grand slam, passing Eddie Murray for third place on the all-time list.

Brett Gardner added three hits and an RBI, while Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher each picked up two hits and scored twice as New York picked up its fifth win in seven games behind a season-high 18-hit attack.

Indians starter Mitch Talbot (6-4) was charged with three runs on nine hits in 6 1/3 innings. A combination of Rafael Perez and Chris Perez came on to surrender five runs during the fateful seventh frame without retiring a batter.

It was a 2-1 Yankee lead going into the seventh where everything fell apart for Cleveland.

Gardner began the onslaught with a single, but was quickly erased on an attempted steal of second. Derek Jeter then singled, but was replaced by a pinch-runner. He had taken a pitch to the back of his left thigh in the second inning. Yankee manager Joe Girardi indicated after the game the hamstring had stiffened as the game went along.

Rafael Perez came on for Talbot and gave up a base hit to Granderson, uncorked a wild pitch to advance the runners and intentionally walked Mark Teixeira to load the bases.

Chris Perez was called upon to limit the damage, but instead served up a 3-1 fastball that Rodriguez crushed to dead center. Cano then ripped a pitch over the wall in right and Swisher doubled to bring Jamey Wright out of the pen.

Francisco Cervelli capped the frame's scoring with a sacrifice fly to make it an 8-1 affair. New York stretched its lead further with Rodriguez's RBI double and Cano's two-run single in the eighth.

Pettitte, meanwhile, had retired 14 straight following a Mark Grudzielanek single in the third leading up to New York's huge seventh inning. Chan Ho Park took over where Pettitte left off by retiring the next five before hitting a snag with two outs in the ninth. He put three on and gave up a Shelley Duncan RBI single before getting the final out.

The Yankees got on the board in their first at-bat. Granderson lifted a ground-rule double to right and came home two batters later on Rodriguez's base hit into right-center.

Peralta turned on a Pettitte fastball and put it well into the right-field bleachers leading off the second for his 100th career home run.

The game remained tied until the fourth when Swisher led off with a double and Gardner laced a two-out single to center for a 2-1 edge.

Game Notes

The Yankees took three of four in the series after winning five of the eight matchups a year ago...Pettitte lowered his earned-run average to 2.48 on the season with three earned runs and no walks over his last two starts (15 innings). He evened his record at 8-8 in 20 career starts against the Tribe and was 0-4 in his previous six starts against the Indians in the Bronx...It was A-Rod's seventh homer this year and 590th of his career. Only Yankee legend Lou Gehrig (23) and Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez (21) have more career grand slams than Rodriguez...Cano hit his 11th home run this season and is batting .450 (27-for-60) with eight doubles, two homers and 17 RBI over his hitting streak....Gardner was caught stealing twice in the same game for the first time in his career.

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Brandon Roy Favorite to Win 2007 NBA Rookie of the Year

Portland TrailBlazer’s guard, Brandon Roy, is MySportsbook.com’s overwhelming favorite to win the NBA Rookie of the Year odds.

Despite missing 20 games due to an injury earlier this season, Roy has definitely put up the best numbers of his 1st year peers. In 32 games, Roy is averaging 15.3 PPG, 4.2 boards and 3.5 assists in over 33 minutes of play per game. While most rookies breakdown as the season progresses (see Morrison), Roy is only getting stronger as his playing time and scoring average has increased each month.

With 30 or so games left in the regular season, Roy isn’t a lock for the award by any means. Other rookies are putting together some pretty impressive campaigns and a few could give Roy a run for the award with increased playing time. Heading the list is first pick, Andrea Bargnani of the Toronto Raptors. Even though he has started only two games all season, Bargnani is averaging 10.3 PPPG while shooting 35% from deep.

Randy Foye of the Minnesota Timberwolves could be set to give Roy the best competition NBA Rookie of the Year betting lines. With the benching of Mike James, Foye looks like he could be the starter in the T-Wolves backcourt for the rest of the season. So far, Foye has averaged 9 PPG and 2.4 assists in just under 21 minutes per game. With his new role of starter, Foye’s numbers will definitely increase. In his first game as the new starting guard this past Sunday, Foye had 10 points; five rebounds and 8 assists. More importantly, he logged 34 minutes of playing time; his third highest run of the season.

Adam Morrison, of the Charlotte Bobcats, was the favorite early on in the season after averaging 15+ PPG through the first month of the season. Ever since his torrid start, Morrison’s point production has declined each month. This really isn’t surprising, considering at 6’8” he only weighs 205 lbs. Obviously he will need to hit the weights big time during the off-season in order to keep from breaking down in the future.

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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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