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Haren injured in debut with Angels; Big Papi powers Red Sox

Baseball Betting Lines

07/27/2010 - Anaheim, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - David Ortiz homered twice and knocked in three runs, powering the Boston Red Sox past the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, 6-3, in Dan Haren's injury-shortened debut with his new team.

Haren (0-1), acquired by LA on Sunday in a trade with Arizona, exited the game in the fifth inning after taking a Kevin Youkilis line drive off his right forearm. He was diagnosed with a contusion and took the loss, allowing two runs on seven hits to go with eight strikeouts and no walks in 4 2/3 innings.

His counterpart, Clay Buchholz (11-6), threw seven innings of one-run ball, yielding just five hits and a walk while fanning seven in his second start since being activated off the disabled list. Jonathan Papelbon nailed down his 23rd save of the season by recording the final four outs.

Victor Martinez (thumb) was in the starting lineup for the first time in a month and drove in a run for Boston, which had lost four of six coming in.

The Angels lost for the fifth time in six games despite home runs by Bobby Abreu and Hideki Matsui.

Boston quickly tied the game following Abreu's first-inning solo homer, as Adrian Beltre tripled leading off the second and trotted home on Martinez's single to center.

The Red Sox stranded two runners in the inning, and the Angels wasted a no- out, bases-loaded situation in the bottom half, with Buchholz getting out of the jam thanks to a pair of infield pop outs and a flyout to left off the bat of Erick Aybar.

In the third, Ortiz got just enough of a Haren offering to send it over the short porch in right for his 20th round-tripper of the year.

The Angels left two more on in the third and went down in order from the fourth through the sixth innings while their newly-acquired starter hit the showers early.

Francisco Rodriguez and Kevin Jepsen kept it a one-run game until the seventh, when Fernando Rodney served up Ortiz's blast on a payoff pitch. Youkilis, who finished 3-for-5 at the plate, singled ahead of the homer.

Scott Atchison took over for Buchholz in the eighth, and Maicer Izturis greeted the reliever with a single before coming in on Matsui's two-out home run, which was upheld upon review as a fan appeared to interfere with the ball just as it cleared the wall in right.

The Sox answered in the ninth on J.D. Drew's two-run double off rookie Michael Kohn, and Papelbon shook off a leadoff single in the ninth to seal the win.

Game Notes

It's the ninth straight year Ortiz has hit at least 20 home runs. He has three multi-home run games this season and 37 for his career...Haren, winless since June 12, went 7-8 with a 4.60 earned-run average in 21 starts with Arizona...Buchholz came back from a left hamstring injury last week and was touched for five runs on six hits and three walks over four innings versus Oakland..Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, on the DL since May 28 with a rib injury, started his rehab assignment in the Gulf Coast League on Monday...Kohn had his contract selected from Triple-A Salt Lake, and the Angels also optioned pitcher Trevor Bell to Salt Lake and recalled from rehab and optioned pitcher Matt Palmer to Salt Lake...The Red Sox swept a four-game home set over the Angels from May 3-6...In the second test of this three-game series on Tuesday, John Lackey will square off against his former team opposite Angels ace Jered Weaver.


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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.”

To visit this internet sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your sports betting needs and World Series odds.

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