VegasButcher said:
Why you very seldom see one of the Pro's on the Cardinals or a total involving them. So I went back and checked all of the plays since July 1 on about 6 or 7 of the Pro's. Of the Pro's I checked I never found more than 3 plays either on the Cardinals or a total involving them in those six weeks. Most of the plays I found were on a total and not the Cardinal side. Now I have nothing but the utmost respect for all of the Pregame Pros but how in the world can you not find enough value on the Cards to have more than 3 plays on them in that time frame? They have more wins than any other team in baseball. They are 42-16 at home. According to Covers they have the best pitching staff AND bullpen in baseball and they are the top money winner. They have also been an under machine at 40-68. I just don't get it. I think that some of you are just looking for reasons to not bet them. Why, you have missed out big time. OK....I'm done. G/L the rest of the year everyone.
I believe part of the reason is that STL is a very very very public team. And when you have a public team that in addition to that is also very very very good, the odds on most (if not all) of their games are going to be inflated in their favor. The pure odds-value is mostly always going to lie with their opponent. Of course if you have a such a scenario, you have to be very careful when to fade a good team like STL in order to benefit from the odds-value, as clearly the Cards are winning more games than they 'should'.
What I mean by this is that their record is 74-41 (64.4% win-rate) but according to BaseRuns projected standings (based on how many runs a team 'should' score vs. how many they 'should' allow) their record should be 66-49 (57.2% win-rate), a +8 run-differential. The only team in the majors with a higher differential are the Twins, who have a +9 variance. The biggest factor in Cardinals' record is the RA/G (runs-allowed per game) as their actual number is 2.9, while their projected number is 3.4, a full 0.5 runs higher per game. That's a pretty huge discrepancy, and the theory is that in the long-run the 'actual' should catch up to the 'hypothetical'. It hasn't happened yet as the Cards continue winning games at a very high rate, but I think that's another part of the reason why Pros are hesitant to back them...in addition to the inflated odds of course.
[/quote]I understand what your saying and I'm sure they are a very public team but I still think the value lies more with them even at inflated lines like last nights game Garcia being a -210 favorite. One thing I have found out at Pregame over the years is it is almost impossible to get a pro to assign a hard number to what is "in the long run". Because if they do that then someone can start to find exceptions and tear that theory apart. I agree with you about their "runs-allowed per game". It's just sick. But instead of letting that scare you off expecting it to catch up to the projected number, how about applying common sense and going with them until it starts to change. A good example was when Marco had his streak of 25 winners in a row. Say person A was betting with him from the start but after he won 6-7 in a row said history tells us this just can't keep up so I'm getting off before he goes on a losing streak. Think of how much money person A would have lost by doing that. But if they would have stayed with Marco until things "actually turned against him" they would have had many more winners. The same with the Cardinals. If things start to go south then you don't back them any more. The Cardinals are just one example. You can plug in a few other teams, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, the Mets at home, and now take a hard look at Toronto. Thank you for your reply. I enjoyed the read.