Baseball Betting: Pittsburgh Pirates at Milwaukee Brewers
Added on Jul 13, 2012 by Jack Thurman in
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More Friday night baseball with NL Central action between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Brewers. This series presents a good contrast with the disappointing Brewers taking on the surprising Pittsburgh Pirates. The Brewers were expected to be one of the contenders in the division but have been decidedly mediocre so far in 2012. Currently, they’re mired in 4th place eight games out of the division lead. That lead is held by the upstart Pirates who hold a one game advantage over the Cincinnati Reds.
Pittsburgh Pirates at Milwaukee Brewers
July 13, 2012 5:10 PM Pacific
It’s easy to outwit yourself in all forms of sports handicapping and particularly baseball. There’s no shortage of handicappers that have already decided that the Pirates early season success was a fluke and they’ll return to earth down the stretch. They’re planning to come out firing against the Bucs starting tonight to get the most value. There’s a couple of problems with that–it necessitates the Pirates going through a reversal of form and linesmakers continuing to price Pittsburgh incorrectly.
There’s a business term that has come into vogue in the past few years that applies to handicapping–the term is ‘pivot’. In business, it refers to a company drastically changing their business model in response to changing market conditions. In handicapping, it can be used for the same purpose–a radical change in a handicapper’s perception of a team. It’s easy in sports betting since we can respond to what happens on the field–and it’s much easier doing this than to be a ‘fortune teller’ predicting what’s going to happen in the future. Baseball is an especially good sport for a quick ‘pivot’–this season, for example, I’ve gone through periods where I’ve looked to play on, against and now on (again) the Pittsburgh Pirates. You’re not ‘locked in’ to a particular opinion on an individual team and in my view it’s much more effective to react quickly to what happens on the field than it is to overreact to what we think *might* happen.
For that reason we’re going to keep betting Pittsburgh until they give us a reason to do otherwise. They’ve piled up +18.8 units of profits this season and are facing a Milwaukee team that has dropped -13.2 units YTD. Pittsburgh won 8 of 10 coming into the break and we’ll back them until they give us a reason to do otherwise.
Bet Pittsburgh Pirates (McDonald) +125 over Milwaukee Brewers (Greinke)
