Baseball Betting Picks: Seattle Mariners at Baltimore Orioles

Added on Aug 07, 2012 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

AL action on Tuesday between a couple of divisional also rans–the Seattle Mariners are well off the torrid pace set by the AL West leaders Texas, Oakland and the LA Angels but have been playing decent baseball in the past month or so. The Orioles are in second place in the AL East but are 5.5 games behind the New York Yankees. That sounds better than it really is–there’s only 4.5 games separating the second place Orioles from the last place Blue Jays with the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox also in the mix.

Seattle Mariners at Baltimore Orioles
August 7, 2012 4:05 PM Pacific

The Baltimore Orioles have been a very ‘up and down’ proposition throughout this season but despite this erratic tendency they’ve reached August just 5.5 games back of the mighty New York Yankees. They’ve been a very profitable betting team this season though all of their profits have come on the road. Baltimore is +17.9 units to the good but they’re -0.5 units at home this season. That’s not a huge surprise given they’ve only gone 26-26 at home–where they’re typically favored–and 32-25 on the road where they’re usually underdogs.

Seattle is a team that has been playing great baseball in the past five or six weeks after struggling through most of the season. For that reason their YTD numbers don’t accurately reflect the current state of this team. The Mariners have won 17 games since July 1st–the only teams in the AL that have won more are Oakland, Detroit and the Chicago White Sox. With the exception of Seattle ace Felix Hernandez–who is well known to casual fans and baseball betting enthusiasts alike–the Mariners are still very much an ‘under the radar’ team. Blake Beavan, like the team as a whole, started poorly this year but has been in stellar form of late with a 2.01 ERA in his last three starts–all Mariners’ wins. The Orioles will counter with Zach Britton who has an ERA of 8.34 in his four starts with Baltimore posting a 1-3 record in his assignments.

Basically, this is an opportunity to take an underdog price with a team that is being seriously underrated by the betting marketplace against a team that plays its best baseball on the road.

Bet Seattle Mariners (Beavan) +125 over Baltimore Orioles (Britton)