MLB Betting Free Picks: Florida Marlins at Pittsburgh Pirates

Added on Aug 17, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

Baseball betting is winding down for the year, and when the rosters expand on September 1 we’ll focus almost exclusively on matchups involving teams that are still in the playoff hunt. For now, however, there’s still some value at the margins and today’s game fits that description to a ‘T’. Two teams going nowhere face off in Pittsburgh as the hometown Pirates host the Florida Marlins.

Florida Marlins (Ricky Nolasco) at Pittsburgh Pirates (Zach Duke)
August 17, 2010—4:05 PM Pacific

The key to successful baseball betting is playing ‘on’ teams in profitable situations and playing ‘against’ them in unprofitable ones. There are simply too many games over the course of the season to ‘pick winners’—you’ve got to drill down deeper into the myriad statistics available in baseball. Earlier in the season, some sports radio guy thought he was going to be clever and prove a point about how bad the Pittsburgh Pirates are by betting against them in every game this year. He hasn’t exactly gotten rich—he got on board after the Pirates rough start and since then has made 10 or so units of profit.

For blindly betting against a team that’s not too bad, but he would have done much better to play against the hometown Pirates in certain situations. We’ve got one of those situations tonight. Despite the fact that Pittsburgh has the worst record in Major League Baseball they’ve been profitable in several situations this year. Despite a 26-30 record at home, they’re up just under three units on the season. As a home dog in this price range (+125 to +150), they’re 10-10 +3.3 units. Against lefthanders, they’re 17-18 +9.15 units. Unfortunately for the Pirates, they’re facing a right hander tonight and that’s been a horrible investment for their backers—against right handed pitching the Pirates are 23-58 for a loss of -25.6 units. Compare that to their overall record of 40-77 -18.2 units and its evident that we want to be playing against the Bucs when they face a righty.

The Marlins, meanwhile, are 57-61 overall this year for a -4 unit loss. On the road, they’re 28-30 for a small profit of 1.9 units. Where the M’s have made the most money are against teams with losing records (19-13 +6.4 units) and particularly against lefthanders (21-12 +9 units). In night games on the road against southpaws, Florida is 8-1 +8.6 units. Over the past few weeks the Marlins have taken care of business against bad teams and struggled against good teams. Florida is 4-9 in their last 13 games, with 8 of those 9 losses coming against teams battling for the playoffs (Philadelphia, Cincinnati and St. Louis). Pirates won last night’s series opener, only their 2^nd win in the last 10 games. Going back even further, they’ve lost 15 of their last 21 games.

We’ve even got a good pitching matchup—Florida has won 11 of Ricky Nolasco’s 14 road starts this year while Pittsburgh has lost 7 of Zach Duke’s 11 home starts. We’ve getting a strong road pitcher in a profitable situation for Florida and a losing situation for Pittsburgh. We’ll lay the price and back the Marlins—as always, make sure to list your pitchers so the bet will be canceled in the event of a change.

Bet Florida (Nolasco) -140 over Pittsburgh (Duke)