[blogguy]

Sound adivce dinque...

I think I need to be real careful talking about these K props. Yesterday may have been a fluke...but it sure looked to these eyes that reality followed logic very well...and the odds were a bit out of synch with both logic and reality. I've heard a lot from people the past few months talking about "giving away an edge" by posting things in the forum. I normally don't think that's much of an issue. Certainly in the marquee sports where there's a ton of action...you can post things in a forum that probably won't have much of an impact on line movement. With something like this though, it is possible that posting a ton of information my hurt the readers here who are already involved with attacking the K props. If you're interested in playing these things...follow through the logic of what we considered yesterday, and see if that holds up in the coming days.

Sunday may not be a great day to ask for high strikeout totals. Visibility is better in day games than night games...and yesterday was really the first day I played around with this stuff to a serious degree. Most of that was in night games. I'm just going to sit back and watch today, and play around with other possibilities that may impact K-type selections.

A rundown of yesterday:

4 FAVORITES
*Santana of Minnesota over 6.5 -163...wins with 7
*Webb of Arizona over 5.5 -143...wins with 10 (in the only "harmonic convergence" game...we got 10 strikeouts and a winner in the first few innnings)
*Smoltz of Atlanta over 5.5 -125...wins with 6
*Santana of Anaheim...over 4.5 -143 wins with 6

So...that's 4-0 with 29 combined strikeouts from the four guys. The hurdles were cleared by 0.5, 4.5, 0.5, and 1.5...so it's not like they all were blowout wins of course. Though....I was getting boxscore updates every few innings...and Santana, Smoltz, and the other Santana all had a bunch of K's in the first few innings before slowing down later. Probably the nature of the stat.

Others that were mentioned:
*Zambrano of the Cubs at Over 5.5 -168 ended with 7
*Johnson of Florida at Over 5.5 +124 ended with 6 even though he only went 5 innings.
*Pettitte had a late reference but was passed because the moneyline was -185 or something. He ended up with 10 K's
*Arroyo of Cincinnati is the first loser...he was Over 5.5 +162...and the big dog just missed with 5 K's.
*Snell of Pittsburgh was Over 4.5 -143, and ended with 6
*Capuano of Milwaukee was the second loser. He was Over 4.5 -112 but only had one K. Ifyou watched the game, you know he just didn't have anything. Was throwing batting practice. An added benefit of studying this stat closely is that you can probably see when pitchers may be dealing with injuries...or when previously struggling guys are getting their form back (Pettitte). I think this is HUGE in terms of handicapping potential. You should probably try to handicap this prop for that reason alone. If you break even with these...the stuff you learn will help your percentage in your regular plays.

I wimped out on Schilling because the A's as a team had been good at avoiding strikeouts. He had 9. I left out Sabathia in the post for the same reason against the Twins...and he had 7. This suggests that the pitcher is the main dynamic at play here. A guy who gets K's is going to get them regardless of who he's facing if he has his stuff. (It's also a reminder of how many ace caliber pitchers went Saturday...an abnormal day in that regard)

Anyway...the four "favorites" went 4-0....and the next four mentioned went 2-2 with a half-K loser on a huge underdog. If you count Pettitte as one for consideration....that's 7-2 just using the basic fundamentals of logic. Yes...there were some big favorites in the mix...none were losers this time...but one of the -160 guys could have been a headache if things broke differently. You've GOT to have a good percentage if there are going to be prices of 140-160 (or higher) in the mix. It will be interesting to see if logic can keep this up.

Lessons:
*The sharps are playing this prop...and high juice means the sharps are on that play....and it's got a good chance of winning! lol

*Strikeouts seem to have an inherent consistency to them that's not always the case in other things in baseball. Decent K guys will get their K's even if they're giving up hits when the bats connect. Johnson of Florida and Snell of Pittsburgh had poor ERA's for the day....but they still got 6 K's apiece. Capuano is the only guy who just disappeared in the stat...and to the naked eye it looked like he just didn't have anything.

*In fact...this felt like a GREAT naked eye stat. I was watching that MLB's Extra Innings for awhile last night...and watching the Santana's pitch along with Webb...you didn't feel like you had made a bad play. Sometimes you watch a game and go "uh oh" because what you imagined isn't really playing out (football, hoops, bases, whatever). Here you could see that many of the hitter's needed to catch a break to make contact. Same was true when watching Schilling and Sabathia (not part of the post here...but part of a grander blogguy experiment that you can do when you've got the house to yourself lol)

Sometimes your Over 6.5 is going to land on 6...and sometimes Over 5.5 will land on 5...but you're going to be in position to get there with some guys at the plate who are overmatched (as dinque mentions, even moreso in the NL when the pitchers have to hit). It felt a lot like getting your money in the pot with the best cards, as they say in poker.

With so many studs pitching on the same day...it could be that this thing is dormant four days a week...then a million things jump out on that fifth day. I'll keep playing around with it. PM me if you want more details. I think the data indicators here are legit...and this is probably something we should try to protect as a courtesy to the sharps here that have been playing it all along.

blg