The NBA playoffs have bee full of great stories. The Celtics have gone back in time by a couple of years. The Suns finally got the Spurs’ monkey off their backs. The Lakers are looking like the Lakers. Performance the most impressive showing so far, though, is by the Orlando Magic. Not only have they swept both of their opponents, but they won their four second round games by a stunning combined total of 101 points. That shouldn’t be possible in the playoffs, and certainly not in the second round. The Magic are now riding a 14 game winning streak, and the only time they didn’t cover the spread over that stretch was in the first game of the playoffs, and they only missed by one point. Oddsmakers haven’t been shy with setting numbers, but Orlando just doesn’t care.
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Here are 3 previews for the Sunday day baseball games. Happy wagering!
New York Mets at Florida Marlins
New York Mets look to improve upon its 27-20 record at Florida over the last three years in the final game of the series. The Mets have won just four of their first 14 road games this season, including a 2-7 mark in their last nine. The team carries the lowest road batting average in the majors (.204), which is a big disparity from the Milwaukee Brewers (.288) who lead in the category. The offense will certainly be challenged against a hard-throwing starter on Sunday afternoon, which doesn’t fit well with their 263 strikeouts as a club (11th-most in the majors).
Here are 2 previews for the night games. Happy wagering!
Oakland Athletics at Los Angeles Angels
Oakland came into this divisional series with a 9-13 record since April 17, when they were a season-high five games over .500 (9-4). The key for the Athletics is scoring four runs or more in a game, as they possess a sparkling 17-1 record when doing so. On the flip side, Oakland is a miserable 1-16 when failing to do so. The pitching staff has managed a 5.43 ERA on the road compared to 2.78 at home. They have also yielded 26 home runs in 16 road games, while just allowing nine home runs in 20 games at home.
We are currently in the closest thing to an offseason that the NFL has these days. Players are working out and coaches are scheming, but for the rookies have been drafted, and most of the significant free agents have new homes. We have the best sense we’ve had yet of what teams are going to look like next year, so it only makes sense that this is a good time to look at the Super Bowl futures that are available to see what is interesting. There are three teams that stand out to me as being lousy bets, and three more that are at least a little interesting that their current prices (all odds are from Bodog):
We picked out 4 games to preview for todays daytime card. Hopefully this insight will give you an edge in any baseball bets you will make today. Be back later with a couple preivews for 2 night games.
Boston heads out on the road after finishing their last 10-game homestand with a 7-3 record. They enter a tough stretch in facing teams currently in first or second place in each game until May 27. “It will be a good test,” said Red Sox right fielder J.D. Drew. “I think we’re well cut out for it. We know what we’ve got to do.” This type of schedule is nothing new for the Sox, as they have played 13 games this season against teams with a .600 winning percentage or better this year, tied for 2nd-most in the Majors. Boston is 3-10 (.231) in those contests. Look for 1B Kevin Youkilis to lead the charge offensively, hitting .394 (13-for-33) since the start of May, adding two home runs and scoring 11 runs over that span.
The Rockies are a game below .500, and they haven’t exactly been the model of consistency this year, but there sure are reasons to be optimistic. The biggest reason for that is something that hasn’t been a strength for them for a long time – their pitching. They obviously have Ubaldo Jimenez – the second best pitcher in a ridiculous strong cast of National League pitchers so far this year. His ERA is a ridiculous 0.93, and he has been absolutely ferocious. He has lost just once, and that was in a seven inning, one run game in which his team totally let him down offensively. I expected him t be very good this year, and he has exceeded all expectations.
Wow. Just wow. There couldn’t possibly have been a better mother’s day gift for all the mothers who are baseball fans out there than Dallas Braden’s tour de force performance today. On the day that so many major leaguers were sporting nifty pinks bats and pink sweat bands, Braden dished up the second perfect game in Oakland history, and just the 19th in major league history. From a betting perspective a perfect game is meaningless unless you have a way to predict it in advance, but it’s still pretty much the most impressive thing you can see in baseball. Add in the storyline about Braden’s grandmother – his mother died when he was in school, so his grandmother raised him. He still lives with her, and today she was there to see it. Great stuff.
I don’t want to talk about the Lawrence Taylor issue much because it’s just not worth spending much time on. I just can’t resist commenting on one aspect of the case, though. It has come out today that Taylor claimed that he thought the girl was 19, not 16 – as if that was a defense he was offering. So let me get this straight, LT – your defense is that you admit that you paid to have sex with a seedy prostitute who was there against her will and was high at the time despite the fact that you are married, but that’s all okay because she wasn’t 16. Classy. So much for your claims that you didn’t do anything wrong.
I want to talk about the obvious story today – JaMarcus Russell – but before I do I just want to hit on the Red Wings’ game for a second. It’s in the first intermission as I write this, but the Wings, facing elimination, have jumped out to a 5-0 lead. More remarkable (or unexpected given the way the two teams have played up to this point) than that is the fact that the first four goals scored in the game – over a span of five minutes and 36 seconds – were all scored by Johan Franzen. Franzen is one of the best pure scorers in the league, but he has struggled with injuries this year and had been in a bit of a slump so far in the playoffs with only two goals in 10 games up to this point. This explosion, coming against a very good goalie in Evgeni Nabokov, is probably unprecedented in playoff action. It’s pretty much impossible to believe.
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