Saturdays Plays

Hey AJ, new to this forum but my friend gave me some helpful info for interleague. Hope this will help.

 

The AL was 149-103 last season (59.1%), 137-115 (54.4%) in 2007, and 154-98 in 2006 (61.1%). Last year, only two AL clubs had a losing record against the senior circuit, and only three had losing records in 2007.

The star teams over the past three years have been DET at an aggregate 42-12, MIN at 41-13 and BOS at 39-15. Only BAL and CLE are below .500 over that period. The only NL team above .500 over three years is COL at 28-20.

I don't have good closing line +/- stats, but this play-AL trend has been perhaps the best moneymaker in baseball over the past three years as favorite and dog, home and away. In my personal experience, dogs and away have been the best subset, but I'm not sure if that translates to the full set.

Last year, lines started to get a bit of AL premium late in IL play as the AL crushed, but still not as much as the winning percentage would suggest. No such league-wide adjustment is apparent for this year's early games. Based on my line calculations, the NL is getting almost full credit, although the aggregate lines for Friday suggest about a 5-8 cent shading to the AL.

Here's the macro calculation: a 58.2% league win percentage over 756 games works out to the average game being AL -140 to be fairly priced. Even Friday night, only three AL teams are priced that high. The average AL line Friday (Pinny) is -111; -123 for home teams and +102 for away teams. So, if average home teams are typically lined around -113 (no-juice), and typical away teams are lined at +112, that's how I get to +5-8 cent shading, considering Pinny juice. Obviously, that does not control for pitchers, and there is an ace going in each league on Friday, Halladay and Santana.

I don't think there is any reason to think that AL superiority has declined year-to-year, in fact, the AL overall seems to be playing a much superior brand of baseball to my eye thus far this season, and competition in all divisions is stiff. Given the recent history of the AL dominating interleague play, it will take a lot to get me to play any NL teams until they demonstrate that this dominance isn't a fluke.

One thing to keep in mind before going overboard, is that even with the AL's huge dominance again last season, the May interleague games were evenly split.

AJ< Anything on the early ones?

Dont agree on that Ump trend in the Cin/Cle game, i think Reds get another victory tonight.