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The Tampa Bay Rays enter tonight's game en fuego, having scored a whopping 42 runs during their current 5-game winning streak. By now everyone is familiar with the heartwarming story of how this resilient team picked themselves up after being humiliated in Seattle last Wednesday and then made their way to Anaheim to spend the weekend kicking the crap out of the crappy Angels. Everyone is also very familiar with the Rays' best pitcher, David Price, who enters tonight's home game with a glittering won loss record of 16-4. He currently leads the majors in wins. The man has pitched at least 7 innings in each of his last 11 starts, and allowed a scant 15 earned runs during that time. Pretty awesome, right? And it is, but everybody knows about it, and of course the oddsmakers do, too. So, for the privilege of betting on this red-hot team and its robot named Price, bettors so inclined must lay -260 and up on the Rays to win tonight's game, or, if they want to "avoid that juice", still must lay a bloated -1.5 -130 and up on the runline. Okay, so the price tag on the Rays is steep, but as we all know, you only pay juice if you lose.
Please raise your hand if you detected any sarcasm at all in that paragraph.
Oh, come on! I need to see more than hands that! Yikes! Oh, well. I'll keep going anyways.
Tonight's supposd punching bag for the Rays is the Kansas City Royals, who at 54-67 on the season, are right around where they seem to be every season, buried somewhere in the AL Central with no postseason hopes to help them get out of bed in the morning. Tonight's starting pitcher is a man very few bettors have any respect for, Luke Hochevar. A cursory look at his stats explains why. A 7-11 record and 5.24 ERA in 2012 is nothing for any Rays bettor to be scared of. But that's why I'm here. I'm here to shine a light on why the Royals with Hochevar are a FAR stronger bet tonight than probably anyone imagines.
Here's the bottom line - Luke Hochevar and the Royals are a legitimately dangerous opponent any time he starts after the Royals have lost his last two starts. So far, this situation has come up five times this season, and tonight will be the sixth. Following back-to-back losses in games started by Hochevar, here's what the Royals have done in 2012:
April 25th - beat the Indians in Cleveland 8-2 as a +130 dog (Hochevar 6.1 IP, 2 ER)
May 12th - beat the White Sox in Chicago 5-0 as a +150 dog (Hochevar 7 IP, 0 ER)
May 27th - beat the Orioles in Baltimore 4-2 as a +130 dog (Hochevar 4.2, 1 ER, pulled after 100 pitches)
June 14th - beat the Brewers at home 4-3 as a +105 dog (Hochevar 7.1 IP, 3 ER)
July 31st - beat the Orioles at home 8-3 as a -120 favorite (Hochevar 6 IP, 3 ER)
That's a nice 5-0 for a team that has won only 6 of Hochevar's 19 other starts! This little trend is nice, but it gets even better because this is nothing new for Hochevar and the Royals. Over the last three seasons, Hochevar has started 16 times after the Royals lost his last two starts. The Royals have gone 13-3 in those 16 games. Pretty impressive for a club that's 13 games under .500 this year, finished 20 games under last year, and 28 games under in 2010! In 11 of those 16 games, the Royals were underdogs (the average price was +142). They won 9 of them.
Now rumor has it that a lot of guys think they're stealin' tonight with Rays runline, but before they take that plunge, they might want to know that in those 16 games mentioned above, the Royals went an incredible 15-1 covering the +1.5 runs. Think about this. Over the last three seasons of baseball, people laying the runline against Kansas City when they're in danger of losing a third consecutive Hochevar start have been ROASTED nearly every time! Fifteen out of sixteen! And tonight, Kansas City is again in danger of losing a third consecutive Hochevar start.
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