Smash Mouth Handicapping
When you see me on TV talking about sports, or when we discuss strategies in
my articles, you'll hear me use the phrase "smash mouth" handicapping.
You can tell from that phrase that I have a preference for physical teams in
football and basketball, and for strong offenses and strong pitchers in
baseball. But you know, that's only part of the equation. Taking full
advantage of a "smash mouth" approach often means finding teams who are
"ready" to be bullied, and going against them.
You don't have to find a powerhouse to back every time they play. You can
make money finding somebody like the Kansas City Royals and just go against
them every play. A team like that is so bad, that EVERYONE has a "smash
mouth" advantage over them.
Now, you're probably thinking that the edge is gone with a team like the
Royals. Sure, they lost a ton of games early. But now the lines are so
stratospheric against them that there's no value. KC just beat the Yankees
in New York the other night as a +3.70 underdog. Bettors playing the Yanks
dropped -4.00. It takes a lot of winners to make up for -4.00!
Maybe the edge is gone with the Royals. The jury is still out on whether or
not they're really ready to start winning. Today though, I want to talk
about a team that might be worse than the Royals right now and nobody's
doing anything about it!
That's right! There's a major league team right now that's been in a
prolonged slump which actually registers as worse than what the Royals have
been doing this season. That team is the Chicago Cubs.
Thanks to injuries, a lack of offense, and a depressed attitude that seems
to have gripped the entire franchise, the Cubs are in a horrendous slump
that's lasted the entire month of May. After Saturday afternoon's loss to
the Braves, the Cubs had posted a 5-22 record their last 27 games.
How bad is 5-22? Pro-rated out for a full season, that .185 winning
percentage equates to a 30-132 won-lost record. Kansas City's loss Saturday
afternoon to the Yankees dropped the Royals to 11-36 for the season. That
.234 percentage equates to a 38-124 record.
Sure, both are pathetic. But, when was the last time you saw a Cubs'
opponent laying -4.00? Nobody's even laying -3.00 or -2.00 against them even
though the team has been as bad or worse than the Royals for a month!
Here are the moneylines that backers of Cubs' opponents saw in recent days: -1.20, -1.20, even, even, +1.10, -1.70, -1.85, -1.60, +1.60, +1.10, +1.40,
-1.25, pick-em, -1.20.
The high numbers in the middle of the run are from the road series against
the White Sox. Think about that for a second; a team playing as badly as the
Royals, and the DEFENDING WORLD CHAMPIONS weren't even -2.00 against them.
The rest of the lines suggest that the oddsmakers think of the Cubs as a
.500 caliber team.
This is why it's our job to find teams like this who are ready to be
bullied. You can just keep piling up the profits day after day until the
line finally adjusts. Everyone should have seen that the Cubs were ready to
be bullied after Derrek Lee got hurt. They had few offensive weapons to
begin with. After that, they had limited options for getting runs on the
board. The players didn't have much faith in Dusty Baker anyway. You could
argue that the team basically went in the tank from that moment onward.
Bettors who anticipated this right off the bat have a 21-5 record to show
for it. What was it about the 1-8 road trip in Arizona, San Diego, and San
Francisco that anyone could have missed? Since then, the Cubs are 3-11. That
means people who waited until after the road trip are still 11-3 going
against the Cubs.
If you want to unleash the true power of smash mouth handicapping, find
teams like this and bully them for all they're worth!
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