Game Picks - Thursday: May 28, 2009

Another decent night of baseball picks in a bland vanilla sort of way. The few that were wrong were items of disbelief. Randy Johnson has been so consistently inconsistent all year, but broke his pattern last night and won his 299th victory. So, even though the pick was wrong, the results were cool. The Blue Jays are so cold right now that even Halladay couldn't save them. And one wake up call in Arroyo. The Fan has been picking against him all season and the guy has a record of 7-3. True, when he is off, he is way off as his 5.12 ERA suggests. But he is on more than he is off. So the Fan deserves to be wrong on that pick.

It has been enjoyable picking games on BallHype.com. There system is easy and they make it fun. There is one caveat though. The Fan always goes by who should win. Based on matchups and how a particular team is going, history shows the Fan is more often correct than incorrect. Since the Fan started picking games on that site, the record is 800-658. That's pretty successful. But in BallHype.com's system, that doesn't work. The Fan is 142 games over .500 and yet has accumulated 39 total points.

Say you pick a team that is expected to win (for example, the Phillies were expected to beat the Marlins). If that team wins, since they were expected to win, you may only get 0.6 points for being correct. But you lose a whole point for being wrong. Okay, if you go for underdog and the underdog wins, then you get a good score. For example, correctly picking the Nationals to win might net you 4 points. But if you pick the underdog and are wrong, you still lose a whole point.

The problem is, you can go 9-6 like the Fan was last night and end up with negative points because all the picks that were correct were games that should have been won by the teams that did win. So nine correct picks times 0.6 points is 5.4 points. Six wrong picks nets -6 points. Therefore the day's tally is -0.6! That doesn't seem fair. There is a guy who picks regularly over there who always has a record of less than .500 but is the point leader consistently. This week (BallHypes goes from Monday to Monday for some reason), the Fan is listed at 18-12 and has 0.9 points. This OrioFan8 is 8-9 and has 4.6 points. Is that fair? No system should ever reward failure more than success. Wait! The banks and car companies scored billions from their failures, so maybe there is a life lessen here?

Anyway, tonight has a light schedule, so here are the short list of picks:

• The Bay Rays over the Indians: The battle of two poorly pitching teams continues. The Bay Rays feature Niemann (Marcus) while the Indians pitch Huff (the magic dragon).
• The Twins over the Red Sox: Beckett is pitching for the Red Sox against the young gun, Swarzak. Beckett should win, but the Red Sox are singularly unimpressive right now.
• The Tigers over the Orioles: Galarraga has been iffy lately, so thus is this pick.
• The Cubs over the Dodgers: The Dodgers are due for their once a week loss.
• The Braves over the Diamondbacks: Two really good pitchers pitching: Lowe and Haran. Two teams that really aren't hitting. All things seem equal so go with the better team.

Yesterday: 9-6
Week: 30-30
Month: 187-165