American League Championship Series Betting
The American League Championship series begins on Friday night with the Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals battling for the right to advance to the World Series. They’ll meet the winner of the National League Championship series between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals. The NL Series will begin on Saturday night in St. Louis.
Starting pitchers James Shields (Kansas City) and Chris Tillman (Baltimore) haven’t put up the best numbers recently but the bottom line is that when they take the mound their teams usually win. The Royals have won 15 of Shields’ 19 road starts while the Orioles have won 14 of Tillman’s 19 home starts. The head to head series was very competitive this season and has been so for the past several seasons. Kansas City holds a 12-11 advantage against the Royals since 2012 including a 4-3 edge this year. The Royals have won 7 of the last 13 games at Camden Yards including 2 of 3 this season.
Kansas City has been very profitable on the road this season (+17 units) but Baltimore has been almost equally profitable at home (+16.4 units). The most glaring statistical edge for one team or the other is Baltimore’s absolute domination of right handed pitching. While Kansas City is in the black against RHP (+5.2 units) that’s nothing compared to Baltimore’s 76-47 +33.4 unit advantage against right handers this year.
In theory, we like to take the underdog in most playoff baseball games but this will be an exception. At this price we’d rather have the home team with their impressive success against right handed pitching. Baltimore hasn’t got the respect they deserve all year and that hasn’t changed since the playoffs have started. They were underdogs throughout the ALDS and were an underdog for the series despite having a better record and home field advantage. They are a -135 favorite for this series though the price for Game 1 isn’t quite that lopsided. Baltimore is our choice to win the World Series and they should take care of business to get this series underway. The ‘Under’ is also worth a look in this game–16 of the last 22 head to head including 9 of the last 13 in ‘Charm City’ have gone ‘Under’ the total.
BET BALTIMORE ORIOLES -115 OVER KANSAS CITY ROYALS
BET BALTIMORE/KANSAS CITY UNDER 7 -115
