For a second, I had questioned why Juan Rivera hadn’t played for five days. On Friday, he reminded me why he was riding the pine…
The Rangers have really struggled this month, and are currently 8-11 in the month of August, giving the Angels every opportunity to take first place. And all we’ve had to do is beat teams like Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, and Toronto. If the Angels had won two games in every series (which, on paper, seems like it could have been pretty manageable), they would be 13-6 and only four games out of first. Instead, the Halos are having trouble stringing together wins and are 9-10 in August. We can sweep the Kansas City Royals, but get swept by the Baltimore Orioles. We can play a solid six innings, but blow the last three. There is no consistency, and that’s what kills all of the loyal fans. It’s hard enough to see them lose; it’s worse to see how good they can be and still blow it. The AL West is the only division in baseball that doesn’t have a first place team with at least 70 wins because the Rangers keep losing, yet we can’t catch them. They’re going to face a tough opponent tonight as they head back home to host the Tampa Bay Rays, who hold the second best record in baseball. Scott Kazmir will face his old team, and allowed 3 runs in five innings in a game earlier in May. He’ll match up against James Shield, who has pitched well against the Angels throughout his career, throwing 2 complete games and recording 41 strikeouts with a 3.18 ERA. These games will be tough, but if we can take the series, it could be a huge boost of confidence for the Angels.
AccuScore.com Forecast:
The Tampa Bay Rays are 37-24 on the road this season and are heavy favorites to beat the Los Angeles Angels who are 33-27 at home. The Rays have a better than 55% chance of winning based on 10,000 game simulations generated one play at a time by the AccuScore Simulation Supercomputer. Rays’ starter James Shields is forecasted to have a better game than Rays’ starter Scott Kazmir. James Shields has a 49% chance of having a Quality Start (QS) while Scott Kazmir has a 39% chance of a QS. If James Shields has a quality start the Rays has a 81% chance of winning. His simulated strikeout to walk ratio is 6.2 and he has a 49% chance of having a 5 to 1 K/BB ratio. When he has a 5/1 ratio the Rays win 68%. In Scott Kazmir quality starts the Angels win 66%. He has a 6% chance of having a 5 to 1 K/BB ratio and if he does his team wins 66% of simulations. In simulations we tracked the batter for each team that was most productive based his average hits, walks and RBI per simulation. The most productive batter for the Los Angeles Angels is Torii Hunter who averaged 2 hits+walks+RBI. He has a 34% chance of having a big game with 3+ Hits, Walks, RBI and if he has a big game the Angels have a 55% chance of winning. The most productive batter for the Tampa Bay Rays is Carl Crawford who averaged 2.81 hits+walks+RBI. He has a 50% chance of having a big game with 3+ Hits, Walks, RBI and if he has a big game the Rays have a 70% chance of winning.
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ACCUSCORE ADVISOR: AccuScore simulates every game thousands of times one play at a time. We are the industry standard in sports forecasting and the only company to be paid for sports picks and predictions by the biggest sports companies in the world. Our newest product, the AccuScore Advisor, provides Side Value, Money Line and Over-Under picks for every MLB game and rates them as One, Two, Three or Four Star picks. Three and Four Star picks have delivered over +10,000 units of profit the past 2 seasons. Visit AccuScore.com to find out what AccuScore’s Advisor recommends for this game. The following trends are AccuScore’s RIGHT-WRONG records and units (+/-) when making picks involving these teams.
SIDE VALUE (2010 SEASON) – Tampa Bay Rays Road Games: 30-31, 49% -1290 Los Angeles Angels Home Games: 30-30, 50% -10 SIDE VALUE (PAST 30 DAYS) – Tampa Bay Rays Road Games: 6-6, 50% -174 Los Angeles Angels Home Games: 4-8, 33% -484
MONEY LINE (2010 SEASON) – Tampa Bay Rays Road Games: 35-26, 57% +226 Los Angeles Angels Home Games: 31-29, 52% -466 MONEY LINE (PAST 30 DAYS) – Tampa Bay Rays Road Games: 7-5, 58% +77 Los Angeles Angels Home Games: 5-7, 42% -336
OVER-UNDER RECORD (2010 SEASON) – Tampa Bay Rays Road Games: 24-27, 47% -570 Los Angeles Angels Home Games: 22-24, 48% -440 OVER-UNDER RECORD (PAST 30 DAYS) – Tampa Bay Rays Road Games: 5-4, 56% + 60 Los Angeles Angels Home Games: 2-6, 25% -460
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