Why Sharp Bettors Are Eyeing the Padres Despite the Oddsmakers’ Doubts

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Tracking how a team performs is significantly harder in baseball than it is in most other sports. The reason is because there are so many games, and outside of the first month or so, it can be a big challenge to tell if a team is better than another one just based on the overall record. Current form is important to pay attention to but it isn’t everything, and we are looking at that here between the Padres and the Blue Jays.

The Padres come into this game with a 27-19 record, which is great, but what if I told you that five games ago they were 26-15. While the record is still impressive and positive, this is a bad stretch for the team. Going back to my original point, if this happened in the first couple of weeks of the season, it would be much more noticeable than it is now. Just a tip for those starting to handicap, don’t fall in love with the overall makeup of a team, always check on their current productivity. It may sound obvious, but it is easy to look at this game and see a below .500 team favored significantly over a team that is eight games over, and think “Oh, the Padres will win.” In order to get a win and snap this skid, the Padres hope that Randy Vasquez can give them a good outing. Vasquez is 3-3 with a 3.45 ERA and a 1.49 WHIP. That WHIP is concerning, but even with traffic on the bases, he seems to be getting out of it. He has posted back-to-back quality starts, and hasn’t allowed more than two earned runs in seven of his nine starts. Actually, if you take out his poor start against the Tigers, he has 42.1 innings of work and just 11 earned runs allowed this season. Blue Jays hitters are batting .312 against him in 16 at-bats. 

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