Sports Handicapper ASA's Picks & Predictions

#927 ASA TOP PLAY ON Los Angeles Dodgers Run Line -1.5 (-130) over Houston Astros, Tuesday at 8:10 PM ET - The Dodgers won yesterday's game 8-3 and this should be another road rout.  We will get involved today utilizing the run line as LA is a massive (-230) favorite on the money line here.  No hesitation for us in laying the 1.5 runs (-130 price) on the run line as all 10 of the Dodgers road wins this season have been by a multi-run margin.  The Astros bullpen has a 6.22 ERA and a 4-11 record and that lofty ERA ranks Houston dead last in the majors.  The Dodgers rank 11th in the majors with a much more respectable 3.72 ERA for their bullpen this season.  In terms of starting pitching Tuesday, LA rates a huge edge with Ohtani over Lambert.  The Dodgers Ohtani has a 0.60 ERA in his 5 starts this season as he has been fantastic again this year and gone 6 innings in all 5 starts.  The Astros Lambert, on the other hand, is 9-21 with a 6.12 ERA in his career.  He has decent numbers overall in limited action (3 starts) this season but he is off an outing in which he could not make it out of the 5th inning and had as many walks as strikeouts.  Also, Lambert got hit hard in his lone home start this season.  Couple that with a weak Astros bullpen behind him and this one should get ugly.  Houston is on a long-term 8-19 run and the Dodgers are now off B2B wins and have one of the best records in the majors this season.  The Astros are a solid hitting team but LA is an even better hitting team on the season and when you couple that with the large pitching edges here, including the bullpen, there are key factors here in favor of the Dodgers.  We are going with the run line option here as we can get involved for a moderate, yet very fair, price if we lay the 1.5 runs with the Dodgers in this one. 17 of the 22 Los Angeles wins this season have been by 2+ runs.  Also, 20 of the Astros 22 losses this season have been by 2+ runs. Another blowout on the road, similar to yesterday's 8-3 thrashing, is likely here and we are laying 1.5 runs with the run line in this one!

ASA NBA play on UNDER 214.5 LA Lakers at Oklahoma City Thunder, 8:40 pm ET - Two takeaways from the Lakers/Rockets round one series….the Lakers defense is not that good, the Rockets offense was just bad, also the Lakers aren’t going to shoot like they did early on against this Thunder defense. The Lakers path for success in this series is to limit possessions as they did in RD1 with 92.40 possessions per game, lowest of the playoff teams. On the pace note, the Thunder saw a regression in their pace of play compared to their regular season numbers as they went from 100.37 possessions per game to just 96.75 possessions per game in the first round against Portland. Even after a hot shooting start to the series the Lakers offense is 12th in Net rating in the playoffs at 107.4 with an eFG% of 53.8%. The Lakers shot 53%, 46% and 41% from deep in the first two games of the series then dipped to 23% and 26% in Games 4-5. In game 6 they corrected to 43% from beyond the arc but also shot just 40% overall. It’s going to be tough to score against this Thunder D that was best in the league in FG% D allowing 43.8% on the season and was the #1 defensive efficiency team in the league allowing 1.078-points per possession. Granted, the Thunder are going to score in this game with their 1.288-points per possession playoff offense but with limited possessions and the Lakers potentially not scoring more than 95-points we have to bet UNDER in this one. In three of the four regular season meetings the Thunder held the Lakers to 87, 96 and 92-points.