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KBO & CPBL Picks, Odds, Lines and Predictions for Tuesday June 2

VegasInsider Staff
VegasInsider Staff Sports Betting Expert
8 minute read
Tomorrow June 2nd, Asian “Breakfast Baseball” returns after both the CPBL (Taiwan) and KBO (South Korea) do not play any games on Mondays.

For this Tuesday, we have a slate of 5 KBO games and 1 CPBL game.

This past Saturday, I went 3-1 bringing my fearless predictions record to 9-3 since I began producing for VegasInsider.com.

I look to continue my momentum for tomorrow’s games with a CPBL underdog, a KBO run line, and two KBO team run total overs.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Betting Schedule

CPBL - Taiwan

  • Games: 1
  • Time: 6:35 a.m. ET
  • Watch: LIVENow, Twitter

Rakuten Monkeys (-148) at CTBC Brothers (+114)

KBO - South Korea

SK Wyverns (+175) at NC Dinos (-225)
Doosan Bears (-104) at KT Wiz (-122)
Samsung Lions (+110) at LG Twins (-141)
Lotte Giants (+135) at Kia Tigers (-175)
Kiwoom Heroes (-175) at Hanwha Eagles (+135)

Tuesday's Pick of the Day
CTBC Brothers Moneyline +114 (DraftKings)

Out of all four teams in the CPBL, the Rakuten Monkeys are clearly the best in the league as they are even money favorites to win the league this year for a reason. They are the only team with a 18-9 winning record, and they lead the league with an average of 8 runs per game. However, when you look at the Pythagorean CPBL records, the Monkeys do not appear to be as dominant as their 18-9 record suggests. Despite the Monkeys having a 66.7% winning percentage, their Pythagorean winning percentage is a modest 60.4%. Opposing the Monkeys are the CTBC Brothers who have a winning percentage that is below their Pythagorean winning percentage. While the Brothers have a 14-15 record for a winning percentage of 48.3%, their Pythagorean winning percentage is 54.8%. This means that their losing record is misleading, as the Brothers are playing winning Baseball.

While typically the Monkeys should be favored in every game that they play, my model gives the Brothers a 58.7% chance of winning suggesting that the Monkeys should be +142 moneyline underdogs. Even though the Monkeys have a significantly better lineup than the Brothers, the Brothers have the edge in pitching. The Monkeys surprisingly have the worst bullpen in the CPBL, while the Brothers quietly have the best bullpen.

More importantly than having the edge in relief pitching, the Brothers also have the edge in starting pitching. The Starting Pitcher for the Monkeys Wei-Chun Weng has a misleading 3-1 record, as he has a 6.85 ERA and a 6.89 FIP suggesting that his high ERA is not due to bad luck. In contrast to Weng, Brothers Starting Pitcher Jose De Paula has a 1-5 record with a 5.45 ERA. While on the surface De Paula does not appear to be much better than Wang, The Brothers expect more out of De Paula as CPBL teams are limited to 3 foreign players. Last year, De Paula played in the higher-level Mexican League where he posted better numbers and gave up only .6 home runs per 9 innings. Based on the pitching between the two teams, I expect the Brothers to win as I am betting on their moneyline at +114 odds.

KBO Favorite to Back
NC Dinos Run Line -1.5 -111 (FoxBet)

In my last article for my pick of the day, I supported the heavily favored NC Dinos at -230 moneyline odds and they won. While tomorrow’s game is against a different opponent with a different starting pitching matchup, The Dinos are still undervalued despite clearly being the best KBO team. The NC Dinos are first in the KBO with a 18-5 record and have every reason to keep winning. This is because in the KBO having a higher place in the KBO regular season standings means needing to play fewer post-season games in order to win the Korean Series. If a team is in 1st place in the KBO, they skip the line of other postseason KBO teams to the final round of the Korean Series. This is unlike Major league baseball where the Yankees and the Dodgers need to win virtually the same amount of postseason games as the other teams in order to win the World Series.

In contrast to the NC Dinos, their opponents the SK Wyverns have the second worst record in the league at 7-16. In addition to having the second worst record, SK is also second to last in runs per game at 4.17 runs per game compared to NC who leads the league with an average of 6.61 runs per game. With such a large gap in both team’s offenses, the only way that SK could win is if they have quality starting pitching to limit the NC Dinos. Unfortunately for SK, the pitching for both teams is virtually identical for tomorrow’s game. The starting pitcher for SK Seung-won Moon is 0-1 with a 6.10 ERA with a 3.84 FIP, while the starting pitcher for NC Jae-hak Lee is 2–0 with a 4.37 ERA and a 4.44 FIP. Even though Moon has an embarrassing ERA, his FIP is slightly better than Lee’s. However even though Moon has been unlucky this year, this is not the right game to bet on him.

Typically, I do not like to bet on run lines in comparison to moneylines as a team’s goal is to win the game, not to win the game by more than 1.5 runs. However, this is one of the rare games in which I will bet on a run line favorite rather than on the moneyline. So far for the 2020 KBO season, if you had bet the moneyline for every favorite you would have done slightly worse than breakeven with only a -.4% return on investment (ROI) meaning on average you would lose only $.40 per every $100 bet. However, if you bet the run-line for every KBO favorite this year, you surprisingly would have an 11.7% ROI returning you $11.70 for every $100 bet. If there is a game to bet on a -1.5 run line, it is this game as the juice on the NC Dinos -1.5 run line is only -111.

KBO Team Totals to Back
Hanwha Eagles Over 3.5 Runs -143 (FoxBet)
Lotte Giants Over 3.5 Runs -148 (DraftKings)

There is a cliché in the stock market that you should buy low and sell high. The idea is that you should buy a stock when it is priced too low and that you should sell a stock if it is priced to high. If you are betting on KBO Team Run Totals, the equivalent would be to bet over on the run totals for teams that have a run total that is set too low and to bet the under on run totals for teams that have a run total that I set too high. The key to placing these bets is to bet on them at the proper time as the lines for these side bets are volatile changing multiple times per day. For tomorrow’s game I like the Hanwha Eagles, and the Lotte Giants to both score more than 3.5 runs.

The Hanwha Eagles are last in the KBO with an average of 3.58 runs per game which is only slightly higher than their run total of 3.5 runs. However, in their matchup against the Kiwoom Heroes tomorrow, my model projects the Hanwha Eagles to score 4.58 runs. While a -143 juice is a steep price to pay on a team with possibly the worst offense in the KBO, an edge of over 1 run is too hard to pass up. Their offense has underperformed this year compared to last year, and if they perform as well as they are capable of performing it is hard to imagine them scoring fewer than 3.5 runs especially against Kiwoom’s Starting Pitcher Hyun-hee Han who currently has a 6.64 ERA.

For my other team total over for tomorrow, I like the Lotte Giants to score more than 3.5 runs against the Kia Tigers. The Lotte Giants currently average 4.75 runs per game and my model projects them to do slightly worse than usual with 4.41 runs. This factors in Kia’s starting pitcher Ki-young Im who has had a strong start to the season with a 3.86 ERA and a 2.65 FIP. While Im is a quality starting pitcher, in 3 of his 4 starts this year he has pitched only 5 or fewer innings. For Lotte to score fewer than 3.5 runs, Im has to pitch 6 innings of quality baseball and the Kia bullpen needs to perform well. With such a needle to thread, I see betting on Lotte to score over 3.5 runs to be a smart low risk bet.

Best Bets Tracker

Record: 9-3, +4.22 Units, +35.2% ROI



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