[DougOzzzz]

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I'd take Johnson over Wells twice any day and 4 times on Sunday no matter when

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It's all about the price. At what price do you take Boston? Your kind of thinking is why Johnson is always overbet and why the Yankees are always overbet and why their oppononents are more often than not very good values.

Once I dig through the numbers and determine the answer to "how often does it happen?" I'll know if I have a play or not. I'm guessing the answer will be it doesn't happen nearly often enough to lay that much wood on the Yankees but might possibly happen often enough to take a chance on Boston.

I haven't even looked at lines on my books yet but if I can get Boston +1.5 runs at close to even money it's a for sure play for me.

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Oh believe me I understand that almost always betting against the Yankees when RJ is on the mound will be a good bet. I'm just saying - this line doesn't look like what you'd expect. I'd be very surprised if we ever see the Yankees with RJ at home go below -200 at any point this season. Maybe against Santana.

What I think is keeping this from being +200 for Boston is the fact that most people believe that when rivals meet, anything can happen. Therefore they pay less attention to the facts. I do not agree with this assumption - if rivals really played each other closer regardless of the matchup then we'd see evidence of clutch hitting.

As far as analysis, the Sox are projected to score about 950 runs this year, or 5.86 a game. Wells' ERA should be slightly under 5.00, call it 4.90. Johnson's should be around 3.20, and the Yanks will be lucky to hit 900 runs, or 5.5 a game. The Sox offense will get a nice boost from playing at Fenway, and should be right at the Yankees level on the road. Both offenses are well above average - so a 15% increase in ERA for both pitchers is likely, putting Wells at 5.64 and Johnson at 3.68. Including unearned runs, that's around .67 runs/inning for the Yanks and .44 runs/inning for the Sox. Both bullpens will be rested and strong - the Yanks should continue to hold the Sox to .44 R/inning while the Sox will improve to around the same mark. Assuming the starting pitchers go 6 innings and the bullpen 3, that's an average of 3.96 runs for the Red Sox and 5.32 runs for the Yankees.

These are just estimates - but they seem about right to me. For one the total runs comes right near the over/under set at 8.5 and second the deficit is near the +1.5 you gave the Red Sox.

Anyways, using a pythagorean projection (with an exponent of 1.83, based on the formula 1.5*(Log(RPG both teams)) + .45, the Red Sox should win about 36.83% of the time. At +180, that would be a gain of 3.13% for betting on the Red Sox.

So by this analysis, a bet on the Sox would be good - but it's close. In fact, there is one factor that I neglected that might tip the scale a bit. The Sox will be facing a left handed pitcher, which isn't good for their lineup. David Ortiz and especially Trot Nixon are lefties who have big platoon splits. They do have righthanders too, but I think the gain is a little less than the loss. I believe last year's data supports this, but I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to look it up.