Tonight's game 1 home plate ump will be Tim Welke. Welke is my number 1 rated "homer" umpire out of the 80 active umpires in MLB. His Home/Away record since 1995 is 195-135 (.591) with every year but 1 being well over .500. For the last 2 years, home teams have gone 47-20 with Welke behind the plate. Since 1997 he has returned $100/game bettors $3000 by wagering blindly on the home team. Welke is also an extremely good "under" umpire, going 110-143 (.435) over/under since 1997, without a single year of more overs than unders. In addition, he is one of the only umps that permanently changed his strikezone in 2001 at the request of MLB - his K/BB ratio before 2001 was 1.83; since 2001 his K/BB ratio has been 2.23 (MLB average 1.93). Taking this info by itself, a 2 team parlay on StL and the under would be a play that would make sense, especially since a StL win would mean only 17 half innings would be played. Please note, however, that I have not analyzed the game from any other angle so this is not necessarily my recommendation. I also believe the over/under line will go up from the current u10 +100, so if you wanna make this play, my recommendation is to wait for a better over/under line.
