Before I went to work with the Oakland Raiders in 1973. Before I went to college in 1968. Before I started high school in 1964, I was interested in handicapping the National Football League. My father and I would sit at our dining room table and go over the point spreads published in the San Francisco Chronicle and tell each other why we liked one team or the other.
My interest in the game spiked in 1965 when Johnny Unitas was sidelined with an injury and yet his Baltimore Colts team upset Fran Tarkenton and the Minnesota Vikings on the road with backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo running the visitors offense. The day before that game, my dad and I agreed that the Colts would have trouble without Unitas and the Vikings would win.
They didn’t.
In 1965, Cuozzo threw seven touchdown passes in relief of an injured Unitas. Five of them were bunched on that November afternoon in Minnesota. My father, a coach, figured it was a superior game plan that led to the Baltimore victory. I saw a different angle. I thought that maybe the loss of Unitas had inspired his teammates to play harder to compensate for him missing the game. Maybe the Vikings were overconfident because they didn’t need to face the highly regarded Baltimore quarterback.
I thought those two factors were the driving force that led to the Colts 41-21 road victory.
That result sent me to the library to research how NFL teams did when their star quarterback was sidelined with an injury. Turns out they won more than half the time straight-up and were most often underdogs, adding another 16% to their point spread winning margin. That result sent me on a career path that emphasized motivation over pure talent while handicapping football.
In 1981, after working six years in professional sports with both the Raiders and Golden State Warriors, I opened Qoxhi Picks. The name derived from using the “Q” for quarterback, “O” for offense, “X” for defense and “HI” for my theory that catching a team on a motivational high is the key to success. While delivering successful NFL seasons including one year in which we had a perfect record on regular season Top Picks, the more I became familiar with the gambling world one assessment was always promoted by people that made livings on being on the right side of wagering propositions.
“Baseball is the sport to bet.”
Professional gamblers consider baseball the easiest sport to gain a consistent edge.
“It’s all about the pitchers in baseball,” One consistent winner told me. I also heard from my good friend, Terry Cox, who at the time was working in the sports book at Harrah’s in Reno, that he could beat me in football with the point spread. “I can give enough points to the underdog in an NFL game that is eventually going to shift the winner. But if someone comes in here and says he wants the Atlanta Braves with Greg Maddux on the mound and the line is minus 180, even if I shift the line to minus 220, it doesn’t matter if Maddux wins.”
While my passion is with the NFL and my experience is focused there, I still find myself wagering on baseball during football off-seasons. Taking the advice of men that know to focus on the pitchers.
Today, the game has shifted from years ago when Maddox, Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and other topflight pitchers could be expected to pitch a complete game. Today, middle relievers are almost always inserted before closers are brought in to complete a contest. Even the best pitchers, having a good day on the mound, seldom pitch beyond the sixth or seventh inning.
In response, a few years ago I began charting how starting pitchers did in the first half of games, the first five innings. The best ones against the weaker hitting teams did very well. Now, the books try to erase this pitching edge by placing a common over/under number on the first five innings of 1½ runs. Still, the best pitchers against certain opponents win enough “unders” to generate a profit even while laying favorite lines.
The NFL is still my business, but the baseball under lines in the first five innings with the right pitchers against certain teams generate profits. I’m not ready to sell this information as a separate entity, but I am offering to text these plays each day between now and the start of the football season to any client that purchases their football service now.
When you sign up for the football season, call our Qoxhi office at (925) 293-4123, and tell us where you want us to text your baseball plays.