August 1st

1. Will the US mens 3m sycronized diving team medal?
At the 2011 World Championships, the team made up of Kristian Ipsen and Troy Dumais placed 4th behind Mexico, Russia and China.  The Chinese are near locks for the gold (-900).  The US would also have a tough time beating out the Russians for silver.  However, the US, Mexico, Ukraine, Germany, and Malaysia all have reasonable shots at bronze with reasonability decreasing as the list goes on.  I think there's too many teams that have a shot at bronze to take the US, especially considering the Mexicans took Bronze at the last World Championships.

2. Will Danell Leyva medal?
Not entirely sure why Leyva is a reasonable vegas favorite to win the prop.  At the 2011 World Championships he placed 24th, this was including a disasterous 6.466 on the horizontal bar (he likely fell), but even if he had notched the top score on that event he would still have placed 5th overall.  One of the most important rules of SFTC that I've learned, if theres a decent favorite and you can figure out why, you should probably take the favorite anyway.  That being said if you're interested in a little risk early in the month, the research strongly suggests no.

3. Benfica or draw vs Juventus
Benfica has done very well in club friendlies during the offseason.  Most highlighted by a 5-2 win over Real Madrid, the Benfica squad has 3 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss in club friendly play.  Their only loss came against a very good Paris side, and their draw was against another decent French side Lille.  Juventus has yet to play any strong side in a friendly, beating two easy opponents.  I think Befica's chances to at least draw here.

4. Will Magnussen win gold?
At the 2011 World Championships Magnussen won gold by .32 seconds, which is a pretty wide margin.  However, his main competitor, Yannick Agnel, did not race there.  Agnel's best time is 48.02, which is .39 sec slower than what Magnussen swam at the 2011 worlds.  Magnussen also swam a 47.10 at the Australian championships, so I'll gladly take Magnussen for the gold.

5. How many hits in the 1st?
Going AON.  Fenway is the 3rd best park for getting hits (Green Monster helps a ton) Additionally, the two teams are 3rd and 6th in the MLB at hits. Porcello allows 1.267 hits/inning, and Cook averages 1.025, for a combined total of 2.292 hits/inning, but at a hit heavy ballpark and two very good hitting teams, and the tops of the lineups, I'll take AON and hope for 3 or more.

6. Pedroia, Gonzalez, or Ellsbury scores in innings 3-6?
A lot of this prop depends on if it looks like these guys will get 1 or 2 ABs.  In 102 games, Gonzalez has 52 runs, Pedroia has 48 runs in 86 games, and Ellsbury has 14 runs in 24 games.  Thus (assuming each game has 9 innings, which is an approximation) that means Gonzalez has .0566 runs/inning, Pedroia has .0620 runs/inning, and Ellsbury has .0648 runs/inning, forming these stats to 4 innings and combining them gives .515 runs/4 innings.  Thus, if it looks like they will get 2 AB's in the 4 innings, yes is the pick, but if it looks like they won't, no is the pick.

7. Strikeout in the 8th?
Yes. End of story.