Cardinals send Pineiro to hill in Cincinnati
Baseball Betting Lines
07/03/2009 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Joel Pineiro hopes for some run support tonight when the St. Louis Cardinals begin a three-game set with the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park.
Pineiro lost for the ninth time in his last 11 starts on Sunday against the Minnesota Twins, as he allowed five runs (three earned) and eight hits in 6 2/3 innings, dropping him to 6-9 on the year to go along with a 3.44 earned run average.
Over the past two months, though, St. Louis has provided Pineiro with an abysmal 2.34 runs-per-start. His nine losses lead the majors.
Pineiro lost to the Reds earlier in the year and is 3-1 with a 2.97 ERA in five starts against them.
St. Louis, meanwhile, enters tonight's tilt on a high note after winning the final two games of its four-game set with the San Francisco Giants. The Cardinals managed to even the series on Thursday, as Todd Wellemeyer threw 7 1/3 innings to help St. Louis to a 5-2 win.
Wellemeyer (7-7) scattered seven hits and two runs with a walk and six strikeouts for the Cardinals, who had lost six of seven before the two wins.
"Just one consistent delivery to where the ball looked the same," Wellemeyer said of his key to success. "Every pitch looks the same out of your hand, every delivery looks the same. That's how you get them off-balance."
Cincinnati also comes in on a two-game winning streak after Joey Votto's single to left in the bottom of the 10th on Thursday scored Chris Dickerson and gave the Reds a 3-2 win over Arizona.
Votto totaled four hits in all while Dickerson was 2-for-4 with an RBI single of his own as Cincinnati won for the fifth time in seven games.
"Obviously we want to take some sort of momentum going into this Cardinals series this weekend," said Votto. "I think losing today, especially to have not scored a lot of runs and to have disappointed Aaron (Harang) today, would not have been a good thing going into this weekend."
Aaron Harang pitched well, yielding just four hits and two runs over seven full frames. The right-hander, who remains without a win over his last seven starts, walked three and struck out eight. Francisco Cordero (1-2) received the win for pitching a scoreless top half of the 10th.
Cincinnati, tonight, turns to 23-year-old righty Homer Bailey, who will be making his third start of the season, but is coming off his first win of the year. Bailey defeated the Cleveland Indians on Saturday, surrendering three runs and three hits in five innings to lower his ERA to a still-lofty 8.68.
Bailey, though, has been awful in his two starts against the Cardinals, losing both contests, while giving up 12 runs in just 7 1/3 innings of those contests.
Cincinnati has won four of its seven meetings with the Cards this season.
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Seattle Mariners enter the final leg of a challenging road trip with tonight's opener of a three-game series with the American League East-leading Boston Red Sox from Fenway Park. The surprising Mariners have acquitte
<< Road-weary Phils return home to host Mets
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Philadelphia Phillies limp back home tied atop the NL
East after a dreadful road trip. Tonight, they try to improve upon their
horrific play in front of their own fans when they open a three-game series
against
<< Serena and Venus reach fourth Wimbledon doubles final
Wimbledon, England (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The incomparable Williams sisters,
Serena and Venus, will appear in their fourth Wimbledon doubles final on
Saturday.
The fourth-seeded sisters drilled a top-seeded tandem of Zimbabwe's Cara
<< Cubs' Zambrano takes mound against Milwaukee
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Carlos Zambrano takes aim at his first win in five starts
this afternoon when the Chicago Cubs continue their four-game series with the
Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field.
Zambrano was roughed up by the Chicago White S
<< Braves try to stay hot in opener vs. Nats
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Atlanta Braves try to push their season-high winning
streak to five games this evening when they open a three-game series with the
lowly Washington Nationals at Nationals Park.
Although it still sits in fourth pl
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Tampa Bay Rays take their hot streak into the Lone Star State, where the defending American League champions will start up an intriguing three-game series with the Texas Rangers this evening. With wins in 15 of their
Santana returns to face Orioles >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have been able to
rebound from a rough beginning to the season. The team is hoping one of its
most talented pitchers will be able to do the same in tonight's matchup with
the Baltimore Orio
Greinke hopes to slow down White Sox >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - There haven't been many pitchers who have slowed down the
Chicago White Sox as of late, but Zack Greinke has shown in the past to be
quite capable of such a task.
The Kansas City Royals ace will take the mound in tonight
Twins try to gain ground in Central in opener with Tigers >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Minnesota Twins have an opportunity to gain some
ground on the division-leading Detroit Tigers when the American League Central
rivals begin a key three-game series tonight at the Metrodome.
The Twins presently trail
Reeling Indians try to get back on track vs. A's >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Cleveland Indians have been playing poorly since mid-
June and will try to stop a five-game losing streak tonight in the opener of a
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The Indians have
SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.
Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"
A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."
Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.
In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.
"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."
Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.
But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"
Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.
This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.
Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.
In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.
No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.
And that's all any bettor can ask for.
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