Cards hope to revive postseason hopes in opener with Reds

Baseball Betting Lines

09/03/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The last time the Cardinals faced the Reds, they completed a three-game sweep that gave them sole possession of first place in the National League Central.

The teams have drastically gone in opposite directions since.

First-place Cincinnati will try to extend its eight-game lead over second- place St. Louis this evening in the opener of a three-game series at Busch Stadium that by the end could put the division crown out of reach for the hosts.

The Cardinals have won four straight and 10 of 15 versus the Reds this year and they posted a three-game sweep in the last meeting from Aug. 8-11 -- a series that featured a benches-clearing brawl thanks to some unkind words towards St. Louis by Cincinnati's Brandon Phillips -- to take a one-game edge for the top spot in the division.

"They silenced our bats a little bit and we didn't pitch that great," Reds starter Bronson Arroyo said after the sweep. "It's not even close to being over. We have plenty of games left."

The Reds have made the most of their games since the series, winning 14 of 18, while the Cardinals have gone 5-13 and have matched a season high with five straight losses to give the Reds their largest division lead of the season.

Arroyo lost the finale of that sweep but gets the first chance at extending his team's current division lead. The right-hander yielded four runs over five innings back on Aug. 11 to fall to 1-2 with a 4.78 earned run average in four starts this year versus the Cardinals. That includes an outing at Busch Stadium on May 31 when he was drilled for seven runs over 4 1/3 frames.

Arroyo has a 2.61 ERA over his last seven starts though and is 14-8 with a 3.82 ERA on the season. The 33-year-old is coming off just his second loss in six starts (4-2) as he gave up three runs on five hits over seven innings against the Cubs on Saturday.

While Arroyo has had his troubles with the Cardinals this year, St. Louis rookie Jaime Garcia has won all three of his starts in 2010 against the Reds with a 4.08 ERA. His latest win in the series came on Aug. 10 despite giving up four runs on two hits and five walks over 5 1/3 innings.

Garcia, though, hasn't allowed an earned run in 20 1/3 consecutive innings, fanning 19 in that span. His run began in a loss to the Brewers on Aug. 17 in which he was touched for three unearned runs over six innings.

The 24-year-old southpaw responded with his first career shutout, a three- hitter versus the Giants on Aug. 22 and then won his second straight start last Friday after posting 5 1/3 scoreless innings in Washington while working around eight hits and four walks with seven strikeouts.

Garcia is 12-6 with a 2.33 ERA this year and sports a 1.55 ERA in 12 starts at home. He'll be looking tonight to halt a four-game winning streak by the Reds, a burst that includes a three-game sweep of the Brewers.

Cincinnati wrapped the series with Wednesday's 6-1 victory, scoring all of its runs in the seventh inning. Ryan Hanigan blasted a three-run homer in the frame, while Scott Rolen capped the burst with a two-run single.

The victory also featured the first win of Aroldis Chapman's major league career. The 22-year-old Cuban lefty has yet to allow a hit over his two appearances, striking out three over two inning while unleashing a fastball that has gone over 100 mph.

Fans would be in for a treat if Chapman faces the Cardinals' Albert Pujols, who is hitting .358 (19-for-53) in 15 games this year against the Reds with three homers and 14 RBI. However, Pujols went hitless in 10 at-bats in St. Louis' three-game sweep at the hands of Houston.

The Cardinals were bested, 5-2, in Wednesday's finale. Matt Holliday drilled a two-run homer as St. Louis wrapped a 10-game road trip 2-8.

"We have to play better, obviously, but you just have to focus on the next game," Holliday said. "Sometimes if you get out and look at the big picture instead of focusing on the job at hand, you lose focus."

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

NFL Betting Lines

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