Rays hope Garza can stay hot against O's

Baseball Betting Lines

09/03/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Tampa Bay Rays need all the wins they can get if the team is going to capture home-field advantage throughout the upcoming American League playoffs. With Matt Garza on the mound against the Baltimore Orioles, the postseason contenders figure to have a good chance of coming out on top tonight.

Garza puts a sensational career record versus Baltimore on the line in this evening's clash between the divisional foes from Camden Yards. The standout righty is 8-1 with a 3.14 earned run average over 11 lifetime matchups with the Orioles, which includes a 5-0 mark over seven starts as the visitor in this series.

The 26-year-old wasn't at his best in his most recent appearance at Camden Yards, however. Garza was rocked for seven runs and 10 hits over 6 1/3 innings while obtaining a no-decision in an 11-10 Orioles' victory, with Baltimore slugging four home runs off the Tampa hurler.

Garza has been significantly better as of late, as he brings a three-start unbeaten streak into tonight's tilt. The former first-round draft choice yielded just one run over a combined 14 1/3 innings in back-to-back wins over Texas and Oakland on August 17 and 22, respectively, then held Boston to a run through seven frames in a no-decision this past Saturday.

He'll be attempting to notch his 14th win of the season and move the Rays closer to first place in the AL East in the opener of this three-game series. Tampa Bay presently sits 1 1/2 games behind the New York Yankees in the race for the league's best record, but does a 6 1/2-game advantage on the Red Sox for the lead in the AL Wild Card standings.

The Rays won for the fourth time in their last five games on Wednesday, with David Price tossing eight outstanding innings and Evan Longoria delivering a tie-breaking RBI single in the bottom of the eighth that lifted the club to a 2-1 verdict over Toronto.

With the score tied at 1-1, Ben Zobrist drew a one-out walk against Blue Jays reliever Shawn Camp and moved to second when Carl Crawford greeted Scott Downs with a base hit. Longoria then singled through the left side, with Zobrist beating the throw to the plate to put Tampa Bay in front.

The clutch hit enabled Price (16-6) to win his 16th game of the year after the All-Star lefty allowed just one run -- a John Buck homer in the fifth inning -- and four hits while striking out seven.

"Unbelievable," second baseman Sean Rodriguez told the Rays' official site about Price. "That's the Price we've come to know and love right there."

Rafael Soriano held Toronto scoreless in the ninth to register his major league-leading 40th save, though the Rays closer had to work out of a big jam to get to that number.

Soriano retired the first batter he faced before surrendering a triple to Vernon Wells that placed the potential tying run 90 feet away. He would bear down and get a key strikeout of Adam Lind, however, before Buck flied out to the warning track in left to end the threat.

The Rays have won nine of 12 meetings with the Orioles, owners of the AL's worst record, so far in 2010, and are 5-1 in games between the teams held at Camden Yards this year.

Baltimore had ripped off four consecutive wins before dropping the final two tests of a three-game home series with Boston earlier in the week, with the Red Sox taking Thursday's rubber match by a 6-4 count.

Boston jumped out to a big early lead by scoring five times against O's starter Brad Bergesen in the second inning, though three of those runs were unearned due to an error by Baltimore first baseman Ty Wigginton.

Bergesen (6-10) lasted 5 1/3 innings in all and was reached for eight hits while issuing five walks.

"I was getting ahead of guys and then I was not executing," he said following the game.

Baltimore did cut its deficit with a four-run sixth inning, capped by Matt Wieters' two-RBI single, and made things interesting in the ninth as well. Felix Pie and Wieters began the frame with consecutive hits off Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon and Corey Patterson bunted both runners over to put men on second and third with one out. However, Papelbon struck out the next two hitters to protect the two-run edge.

Wieters ended 3-for-4 for Baltimore and Nick Markakis collected two hits, including an RBI single.

Kevin Millwood will oppose Garza tonight and hopes to duplicate his most recent effort, when the veteran right-hander fired eight shutout innings to defeat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on Saturday.

That performance was one of the few bright spots for Millwood this season. The offseason addition has produced an unwanted 3-14 overall record and had lost six consecutive decisions prior to Saturday's breakthrough, which lowered his ERA to a still-unimpressive 5.34.

Millwood's only 2010 encounter with the Rays took place in his season debut back on April 6, with the 35-year-old giving up two runs in a five-inning no- decision in St. Petersburg. He's 2-2 with a 5.80 ERA over six lifetime starts against Tampa Bay.

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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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