Braves' trip continues with stop in Arizona

Baseball Betting Lines

06/07/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Atlanta Braves cooled off a bit out West at the start of their 11-game road trip. A trip to Arizona to facing the struggling Diamondbacks should be enough to get them rolling again.

National League East-leading Atlanta kicks off a four-game series tonight at Chase Field against Arizona, which hopes it has turned the corner since its horrid 10-game losing streak.

The Braves kicked off their road trip with four games versus the Los Angeles Dodgers and took Thursday's opener to stretch their winning streak to nine games. However, they then lost two of the next three versus Los Angeles, including Sunday's 5-4, 11-inning defeat.

Atlanta's Martin Prado went 3-for-6 with a homer to extend his hitting streak to 11 games, while Brian McCann also went deep for the Braves. Prado is hitting .404 (21-for-52) with seven RBI and 12 runs scored over his run.

Tim Hudson gave up four runs -- three earned -- over seven-plus frames, while Jesse Chavez allowed the winning run in the 11th inning after the Braves, who are still 20-6 since May 10, left 11 men on base.

"We had the lead but couldn't keep it," said Braves manager Bobby Cox. "We had 100 opportunities to win the game, a lot more than they did, but we couldn't get the big hit."

Atlanta owns a two-game edge over second-place Philadelphia in the NL East standings and is likely to be without Chipper Jones for a fifth straight contest tonight due to a right finger injury.

The Braves might not need Jones, considering the way they have played against Arizona as of late. They have won five of their last seven overall meetings with Arizona and six of the last nine played between the teams at Chase Field.

The Diamondbacks notched an 11-1 win at Atlanta on May 15 in the middle set of a three-game set, but the Braves responded with a 13-1 rout the following day to take the series victory.

Dan Haren suffered the loss on that day for Arizona, allowing seven runs -- six earned -- over a season-low 4 1/3 innings. He fell to 3-2 with a 6.44 earned run average lifetime against the Braves and will seek some revenge tonight.

Haren is just 5-4 with a 4.83 ERA this year, but he might have turned a corner last time out. After going 1-3 over his previous four starts with a 7.92 ERA and 10 homers allowed, he pitched eight shutout innings on Tuesday versus the Dodgers, working around seven hits without a walk and seven strikeouts.

"Every pitch I threw was 100 percent effort. I felt good. I'm starting to feel like I did in the past," said Haren after tossing a career-high 126 pitches.

The 29-year-old righty did not factor into the decision versus Los Angeles, a game his club lost 1-0 in extra innings, and he faces a Braves starter tonight in Derek Lowe that has won three straight times.

Lowe, who turned 37 last Tuesday, is 4-1 with a 2.45 ERA over his last five starts since allowing seven runs in a loss to the Phillies on May 7. He got his revenge on Philadelphia Wednesday, limiting the club to a run on six hits over a season-high eight innings while striking out a season-best seven batters.

The right-hander improved to 8-4 with a 4.44 ERA on the season and is 6-8 with a 3.68 ERA in 18 career starts versus Arizona.

The Diamondbacks will try to snap Lowe's win streak one day after a tough 3-2 loss to Colorado and Ubaldo Jimenez in the finale of a three-game series. Arizona managed just Conor Jackson's two-run homer in the eighth inning, snapping a 21-inning scoreless drought versus Jimenez while ending the hurler's personal consecutive scoreless-innings run at 33.

Arizona nearly got to Jimenez in the first inning, loading the bases on an error, walk and single. However, Chris Young hit into an inning-ending double play.

"We made a run at the end, but we missed a few opportunities early, especially in the first," Diamondbacks manager A.J. Hinch said. "We were a foot away from not only scoring first, but also making Jimenez get to maybe 40 pitches in the first inning, which changes the entire complexion of the game."

Arizona, which had won the first two contests of the series to snap its losing streak at 10 straight, set a club record with its seventh one-run game in a row as it opened a 10-game homestand.

Shortstop Stephen Drew did not play for Arizona on Sunday after suffering a right finger injury the previous night and is day-to-day.

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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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