Brignac homers as Rays beat Tribe

Baseball Betting Lines

07/25/2010 - Cleveland, OH (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Reid Brignac hit a three-run homer, as the Tampa Bay Rays earned a 4-2 decision over the Cleveland Indians in the rubber match of a three-game series at Progressive Field.

Carl Crawford also knocked in a run, while Willy Aybar and John Jaso each chipped in with a pair of hits and a run scored for Tampa Bay, which snapped its 18-game slide at Progressive Field on Saturday and has won four of six overall.

Wade Davis (8-9) picked up the win after tossing 6 1/3 effective innings. The right-hander, who allowed seven hits and two runs with one walk and four strikeouts, has won three straight decisions. Rafael Soriano locked the game down with a scoreless ninth to register his 26th save of the season.

"The first two innings was an uphill battle," Davis said. "Couldn't really find anything to go to throughout the whole game, but we played some great defense today and won the game."

Carlos Santana and Andy Marte each knocked in a run apiece for the Indians, who have dropped three of their last four after a six-game winning streak.

Justin Masterson (3-9) was tagged with the loss for yielding four runs -- three earned -- on five hits with a pair of walks and struck out five over 6 2/3 innings.

Santana's sacrifice fly in the first gave the Indians the early lead, but Tampa Bay answered with three in the second. Aybar worked a two-out walk and went to third on Jaso's single. Brignac then hit a three-run homer that just cleared the wall in right to put the Rays up 3-1.

"I look at it as a slider that forgot to slide," Masterson said about the pitch to Brignac. "It turned out to be a terrible cutter like 85 m.p.h."

Cleveland got a run back in the home half on Marte's fielder's choice RBI groundout. The Rays then restored their two-run lead in the fifth. Jason Bartlett started things by reaching on an error, stole second, advanced to third on a ground ball and crossed the plate on Crawford's sac fly.

Marte led off the seventh with a base hit, and after Michael Brantley bounced into a force out, Davis was replaced by Joaquin Benoit, who surrendered a base hit to Asdrubal Cabrera before retiring the next two hitters and keep the score 4-2.

Grant Balfour worked out of trouble in the eighth, getting pinch-hitter Shelley Duncan to fly out to leave runners at second and third. Soriano issued a two-out double to Shin-Soo Choo in the bottom of the ninth before getting Santana to fly out to center that ended the game.

Game Notes

Despite the loss, the Indians are still 7-3 since the All-Star break...Masterson is now winless in his last four starts...Cleveland went 1- for-10 with runners in scoring position ands stranded 11, while Tampa Bay finished 1-for-6 with RISP and left three.

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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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