Cubs hope to stay hot versus Astros

Baseball Betting Lines

07/19/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The confidence level in the Windy City has to be high after how easily the Chicago Cubs handled the two-time defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies this weekend at Wrigley Field.

Chicago's chances of keeping the spirits high just got a bit easier with the lowly Houston Astros in town Monday for the opener of a three-game series between NL Central inhabitants. The Cubs took three of four contests from the Phillies and are coming off Sunday's 11-6 beating behind big contributions from Alfonso Soriano and Geovany Soto.

Soriano and Soto both finished 2-for-4 with a two-run homer and three RBI off Phils ace Roy Halladay, while Derrek Lee drove in three runs for Chicago, which has won seven of its last 11 games and is 3-1 on a 10-game homestand. Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro both had three hits in a winning cause.

"We swung the bats really well today off a good pitcher," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said on the team's site. "You put six runs on the board against Roy Halladay, and you have to feel good about your offense."

Tom Gorzelanny took the hill for the Cubs last night and evened his mark at 5-5 after holding the Phillies to three runs -- two earned -- on five hits and five walks over 6 2/3 innings.

The Cubs will attempt for more success tonight with Carlos Silva on the hill, but he's only 1-3 with a 4.50 ERA over his last six starts since opening the 2010 campaign 8-0 over his first 11 trips to the mound. Silva lasted just 1 1/3 innings his last time out on July 11 against the Los Angeles Dodgers and gave up six runs on six hits in a 7-0 loss.

Silva fell to 9-3 overall and raised his earned run average to 3.45. The righty will take on the Astros again this season and beat them on April 16 by allowing just two unearned runs over seven innings of a 7-2 victory. Silva is 2-0 with a 3.12 ERA in seven career games (2 starts) against Houston.

The Astros lost the last two portions of a three-game series at Pittsburgh and have dropped four of six games overall. In Sunday's 9-0 drubbing at PNC Park, Pirates starter Paul Maholm threw a three-hit shutout to stymie Houston's lineup.

Angel Sanchez had a team-high two hits and Chris Johnson recorded the other base hit for Houston, which lost starter Roy Oswalt to a left ankle issue after the right-hander was struck by a line drive. He lasted four innings and gave up two runs and seven hits with five strikeouts.

"I couldn't really finish pitches," Oswalt said on Houston's website. "Couldn't really get through pitches, and left two balls kind of spinning in the plate, and got a few hits."

Oswalt, who is probable for his next start, remains one win shy of Joe Niekro's franchise record 144 victories. The bullpen did no better in relief on Sunday, as Chris Sampson and Wilton Lopez both allowed two runs and Casey Daigle was reached for three more.

Wandy Rodriguez hopes to get a bit more support when he makes his 19th start of the season tonight. Rodriguez had a personal three-game winning streak stopped on July 11 in a 4-2 loss versus St. Louis, as he surrendered three runs on four hits in six innings of work.

Rodriguez, who is 2-6 in nine road starts this season, fell to 6-11 this season to go along with a 4.97 earned run average. He faced the Cubs in a 3-2 win on April 18, but did not figure into the decision after giving up two runs and six hits in seven innings. The lefty is 4-4 with a 3.74 ERA in 14 career starts against Chicago.

Houston has won four of six matchups with Chicago this season, one year after the Cubs took 11 of 17 matchups between the two clubs.

Wwwpassthison Baseball Betting News

<< Oosthuizen soars to 15th in world rankings
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Louis Oosthuizen parlayed his first major championship victory into a huge jump in the world rankings. Oosthuizen cruised to a seven-stroke win at the British Open this past weekend and jumped 39 places f

<< Nats try to get bats going against Reds' Cueto
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Struggles on offense cost the Washington Nationals the chance to open the second half with a three-game sweep. Chances at the plate could be hard to come by again tonight against the Cincinnati Reds' Johnny Cueto.

<< Indians hope to continue to play spoiler in Minnesota
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Cleveland Indians may have little hope of finishing in first place in the American League Central, but they've done a fine job of hurting the postseason chances of some of the division's top teams as of late. Riding

<< Red Sox limp into Oakland
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - While the Boston Red Sox continue to lose ground in the American League playoff chase, the Oakland Athletics are doing their best to stay in the hunt. The resurgent Athletics try to extend their season-best winning streak

<< AL Central-leading White Sox continue trip in Seattle
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Chicago White Sox ended the season's first half as the hottest team in baseball, but things haven't gotten so smoothly since the club returned from the All-Star break. The American League Central leaders will try to

Phillies aiming to get on track against first-place Cardinals >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Philadelphia Phillies have handled the St. Louis Cardinals pretty conveniently the past few years. That may change when the struggling Phils pay a visit to Busch Stadium Monday for the first of four consecutive matchups w

Jimenez goes for win No. 16 in south Florida >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Both the Rockies and Marlins have struggled on offense in the second half. Given Tuesday's pitching matchup, neither team is likely to break out at the plate on Monday night. National League All-Star starter Ubaldo Ji

Dodgers head home to face Giants >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - After getting swept in four games at St. Louis over the weekend, the Los Angeles Dodgers are back at home and will try to regroup in tonight's opener of a three-game set versus the NL West-rival San Francisco Giants at Chavez

Mets' Pelfrey seeks turnaround against Diamondbacks >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - After winning 10 of his first 15 starts of the season, New York Mets right-hander Mike Pelfrey has fallen on hard times. Pelfrey will try to bounce back when he takes the mound Monday in the opener of a three-game series agai

Pirates, Brewers renew rivalry in Steel City >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Pittsburgh Pirates are coming off perhaps their most complete victory of the season. They'll need that momentum given their struggles versus the Milwaukee Brewers this season. The Pirates will try to snap a

FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.

MySportsbook.com is an online sportsbook that aims to keep betting fun. The company sees itself as a premier provider of a top-shelf gambling entertainment experience. MySportsbook knows that this can not be accomplished if gamblers are struggling through the betting process, so the emphasis is put on simplicity and ease of use.

Established in 1997, MySportsbook was the first sportsbook to offer the Instant eCheck method, and has since continued on to be one of the most innovate and fastest growing internet sportsbooks the industry has seen. A player doesn’t have to look very far before coming across one of the many sportsbooks that have cloned MySportsbook’s written policies, web pages and advertising campaign, hoping to bottle some of MySportsbook’s magic.

Although MySportsbook’s growth is largely attributed to their talented in-house marketing team, every successful bookmaker will agree that bringing the players in is only half of the battle. In a time when most internet sportsbook were nickel-and-diming players, MySportsbook was creating ways to make bonuses automatic and absent of fine print, while offering all payouts free of charge. This sportsbook also accepts Visa & Mastercard sportsbook.

Almost everything on the online sportsbook site is set in the model of simplicity, making the CS clerk’s job easy as well. Each account action made online results in an automated email sent to the client. When calling MySportsbook, the player feels as if his call is in the united states as no accents can be heard through a state of the art telecommunications system. Few online sportsbooks can compete with My Sportsbook when it comes to offering a fun and hassle-free experience to the small to moderate sized gambler.

To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your bet on football needs.