Cubs finish sweep of Pirates

Baseball Betting Lines

04/10/2008 - Pittsburgh, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Mike Fontenot and Geovany Soto both hit two- run home runs and Jon Lieber provided 4 1/3 innings of scoreless long relief, as the Chicago Cubs finished a sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 7-3 victory at PNC Park.

Lieber (2-1) scattered five hits with one strikeout while accomplishing something starting pitcher Rich Hill couldn't -- he threw strikes. Lieber threw 41 of his 58 pitches for strikes, while Hill only found the plate on 34 of his 72 pitches.

Derrek Lee drove in a pair of runs and Alfonso Soriano finished 2-for-5 with two runs scored. Chicago broke out the brooms in a crazy, marathon series that lasted 36 total frames. The Cubs won in 15 innings on Wednesday after a 12- frame victory on Monday night.

Matt Morris (0-1) was sailing along until the sixth frame. The veteran right- hander was tagged for seven runs -- four earned -- on 11 hits with two walks and three strikeouts.

Nate McLouth and Ronny Paulino each collected two hits for the Pirates, who have lost five of their last six.

Soriano manufactured a run all by himself in the top of the first. He singled, stole second and advanced a base on two straight groundouts, the last off the bat of Lee for an RBI.

The Pirates attacked Hill in the home half of the first. McLouth doubled, advanced to third on a wild pitch and quickly squared the contest on Freddy Sanchez's base hit. Jason Bay and Adam LaRoche both walked to load the bases, and Xavier Nady's sacrifice fly put Pittsburgh in front.

Paulino's single re-loaded the bases and Jose Bautista's sacrifice fly made the score 3-1.

Chicago chipped away in the fifth and exploded in the sixth. Soriano doubled, moved to third on Fontenot's single and came home on Lee's sacrifice fly in the fifth.

The Cubs put a crooked number on the board in the top of the sixth frame to take the lead. Kosuke Fukodome walked and Soto belted a two-run shot over the wall in the center. Ryan Theriot followed with a base hit and Lieber moved him over to second with a bunt. Theriot advanced to third on an error before Reed Johnson's run-scoring single.

Fontenot hit Chicago's second two-run home run of the inning with two outs for a 7-3 lead.

Game Notes

Morris dropped to 12-9 lifetime against the Cubs...The Cubs have won six in a row over Pittsburgh...Sanchez and Bautista committed errors for the Pirates...Attendance 9,798.

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

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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.

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