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Let’s recap tonight’s titanic struggle….
FINAL
Cincinnati 0
Houston 4
WP: Rodriguez (8-11)
LP: Leake (7-2)
BOX SCORE
POSITIVES
–Joey Votto had two of the Reds three hits, one of which was a double.
NEGATIVES
–The bullpen let down Mike Leake, as usual. Leake was cruising until the seventh, but in a flash, a winnable game got out of hand. The damage could’ve been contained, but Arthur Rhodes couldn’t stem the bleeding. Hard to get too mad at either Leake or Rhodes, considering how good they’ve been this year.
NOT-SO-RANDOM THOUGHTS
–The Reds have now been shut out six times on Sunday. Today’s lineup wasn’t awful, but you’d think Dusty would reconsider his ordinary Sunday JV lineup when presented with this evidence.
–I always look forward to the Sunday afternoon contest, only to be disappointed nearly every single week.
–Off to Milwaukee. If the Reds can take two of three as they just did in Houston, it will be a successful road trip. Plus, I have it on good authority that there will be at least one Redleg Nation t-shirt present at Miller Park this week.
–Ugly game:
That might be the funniest picture ever.
haha
Saying the bullpen let down Mike Leake might be a little bit of an overstatement. First, I’d say the offense let him down, if anyone. Second, he left runners on 2nd and 3rd with only 1 out. This was one of those instances where I would say the earned runs were assigned to the right guy.
Was that his reaction to the hiring of Baker?
This is an article on Fransisco Cordero.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2010/06/transactions-history-francisco-cordero.html
Your Honor:
I owe you a response to your previous inquiry. I will do that, as we say, under separate cover.
With regard to the JV lineup comment today, this seems to me to be a legitimate varsity lineup with Rolen being held back because of the hamstring situation. Everyone here roots for Heisey and Hanigan to play more and you got that. What was so wrong with the lineup?
Enquiring minds want to know. And to The Natural, not a single name dropped in this post. You could look it up.
Not related to the game, but Dan Haren was traded to the Angels for what appears to be a pretty weak package (Joe Saunders, two middling minor league prospects, PTBNL). Supposedly the PTBNL is supposed to be a pretty good prospect. I would hope so.
World, with that pic you sort of have a Dave Barry look to you. I like it.
The Angels have just acquired Dan Haren from the Diamondbacks for Joe Saunders, Patrick Corbin, Rafael Rodriguez, and a player to be named.
I agree with World, we talk about Heisey, Hanigan and Soft-J getting more playing time, and then when they do…we have to pick a side of the fence and stay on it. I think Hanigan is our best C, Heisey deserves more PT and Janish would be worth more to us the more he plays.
MLB trade rumors says the PTBNL is one of the best prospects from the Angels organization.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2010/07/angels-trade-joe-saunders.html
Reds are pretty much in a holding pattern until they can get Rolen back. Statistically they are a good offensive club, but it seems it is feast or famine in games. It’s weird, early on the pitching was so so and the bats carried them and now they seem to have good overall pitching and they just run into games where they can’t hit bupkus. Some of those games were against elite starters, but some of them were not, as they have gotten tied by some pitchers that were struggling at points like Rodriquez today and Cook from the Rockies.
I’m for giving Chris Heisey more at bats, if nothing else to keep the other three on their toes and fresh, but really they are all kind of the same type of hitter, agressive and dangerous on the fastball with a propensity to swing and miss.
Wandy’s had a tough year; but he’s always dangerous to face in Houston and he has been better lately.
I’m tired of losing what should be winnable games. It’s going to take a series of four- and five-game winning streaks to push the Cardinals down in the standings. So let’s get that offense going, Reds.
I agree with World B. Free. This was a legitimate lineup. Bruce was on the bench, but I’m okay with that, especially given the (somehow) tough LHP. Rolen has now missed what – 9 games? No indication that he’s coming back any time soon. And no DL. He’ll be retroactively DL’ed for 1 game, at this rate. Silly.
This is probably just selective memory, but when I was a teenager (late 80s), it feels like the Reds lost every Sunday. These were the days of the George Michael Sports Machine, which was essentially the only time you could see national baseball highlights. I always stayed up ’til 11:30 in the summer, and I always watched highlights of the Reds losing.
We’re 11-10 in July.
If we can win series, we’ll be in good shape for at least the wild card spot. We can’t get completely preoccupied with the Cardinals yet.
August 9-11 looms huge. The remaining 3 games we play St. Louis here. Can’t wait. Will all three games sell out?
Rolen is due back tomorrow or Tuesday according to various reports. The Reds haven’t done that bad in his absence, really.
Homer is pitching tomorrow night in Dayton.
Didn’t see the game today because I was on the road and forced to listen to the Houston radio broadcast. They were very complimentary about Mike Leake. They were also left literally speechless by the play Cabrera made at SS (which I still haven’t seen but it must have been great).
Baker is quoted in several places tonight saying that maybe it’s time to consider Leake’s pitch count threshold at 90 instead of 100.
I can’t decide what’s worse, when he stubbornly refuses to admit a mistake. Or when he does.
I don’t remember the 80′s so much for Sunday foibles but Bob BooneDog was as bad or even worse than Dusty for running a JV/ Spring Training line up out on most Sundays.
The Reds have some off days starting pretty soon. I think it is time for then to get into grinding mode.
A win earlier in the season counts as much as one the last week of the season; but if you push too hard to get that one particular win in April or May, it can come back to bite you by costing more later on. (one of the ways you can’t win but can lose a pennant early on). Now it is down to the point of just grinding. Make through the next 5 weeks or so; and to the point you have depth in your farm system, some relief can be had over the final month once the rosters expand. Unfortunately for the Reds, as far as position players, it doesn’t look like much help is at AAA besides Corky and maybe if Francisco can be spotted effectively, he might deliver a big hit or two off of the bench (assuming he isn’t traded this week). But on the other side of the coin lots of pitching will be there for them to call on.
World……you’re growing on me
Funny thing about that is Wandy doesn’t have much of a platoon split: .270/.339/.436 vs righties and .252/.314/.393 vs lefties for his career.
I for one am going to worry about the Central race- the Giants are going to win the Wild Card:
1. With the addition of Bumgarner they can match anyone in the NL 1-5 in their rotation.
2. They got one of the top closers in Brian Wilson plus experienced bullpen depth.
3. The addition of Posey gives them a legit middle of the order.
4. They have arguably the best 4th infielder in the NL in Juan Uribe(power and plus defense at 3rd, ss, and 2nd) plus they have 2 former starters as their 4th and 5th outfielders(Rowand and Burrell)
It was a fantastic, jaw-dropping play.
That’s probably a good idea.
World, I want to go on record to say that I apreciate the unique perspective you bring to this blog. Even though I rarely agree with your analysis, I like that you can usually relay the mindsets of the people close to the organization. Plus, I usually enjoy your stories of the good ol days.
I’m too lazy to look it up, but doesn’t Heisey actually have a significantly worse split vs lefties this year.
Btw, Chad, I’m a big fan of the monkey. Now if you can just photoshop a sombrero on him, I think we have our fixture for all future losses.
If you’ll look above, I tried to distinguish yesterday’s lineup from the ordinary Sunday JV lineup. There was nothing wrong with this week’s Sunday lineup; usually, it’s the JV bunch, and I was attributing all the shutouts to that ordinary Sunday lineup.
Poorly worded, I suppose, but I didn’t intend to lump yesterday in with the usual group.
I agree with LVW, the Reds trip to the playoffs will likley have to be with a division championship. Whoever earns the wild card will probably play fantastic ball in the second half. The wild card team might even win 2/3 of their remaining games.
@LVW:
I’ll be surprised if the Giants finish higher than 4th in their division. Not enough top to bottom offense, and I’ve got a feeling Lincecum won’t make it through the year.
First I agree that we had a good lineup in there on Sunday, given that Rolen is out. I liked giving Bruce a day off against a lefty and playing Heisey, for example.
Dusty’s overall done a good job with the bullpen lately, although he continues to use Rhodes too much when we’re behind.
I wouldn’t say that the bullpen let Leake down. The big hit was given up by Leake to Michaels. I did not want to see a tiring Leake pitching to Michaels. But I decided to not second guess Dusty after the game.
Anyway today Dusty has second guessed himself, saying he shouldn’t have left in Leake to pitch to Michaels, and that Leake is now tiring after 90 (instead of 100) pitches. Good for Dusty to second guess himself, but come on Dusty, you didn’t learn from the Philly debacle ?
Since Posey became the everyday catcher they are 16-4 and they have opened up a 3 game lead over the struggling Dodgers and 4.5 over the even more struggling Rockies.
@LVW:
Well I rather doubt Posey is going to maintain his .349/.442/.522 batting line, and like I said, I have a feeling Lincecum is going to have to go on the DL at some point.
Where is tonite’s game thread?