Let’s recap today’s titanic struggle….
FINAL
Cincinnati 10
Milwaukee 2
WP: Wood (1-1)
LP: Narveson (8-7)
BOX SCORE
POSITIVES
–Brandon Phillips went 2-4 from the leadoff spot and hit a grand slam to put the game out of reach. Phillips is heating up again. National League: you have been warned.
–Joey Votto had three more hits, including his 26th homer. His numbers are other-wordly for a 26-year old: .322/.423/.599.
–Miguel Cairo was 2-4 with 2 RBI and a walk. The beat goes on for this guy. (His defense was bad again, but I have no complaints, since he continues to hit well.) Cairo also scored on a beautiful suicide squeeze performed by Ryan Hanigan.
–Travis Wood picked up his first major league win, going 5 innings, throwing 82 pitches, and giving up two runs on five hits. Wood was very sharp except for a short sequence in the fourth inning.
–Jay Bruce had two hits and a beautiful catch that saved a run when the Reds were already down 2-0. Hopefully, he’ll start to emerge from this slump.
–The bullpen was great yesterday. Today, it was an almost entirely different cast of characters — CoCo, Nick Masset, Arthur Rhodes, and Jordan Smith — but they were equally good. The pen has been great lately.
NEGATIVES
–None.
NOT-SO-RANDOM THOUGHTS
–22 runs and 32 hits in less than 24 hours? More, please.
–Reds finished the road trip 4-2, they won another series, and Cincinnati is back to 11 games over .500. They’ll stay in first place, and with St. Louis scoring 6 in the first tonight, it appears that it will remain a tie.
–I just don’t see any way the Reds can justify sending Travis Wood back to the minors when everyone gets healthy. If ever there were a good example of someone getting an opportunity and seizing it, it’s Wood in 2010.
–Funny moment in the third. Wood had just struck out his fourth batter in a row, and he and Hanigan started walking to the dugout. One problem: there were only two outs in the inning. Oops.
–Dusty Baker used Mike Leake to pinch hit in the eighth. Okay, Leake is a good hitter. Problem was, Paul Janish was still available.
We have joked about how much Dusty hates Janish, but this was a huge slap in the face to a major league baseball player. Here’s Dusty’s explanation; make of it what you will:
“We were kind of short of people today,” Baker explained. “We tried to stay away from Scotty after his big day yesterday. He was sore. We didn’t want to use Ramon because he caught about 150 pitches yesterday. He was a little sore. I had to save Janish because Cabrera injured his shoulder a little bit on that slide into third. I took a chance of bringing Nix in early. I couldn’t afford to use anybody else and I didn’t think they’d walk him.”
–Funny that Travis Wood earned a win after going only five innings, when he couldn’t get a win earlier in the season despite taking a perfect game into the ninth.
–That’s a good game to take into an off-day. Let’s enjoy it.
Joey Votto