The Canadian Club Knocks Three Times

One, Two, Three....Joey Votto slammed three home runs against the Cubs on Wednesday. It was beautiful. It's surprising that Dusty Baker has had the sense to start Votto over veteran Scott Hatteberg. I am thankful. It is out of character for him, though. Normally he'll stick to the struggling veteran regardless of how promising or productive the rookie is. This was Votto's best game as a pro. On top of the three homers, he also had a walk and his first stolen base of the season. I have to admit, that is one of the things that excites me most about Votto. He's huge. He plays first. However, he's got decent speed. He could end up being like Derrek Lee or like Jeff Bagwell in his prime. He's not going to steal 50 bags or anything, but if he chooses his spots well, he has the ability to nab 20.

The Reds hit seven home runs in all. In the second inning, Votto, Adam Dunn and Paul Bako each had solo shots and Jerry Hairston, Jr. added a 2-run blast. In the fifth, Brandon Phillips and Votto went back-to-back with solo homers. Votto hit his third shot in the sixth.

What went greatly overlooked during the home run derby was another outstanding performance by Edinson Volquez. He's allowed 1 or fewer earned runs in every start this season. His ERA is a paltry 1.06. That leads the NL and is second only to Cliff Lee in the majors. He also struck out 10 batters.....he is now leading the majors in strikeouts with 52. The only complaint that one can reasonably make against him is his walk rate. He's walked 24 batters in 42.1 innings. That is too high. However, they're not coming around to score. It does cause his pitch count to rise and prohibits him from pitching as deep into games as I would like to see. That said, in his last four starts he has gone 7 innings three times and the other he lasted six.

Best quote of the day and the most telling reason for Volquez's success so far this season: “The last two years, I haven’t thrown the ball like I’m throwing right now,” Volquez said. “Every pitch I throw, I’ve got a reason for throwing. Before, I’d just throw a pitch.”

1-9, 1-3, 3-0, E-5 (8)

The Reds are in the middle of their 10th series of the year. This is the first time that they have won the first game of a series. What an odd stat. Yet, it's true.

Bronson Arroyo got his first victory of the season last night. He is now 1-3. A turning point in the season for him? Probably not. He still pitched horribly. He was still very hittable. His control was still erratic. He was the same old Arroyo, just with a different result.

The Reds put together three consecutive wins for the first time this season. It's a small streak, but still a streak.

Edwin Encarnacion made his 8th error of the season. 27 games into the season and he has 8 errors. That puts him on pace for 48. That disgusts me. Can we please have Ryan Freel starting at 3rd from now on? Please. We don't have a right-handed bat coming off of the bench that puts any fear at all in the heart of a middle reliever or closer. Encarnacion, despite his defensive woes, would answer that need just a little. Please.

Coffey Optioned and other thoughts

It's about time. Todd Coffey was optioned to Louisville today. He has been awful this year. Bill Bray gets the call up. Apparently Bray has been on fire for Louisville so far this season. Hopefully he can continue that with the big club.

Carrying three catchers is about the dumbest thing a franchise can do. We have Paul Bako, David Ross and Javier Valentin right now. One of them needs to go. Bako has been surprisingly complete this year. I don't think anyone doubted his ability to call a game and play well defensively. His offense has been a welcome surprise. He shouldn't go anywhere except out behind the plate four out of every five days. Ross is coming off of injury. He's not a liability behind the plate or next to it. But he's not a great asset either. He's acceptable defensively. He hits for a low average, but with occasional power. I'll take it. The best you can say about Valentin is that he's a great pinch-hitter. Every time he is behind the plate, the pitchers look lost, confused and unconfident, especially when it comes to the bullpen. This is particularly bad considering he typically comes in as a pinch-hitter late in the game and mostly deals with pitchers out of the pen. Hopefully management will do the right thing and trade or demote him soon. There is no good reason to carry three catchers.

Good Morning Brandon Phillips. I would like to extend a personal thank you to the San Francisco Giants for waking up Mr. Phillips. He went 6-12 with 3 HR against SF.

Edwin Encarnacion is still on pace for about 50 errors. Sure, he leads the team in HR. Sure, one of those even was hit to me (7th inning, solo shot, last Monday against the Dodgers; first home run ball I have ever gotten). I don't care. There is nothing you can do with your bat that will make up for 50 errors. Please, do something. He makes some phenomenal plays. He makes gold glove caliber plays. And then he boots things that an A-Ball player would make with ease. It is painful to watch.

Base running is important. Maybe Corey Patterson and Jerry Hairston, Jr. didn't get the memo. Last week they got picked off of first in consecutive innings. It was embarrassing. If you're going to run, then run. If you're not going to run, don't dance around like you're going to. Good catchers will take advantage of that and so will good pitchers. It was nice to see Patterson get 2 steals against the Giants. maybe he will start running more? But how much can you really run when you have an OBP that is sub-.300?

Drop Adam Dunn already. I don't understand. Joey Votto is hitting well. Flipping them in the batting order would be great. Votto could provide more protection for Ken Griffey, Jr. or Phillips. Dunn shouldn't be hitting above 7th with his .200 AVG. An even better idea is to bat Dunn in front of the pitcher. Despite his paltry average, he is still getting on base at a great rate. He just isn't hitting. He especially isn't hitting with runners in scoring position, but, then again, who expected him to suddenly learn how to do that? Putting him in the 8 hole would mean that about 35-40% of the time there would be a runner on first for the pitcher to bunt over. It also means that fewer opening innings would end with him striking out with runners on.

Aaron Harang, Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto have been lights out. Any other starter just makes you wish the lights were out so that you wouldn't have to see the slop they're lobbing up there. It's time to do something about Bronson Arroyo. He isn't getting the job done. He's the poor man's Barry Zito at this point. It's time to move him to the pen or move him to someone else's rotation or move him to Louisville. Homer Bailey deserves his chance.

Speaking of deserving his chance, can we please see Jay Bruce in centerfield some time soon? I cannot stand to watch Patterson any more. Let's find out what Bruce can do. He cannot do any worse than Patterson. If he is anywhere near as good as everyone seems to think, he's bound to have an OBP over .300. Patterson is an average at best defensive player, it shouldn't be too much to ask for Bruce to be able to match that.

It's time for change. We're 11-15, things aren't working. Something has to change.

Take that, Lefty

The Reds won their first game since last Thursday. They actually did it against a lefty. Does it still count that the lefty was Ted Lilly? As far as the standings are concerned, thankfully, it does.

Edinson Volquez struggled. His numbers don't glaringly show it. He gave up 1 run in 5 innings. He struck out 7. However, he walked 4 and 64 of his 122 pitches were out of the strikezone. The only run he gave up was on a bases-loaded walk to Ted Lilly, yes, the pitcher. It's hard for me to blame him, though. The strikezone was tiny and inconsistent. No matter what the ump is doing, 112 pitches in 5 innings is too many and 5 innings are too few. He needs to get more efficient with his stuff. I love that he wants to strikeout every guy that steps to the plate. However, it would be nice to see him pitch to contact and get some easy outs.

596. Ken Griffey, Jr. is good.

It was nice to see that Dusty gave Joey Votto the start against the lefty. Maybe they're going to finally put him out there and leave him out there. Platooning him with Scott Hatteberg isn't helping anyone. Votto responded well today. He had a double and a homer in 4 ABs while matching his career high with 5 RBIs.

Edwin Encarnacion had another error, way to keep on pace for 50 Edwin.

Todd Coffey had another shaky outing. It's time for a trip to Louisville. Matt Belisle is pitching well and should be available soon. Josh Fogg should move to the pen to take Coffey's spot. Belisle can take Fogg's spot in the rotation. I'd also like to see Javier Valentin sent down in favor of David Ross. The thought of carrying three catchers make me shudder. Valentin has not been handling the pitching staff well. Paul Bako just keeps hitting (go figure) and he's been playing some great defense and calling great games.

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting

If you want to be considered a good team, you have to beat up on the teams that are worse than you. I don't just mean splitting 4 game sets or taking 2 out of 3. Basically, you have to do what the Pirates did to the Reds this weekend. Dominate them. Shut them out. Sweep them: 1-0 on Friday, 4-3 on Saturday and a soul-crushing 9-1 on Sunday. What makes it so saddening is that the Pirates are not the better team and should not be able to do that. The Reds looked good coming off a series win in Milwaukee. They looked awful in Pittsburgh. So, what was the problem?

The main concern is leaving too many runners left on base. In the Pittsburgh series they left 32 runners on base. This includes leaving 12 on in the 1-0 loss Friday night and 11 in the 4-3 loss on Saturday. That is just disgusting. Edwin Encarnacion left 7 on base Friday night all by himself. He is now hitting .179 on the season.

Saturday was bad. 11 runners were left on base. To add to that, 3 errors were made. Encarnacion accounted for a mere 4 runners left on on Saturday. However, he also got credit for 2 of the errors. That gives him 4 errors. He is on pace for about 50 this year.

So, what am I getting at? It's time to bench Encarnacion. Ryan Freel can play third. He can hit 8th. Corey Patterson is doing well enough hitting leadoff. Jeff Keppinger is being an awesome number 2 hitter. It's time for some changes. The batting order should go something along the lines of

CF Corey Patterson
SS Jeff Keppinger
RF Ken Griffey, Jr.
2B Brandon Phillips
1B Joey Votto
LF Adam Dunn
C Paul Bako
3B Ryan Freel
P

Dropping Dunn down to #6 would take some pressure off of him. He's hitting a robust .167 right now. He is leaving an astounding number of runners on base. He has one HR. Of course, this would all be a temporary fix. Once Alex Gonzalez comes back, he should resume his place at SS and bat 7th. Keppinger can then take over at 3B. This would allow Freel to be the super-sub that he excels at so much.

The other big problem about these last three days....short outings by the starters. Edinson Volquez pitched only 5 innings on Friday. Bronson Arroyo pitched five innings on Saturday. Johnny Cueto pitched 6 innings on Sunday. They need to stay out there longer. Now, Friday there was a lengthy rain delay and that's why Volquez was replaced. Sunday, Cueto just didn't have has A-game and he still threw 6. To be fair, Arroyo coming out of Saturday's game was a strategy decision. He was pinch-hit for with two outs and two on. But back to back to back short outings are never good. It asks too much of the bullpen. Thanks to the baseball gods that Aaron Harang threw 8 innings on Thursday and today is an off day.

Hey, look, it's an offense!

Cincinnati
AB R H RBI BB K LOB Season Avg
C. Patterson cf 5 2 3 2 1 0 0 .323
R. Freel 3b-rf 5 0 2 1 0 0 5 .176
K. Griffey Jr. rf 4 3 2 1 1 1 2 .357
J. Castro 3b 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000
B. Phillips 2b 5 2 2 0 1 1 2 .316
A. Dunn lf 2 2 1 3 2 1 0 .160
K. Mercker p 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000
T. Coffey p 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000
J. Keppinger ss 3 1 1 2 1 1 3 .382
S. Hatteberg 1b 2 0 1 1 2 0 2 .125
J. Valentin c 4 1 1 1 1 0 3 .333
J. Fogg p 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 .000
J. Votto ph 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 .250
M. Lincoln p 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000
N. Hopper ph-lf 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 .200
Totals 36 12 14 11 9 5 19

I expect more games like this in the future. Do you know what excites me most about last night's offensive output? SF - A Dunn , S Hatteberg , R Freel , J Keppinger....count 'em, four Sac Flys. That means there were four occasions in which the Reds drove in runners from third with less than two outs. There are few things worse than leaving a runner there when you don't even need a hit to score him.

Josh Fogg pitched ok. He gave up 3 runs in 5 innings. Two of those were scored on a rare error by Brandon Phillips. My only real complaint is that he only went 5 innings. We're relying on the pen too much. I'd like to see the starters go deeper into games. However, it isn't really Fogg's fault last night. Dusty pulled him for a pinch hitter to try and turn a good inning into a soul-crushing inning.

Any coincidence that this offensive outburst happens when Edwin Encarnacion is on the bench?

Can we please stop sending Todd Coffey out to the mound? He's a crooked number waiting to happen everytime he sprints out there. Why does he sprint out there?

Bye Jon....

The Reds and the Diamondbacks made a minor league trade yesterday. The Diamondbacks get Jon Coutlangus. The Reds get Daniel Perales.

This makes me sad. I like Coutlangus. Truth be told, what I like most is his name. But I also appreciated the rookie season he turned in last year. I thought he could have made the time this spring. I would much rather see him coming out of the bullpen than Todd Coffey.

As for Mr. Perales....I've never heard of him. He played in a rookie league and in A-ball last year. He plays OF. In 809 minor league ABs, he has 23 HR, 131 RBI, 135 SO, .279 AVG, 19 SB. Those aren't overwhelming numbers. Seems a shame to trade a left-handed relief pitcher who has had some success in the majors for a 23 yr old OF who has never played above A-ball.

Perales is being sent to Sarasota.