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.