Reds Refuse Entrapment of a Boring Existence, Reds 9-8

For all of you, which certainly doesn't include any member of the Reds Rocket, who thought that there was no way the Reds were going to win after blowing an 8-0 lead in the 9th to head to extra innings with the Cardinals last night, well, you learned a valuable lesson. The Reds are very wily and envision a depleted Cardinals pen screwing things up in St. Louis leading into the All-Star Break. Actually, I, perhaps, would have preferred that Coco close the door in the 9th as opposed to giving up the game-tying homer to Jon Jay. I like free, additional baseball as much as the next guy but it's tough on the nerves.

For as exciting as things concluded, the Reds were pretty impressive for the first 5 or so innings. Things started off with Heisey taking the first pitch he saw from Jake Westbrook over the fence in right. Phill, back in the fourth spot in the order (maybe he's been there for a while, who pays attention to these things), triple home two on a hard hit ball to right. Which as I predicted, which I need to point out because I am so infrequently right about anything, Berkman took forever to retrieve and return to the infield. Didn't he used to play center field in Houston? He, Berkman, looks like he's never played a position other than DH in his entire career. Bruce hit a two-run bomb to close the scoring in the first and give the Reds a 5-0 lead. They added 3 more on Fred Lewis and Rolen homers (Rolen's was of the two-run genus). So, bottom of the 6th, up 8-0 and Arroyo has faced one over the minimum. Cardinals added two in the 6th, then 5 in the 7th. Arroyo only got one out and the normally reliable Bill Bray didn't do him any favors. Ondrusek, after giving up a hit to Pujols to bring the score to 8-7, got Holiday. Masset was good in the 8th, then Coco decided it had been too long since we had an extra innings game to enjoy. That homer coming a couple of days after he did some minor complaining about being left off the All-Star roster. Bad timing. Or good timing if you want to look like a dick.

But Hernandez, pictured above, saved the day with a two-out double in the 13th to close things down. Arredondo was surprisingly un-terrible last night and got the win. Chapman, whose brain looks to be functioning properly agains (he just needed to talk to Dontrelle Willis in AAA to straighten things out) looked pretty dominant in securing his first career save. He struck out a couple and exploded the message boards with talk of replacing the expensive, temporarily ineffective Coco with the Cuban missile. Message boards are notorious for rational, well-reasoned discussion.

Team starts over today at .500 in Milwaukee. Brewers just lost 2 of 3 to the Diamondbacks and scored a total of 0 runs over 7 innings against Josh Collmenter yesterday. He's like Arroyo, without the stuff. Brewers are ready to take their medicine for four days. Reds! Reds! Reds!