After going a month and a half without winning two consecutive games, the Reds finally did it against Atlanta, which exhausted them. The Mets hid in the tall grass only to spring out in the 7th. After Phillips finally put the Reds on the board against R.A. Dickey in the bottom of the 6th with a Cairo-scoring double, Leake got Dickey in the 7th but then allowed back-to-back single to Reyes and Reds turncoat, Justin Turner. That was the end of Leake's night, which went quite well. He got into the 7th and, though he left two guys on base, the presumption is the bullpen, where stranding baserunners is part of their job description, would leave those runners on base. They didn't. Bray allowed a sacrifice fly to Beltran, which is probably okay. The game was tied and now there are two outs. Ondrusek, however, was tired of the boring nature of the game, gave up a single to David Wright and then doubles to both Dan Murphy and Jason Bay. That made it 4-1 and, as we know, 4 runs on most days is entirely too many for the offense to fight back against. They added 1 in the bottom of the7th and loaded the bases against Isringhausen in the 9th but B. Phill k'd to end it.
Votto got a deserved day on the bench yesterday. He's out there everyday and probably needs a break to get his head straight. Though, I'm sure he wasn't sleeping in an easy chair in the clubhouse, he probably took a full 3 hours of extra batting cage time. I believe it's the first time the Reds have seen a knuckleball this year, so, you'll see I have lots of excuses for the loss and reasons to believe it is an outlier in the Reds steady assent to the top of the Central. Cueto pitches today against Jon Neise. I have a vague recollection of the Reds struggling against Neise, whose stuff is far from overwhelming. Hopefully that vague recollection turns out to be inaccurate or, if accurate, the Reds have been practicing against soft-tossing lefties and are ready rake. Either way, Reds win today.
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