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Home > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2011 > May > 30 > Entry

The worm turns - for at least one day

By Hal McCoy | Monday, May 30, 2011, 11:11 PM

CINCINNATI — This is how it is when things go bad, when the world seems to nip at your posterior no matter where you are or what you do.

After the Cincinnati Reds lost Sunday to the Atlanta Braves, 2-1, to complete a road trip on The Highway to Hell, a 2-8 trip, manager Dusty Baker was anxious to get home and relax and forget about Cleveland, forget about Philadelphia forget about Atlanta.

“But when I got home to my place in Cincinnati, the power was off,” said Baker. “No lights, no air conditioning, no elevator. So I walked up seven flights to my place. I laid down in my hot bedroom and just when I finally got to sleep the lights came on.”

Baker laughed before Monday’s game in Great American Ball Park and said, “A trip like that either breaks you or makes you stronger. Where I come from, you get stronger and stronger mostly through adversity rather than from the good times.”

THE REDS passed their first test Monday night, beating the second place Milwaukee Brewers, 7-3, behind Travis Wood and Jay Bruce. With St. Louis losing, the Reds crept to within four games of the division-leading Cardinals and within 1 ½ games of the second place Brewers.

Wood held the Brewers to three runs and seven hits (no walks) over six innings, surviving a testy fifth inning in which he gave up all three runs, including back-to-back home runs.

Bruce made certain Wood coasted to a victory. He tripled in the second inning and scored on a Jonny Gomes sacrifice fly/line drive and he crashed a three-run homer in fourth. He later added a single for three hits.

BRUCE LEADS the league with 16 homers and his 12 homers in May are two shy of the club record for homers in one month, 14 by Greg Vaughn in September, 1999. Bruce needs two in tonight’s final game of May to tie him.

Bruce has hit six of the last seven home runs by the Reds and 8 of the last 10. So where is Joey Votto. Walking, walking, walking. He has been walked at least twice in five of his last seven games (11 walks) and lead the National League with 48.

“Bruce is not trying to do too muh,” said manager Dusty Baker. “Sometimes when you try to do too much, like he was earlier in the year, it makes it worse. He has been on a tear. One thing you notice is that he is not fouling off balls, not missing pitches that he should put in play and hit. When you are not going good, you foul off pitches and that puts you in a two-strike hole. He isn’t doing that. He gets his pitch, he hits it.”

AN INTERESTING match-up unfold tonight when veteran Milwaukee pitcher Zack Greinke goes against Defiance, O. native and Miami University graduate Chad Reineke.

The 28-year-old right-hander was a non-roster player this spring, but was impressive in his early spring appearances. He has made brief stops at Oakland (one game, five innings) and San Diego (four games, 18 innings), so this won’t be his major-league debut. At Class AAA Louisville, he was 5-2 with a 2.52 ERA, giving up 15 runs and 50 nits over 53 2/3 innings, walking 16 and striking out 31.

“He is in his second year in our organiztion, throwing the ball well, and he deserves the opportunity, especially with our present pitching situation,” said Baker, whose pitching staff is broken and scattered like matches in the wind.

“Edinson Volquez is going to make one more start (for Louisville) and then we’ll make a decision after that,” Baker added. “We’ve been making roster moves every day and this is just another needed move for us.”

Asked if he had ever been involved with a team that made a pitching roster moves every day for more than a week, Baker said, “Not on a good team, not on a winning team. On losing teams, oh yeah. For a winning team this is something that rarely happens — one thing after another. We’re going through bad space and time and these things happen and you have to ride ‘em out.”

RIDING THIS thing out takes a big, big saddle. Aroldis Chapman went down with a sore lef shoulder. Matt Maloney went down after sneezing and breaking a rib. Homer Bailey went down (again) with a sore right shoulder. Sam LeCure went down with a sore right forearm. Edinson Volquez went down, too - down to Class AAA Louisville with hurt pride and a need to find the strike zone.

That meant in addition to Reineke, the Reds have had to call up Jose Arredondo, Tom Cochran, Carlos Fisher and Jeremy Horst.

“I’d never even seen Cochran or Horst pitch,” said Baker. “They weren’t in camp with the big club this spring.”

BAKER SMILED over the turmoil swirling here, there and everywhere around his team and said, “Things haven’t been going our way, but the worm always turns.”

For one day the worm stuck his head out of the ground and said, “OK, Reds win tonight.”

Jonny Gomes may be a turning worm, too. After sitting out several games, he started Saturday in Atlanta and had four hits. He started Monday and had a double and a sacrifice fly and made a nifty running catch at the wall.

And the other struggling hitter, Paul Janish, contributed two hits Monday.

MIGUEL CAIRO, who rarely utters a word out loud in the clubhouse, was walking through the room when he saw a media horde standing in a human clump and said, “What are all you reporters doing in here? Go to Twitter.com and you can check out everything.”

Ah, modern communications.

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