Game 17 and 18

Game 17, Brewers 5, Reds 2
Game 18, Brewers 5, Reds 3 (10)

Any hope of a sustained offensive turnaround for the Reds after Thursday’s rout in Chicago was snuffed out after two straight losses to the Brewers Friday and Saturday.

Friday Milwaukee’s ace Ben Sheets was dealing, and there wasn’t much the Reds could do about it through five. Sheets was lifted after five due to tightness in his throwing arm, certainly reason for concern for such an injury-prone starter who has gotten off to such a great start. At that point the Reds trailed 4-0 after Arroyo’s poor starting performance.

Saturday the Reds again looked helpless against Jeff Suppan, just an average big league starting pitcher, before finally coming back to tie it in the seventh. Johnny Cueto was again superb, this time against a team that was seeing him for the second time, definitely an encouraging sign. However David Weathers allowed the winning runs to score on a Bill Hall double in the tenth, and the Reds have lost seven of eight.

IT”S OFFICIAL
It’s time to be concerned about Bronson Arroyo. He just doesn’t seem to have confidence in his stuff at this point. He clearly was trying to nail every corner Friday night, just being way too fine with his breaking ball, and he got pounded because of it. He’s had four starts and his performances seem to be getting progressively worse. One of the thing that’s so great about watching Cueto, Harang and Volquez is they really attack the zone and generally throw strikes (Volquez had some control issues his last start but still made nasty pitches in the zone). Another issue with Arroyo’s performance Friday was that when he missed, he missed up. Bill Hall’s homer still hasn’t landed yet, and it’s late Saturday night. He didn’t miss in the dirt, he missed Bako’s target right into the hitting zone.

IT’S ALSO OFFICIAL
Be concerned about David Weathers. He’s been shaky all season and doesn’t seem to be confident to throw strikes in the zone. If you’re flipping breaking balls and piddly fastballs outside the zone, hitters will eventually figure it out and wait for you to throw something they can hit. Stormy has eight walks in seven and a third innings this year to go with nine hits. That’s a WHIP of 2.32. He took the loss today, pitching a terrible tenth and being victimized again by Bill Hall, the Reds killer. I look for Mike Lincoln to get more innings in high-leverage situations before the 9th in the coming games along with Jared Burton. I have nothing against Weathers; when the Reds got him I never thought they would get as much out of him as they have, but he looks like his goose is cooked.

ROTATION CHANGE
Starting Monday the Reds will no longer be guaranteed a loss every fifth day, as Josh Fogg has been demoted to the bullpen. Matt Belisle will start Monday’s game against the Dodgers after looking superb in three minor league starts. The move is not completely unexpected but I still give them credit for pulling the plug before he did any more damage. From the start Fogg felt like a true throwback in the Reds rotation: a guy who was only there because he’d had a little success in the majors in the past, who had completely outlived his usefulness, and whose best-case start was five innings, three runs and not getting shelled. The only difference is that in the past, it felt like the Reds’ entire rotation was made up of guys like that, whereas now they’ve actually got a few pitchers who can get guys out. The presence of Harang, Cueto and Volquez made Fogg’s awfulness stand out all that much more, though.

Belisle is a guy who’s had his ups and downs in his time with the Reds. He arrived as a former highly-touted prospect out of the Atlanta organization, but several times guys who Atlanta trades away don’t end up working out (as Bruce Chen, Jung Bong and Rob Bell showed the Reds in the past), but Belisle had times last year when he looked like he was really putting everything together. He certainly can’t do much worse than the guy he’s replacing.

POOR AT-BATS
Poor at-bats, especially from the top of the order, are really hindering the Reds’ ability to get into the bullpens of teams. When things aren’t going well at the plate the Reds aren’t even making the opposing starters work for it. It appears Dusty is already souring on the Corey Patterson experience. He’s a leadoff man who nearly always swings at the first thing he sees that even remotely resembles a strike. Freel and Hopper also go up hacking pretty much every time up. The offense has continued to struggle against even league-average starting pitching, but even when you’re not getting a lot of hits, making the opposing pitcher throw more than two pitches per hitter can help you get to the soft underbelly of every pitching staff, the 5th-6th-7th inning middle relief. There are guys on the team that realize this; Griffey made a point of seeing a lot of pitches and giving Volquez a bit of a breather in the Thursday game at Chicago when Hopper and Freel saw two pitches in making the first two outs in the top of the fifth.

Joey Votto had a game-tying dinger in the Saturday game, which is one element this team needed to get going offensively. The void at the top and bottom of the order (Patterson, Bako) is really hurting, though. Dunn still isn’t doing much. Griffey only has three homers but he’s always going to be a power threat even when he isn’t going good, so I’m not all that concerned about him. How long can they look at getting little to no production out of center field before the temptation to bring up Jay Bruce becomes too great?

The two losses put the Reds record at 7-11 on the season, while Milwaukee improved to 11-6. The Reds try to salvage the series in Sunday’s finale. Aaron Harang looks to rebound from a poor outing for the Reds, while Milwaukee still showed TBA as of Saturday night. Yovani Galardo may get the ball, as he is eligible to come off the DL Sunday.

Game time is 1:15 Eastern, 10:15 AM here in paradise. Peace.