Game 20: Dodgers 9, Reds 3

A disastrous first outing from Reds starter Matt Belisle sent the Reds to their eighth defeat in their last ten games, falling to the Los Angeles Dodgers 9-3 Monday night.

From his second pitch to LA leadoff man Rafael Furcal (a no-doubt dinger to right) to his final delivery to Matt Kemp (an RBI double making it 6-0) Belisle mainly pitched to one part of the zone: right down the middle of the plate. Los Angeles (8-11), coming off an awful start to the season offensively, saw its bats awaken at Great American, as so many teams do.

Belisle’s final line was four-plus innings, twelve hits, seven runs (five earned), three strikeouts and a walk. It was almost as bad as Fogg’s two disasters, much as I hate to say it, although I’d give him another couple of starts to right himself. If Fogg got three starts, Belisle should, too. Maybe he was trying too hard to impress or something, although I would think that would lead to wildness rather than fastballs right down the middle.

It does raise the question, though: if Belisle does right the ship to, say, last year’s performance level, and Bailey keeps pitching well in AAA, how long do you keep Bailey in Louisville? The question, to me, depends on how Bailey is going about piling up his numbers. If he’s still primarily getting guys out with a rising fastball that’s really wild in the zone and appears to have no clue where it’s going, you have to leave him down. If he’s getting guys out and throwing his breaking pitch for strikes, it becomes a different story. That’s another question for another day, though.

In relief Jeremy Affeldt got the outs in the fifth after Belisle exited with two on, one in and none out. He allowed one run to score on a groundout for out one, making it 7-0. Josh Fogg relieved him in the fifth, promptly reminding fans why he was lifted from the rotation to begin with and hitting Russell Martin and serving up a dinger to Nomar Garciaparra. He did recover to pitch a 1-2-3 sixth, however. Todd Coffey looked OK in pitching a scoreless eighth although he did walk a guy, while Kent Mercker allowed one hit in a scoreless ninth.

Two of the only positives for the Reds (8-12) were absolute blasts off the bats of the hot-hitting Edwin Encarnacion (two-for-four, two runs scored) in the seventh, along with a titanic shot to dead center off the riverboat by Joey Votto. It was a truly Dunn-esque homer. Unfortunately the two homers made the score 9-2 and 9-3, but it’s hard not to grasp at straws when a team gets skunked.

Monday felt like a throwback game, one we saw all too often from 2001-2007, where a horrible starting performance led to the team being out of the game from inning one. For the sake of the team, the bullpen and my sanity here’s hoping they can get more out of Edinson Volquez tomorrow. Volquez’s last two starts have both resulted in five innings and a whole lot of pitches. If his control problems continue, this threatens to become a staff that has to use its bullpen quite a bit between Volquez, Arroyo and whoever the fifth spot ends up being, and three five or six-inning starts a week will burn out a bullpen quick. He faces Taiwanese lefty Hong Chih-Kuo in the finale of this brief two-game series tomorrow. First pitch is 7:10, 4:10 here in paradise. Peace.