CINCINNATI – Tuesday wasn’t the best of nights for the Reds, plain and simple. A 9-1 defeat to give them back-to-back losses to the Chicago Cubs – the team at the bottom of the National League Central standings – isn’t how one wants to follow up beating playoff contenders St. Louis and Los Angeles six of seven games.
The reality of the situation is that the Reds have 16 games remaining and are six games ahead of Washington for the second and final wild card spot in the National League. The Reds are still closer to the lead in the NL Central (three games behind St. Louis) and to the first wild card spot (two games behind Pittsburgh) than the Nationals are to catching them.
Nothing is clinched – the Reds’ magic number to secure a playoff berth is still 12 – but the focus is what is ahead of this team, not who is trying to chase it down. The most important of the remaining games are the two three-game series against Pittsburgh, one at PNC Park, the other at Great American Ball Park to close out the regular season.
That doesn’t mean the last two nights have sat well with them, even if they win the series finale on Wednesday afternoon. Even though they’ve got series remaining with Milwaukee, Houston and the New York Mets – all sub-.500 teams – the Reds can’t afford more games like Tuesday.
“I don’t think anyone wanted to lose two out of three to the Cubs,” said leftfielder Ryan Ludwick. “They are a big league team but they’re in last place and we’re a team that’s trying to chase down a couple of teams that’s in front of us. I’m not trying to take credit away from that team – they’ve got some good young talent – but their record is what their record is.
“We’ve got to try to focus tomorrow. They’ve got a guy on the mound (Jeff Samardzija) who is pretty good. When he’s on, he’s pretty dominant.”
The Reds are also concerned with the health of starting pitcher Tony Cingrani.
The rookie left-hander left the game in the second inning with back spasms. This was his second start after missing 15 days with a lower back strain. He pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing two runs and four hits on 79 pitches and got the win last Thursday in a 6-2 victory against St. Louis.
Cingrani gave up a mammoth two-run home run to Chicago catcher Welington Castillo with one out in the second inning, retired another batter and then got a visit from pitching coach Bryan Price and a trainer. When Price came back to the dugout, he and the trainer brought Cingrani with them.
Manager Dusty Baker said Cingrani warmed up fine and didn’t report feeling any pain until getting back to the dugout following the top of the first inning. Baker and Price kept their eye on Cingrani in the second and noticed his velocity was dropping.
“It kept going down and down and down,” said Baker. “I told Bryan to go check on him and be prepared to get (Greg) Reynolds in the game. We had our eye on the board and all of a sudden it looked like the ball wasn’t reaching. We got him out of there in time. Hopefully he’s not too sore or too bad.”
The Reds ended up using 24 players in the game, including five relief pitchers after Cingrani. The Cubs scored four runs off of Reynolds in 1 2/3 innings and three runs off of Curtis Partch in 1 2/3 innings. Baker pulled all of his starting eight position players, with the exception of shortstop Zack Cozart and catcher Ryan Hanigan, after the sixth inning. Hanigan was replaced in the bottom of the inning when Corky Miller pinch-hit for him.
Miller drove in the lone run of the night for the Reds with a double to score Cozart, who extended his hitting streak to a career-high 15 games with a one-out double.
Tuesday wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination. There’s no sugar-coating two losses to the Cubs. All the Reds can do is work on winning the series finale and ending the homestand 7-3.
“Some defeats are worse than others,” said Baker, “but what good is bringing yesterday into today? It doesn’t do any good. And if you bring this (loss) forward, you’ll feel like hell.”
