Snakes and Bears

This post brought to you by the letter "R" for "rain delay." Now that my sister is officially married, she no longer owns my soul and I can return to blogging action. The rain delay in Chicago is at least convenient for catching up on the long weekend. I hope y'all didn't melt while I was away.

The series with the Diamondbacks was very similar to the last series. Two pretty frustrating losses followed by what I'm sure was an exhilarating win. Cincy lost 3-0 on Friday and 7-0 Saturday, and then won 5-4 on Sunday.

Eric Milton had a great game on Friday, giving up 3 hits and one run while striking out 9 over 8 innings. Unfortunately, the offense gave him 0 runs to back it up. Todd C0ffey allowed 2 runs in the 9th, bringing his ERA all the way up to 1.26. The infuriating Brandon Webb held the Reds to just 7 hits over the entire game. I don't remember if I had a Least Favorite Diamondback before this weekend. If I did, it should have been Webb, because he irritated me last time, too. If not, it's Webb now.

It looks like Saturday was just an ugly day. The Reds added two more errors (one for Dunn and one for LaRue) to their already sky-high total. The Snakes scored 4 runs on Aaron Harang, only 2 of which were earned, and 3 on Kent Mercker, all of which were earned. Matt Belisle allowed no hits and no runs in his 1 inning. Once again the offense failed to produce, getting just 5 hits.

Sunday was much better. Javier Valentin saved the day with a walk-off home run after the Reds had been down 4-3. Bronson Arroyo started for Cincinnati, the win went to David Weathers, and Chris Hammond pitched in between. All 4 of Arizona's runs were credited to Arroyo. Ryan Freel, Scott Hatteberg and Valentin all had home runs. Yay for a win!

Monday the Reds went to Chicago, where they were slapped around a bit in a 7-3 loss to the Cubs. I'm blaming it mostly on Mercker, but I'm not sure it's entirely his fault. After all, Elizardo Ramirez and Rick White gave up runs, too. It's just that the tiny bit of the game I managed to catch involved Mercker giving up a 2-run homer. Dunn hit his 17th home run of the season, which I heard was also his 17th career home run at Wrigley. I don't want to take the effort to verify that, though, so I'm just going to assume whoever told me that knew what they were talking about. Alas, the home run was not enough, as the Cubs took out their We Suck Frustration on the Reds.

Now the two teams are in the midst of rain delay during game 2 of the series. The Reds are up 1-0 in the middle of the 4th after Edwin Encarnacion singled in Dunn. Brandon Claussen is going against Greg Maddux. Maybe the game will resume here in a bit, but the storm's a big'un according to the Color Weather Radar channel.