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Reds starter Johnny
Cueto led the Reds to theor second straight series sweep. This time,
the Mets got the Reds broom. Cincinnati will head to Cleveland for
another series with the Indians.
Cincinnati Reds...
Reds Sweep
Tribe then sweep Mets
reds.com
NEW YORK -- Reds manager Dusty Baker was aware of what the Mets did in
their previous series, a three-game sweep of the Rays, before meeting
the Reds this weekend. That just made him even more impressed with
Cincinnati’s performance the past three days.
With a 3-1 victory on Sunday at Citi Field, the Reds held New York --
which scored 29 runs in three games off the Rays’ formidable pitching
staff this week -- to just five runs in three games.
“That’s baseball,” Baker said. “That’s something you can’t figure out,
how they were so hot against a quality pitching staff like the Rays.
You come in and get reports on the guys, and who’s hot and who’s not,
and almost everybody’s hot. They say good pitching beats good hitting,
and we had very good pitching this weekend.”
Johnny Cueto was the man behind Cincinnati’s sixth consecutive win,
striking out a season-high eight batters in seven innings for his
team-best 11th quality start of the year. In the three-game sweep, the
Reds’ rotation notched a 2.14 ERA, and Cueto’s ERA over his last four
starts is 1.76.
The Reds are a season-high 11 games over .500 (38-27).
Cueto overcame some early dizziness -- the Reds’ staff tended to him in
the third, giving him some water and medicine before he resumed
throwing -- and allowed one run on six hits.
Cueto allowed singles to three consecutive hitters in the second inning
before facing Mets starter Chris Young, who drew a bases-loaded walk to
make it 1-0. After the troublesome second inning, Cueto had logged 50
pitches. He left after seven innings having thrown 111 total.
The right-hander led off the third with a double for his first career
extra-base hit, which he said may have prompted the dizziness later in
the inning. Baker and the Cincinnati trainer came out to check on Cueto
after he said he was feeling lightheaded, but the hurler stayed in the
game and had no further difficulty.
“After I hit that double and got to second, my eyes were blurry and I
was dizzy and I felt like I was going to throw up,” Cueto said
afterward, speaking through translator Tomas Vera. “After that, I
relaxed. I felt better and I threw the kind of game I wanted to throw.”
The Reds finally scored in the fifth when Zack Cozart laced a two-out
double into the left-field corner to start a rally. Wilson Valdez
followed with an RBI single up the middle before Young intentionally
walked Joey Votto. Brandon Phillips then came through with an RBI
single, and right fielder Lucas Duda made a throwing error on the play
that allowed Votto to score and run the Cincinnati advantage to 3-1.
“Every time I tried to pull the ball, I kept popping up,” said
Phillips, who admitted he had trouble facing the 6-foot-10 Young for
the first time. “I was like, ‘This dude is killing me,’ and I was
starting to get [annoyed]. So I said, ‘Let me go at it and try to focus
on hitting the ball the other way.’ And I went out there and got a key
hit.”
Young allowed nine hits and three runs (two earned) in seven innings.
Cueto got out of trouble in the fifth and sixth with double plays, but
none prettier than the one Phillips turned coming toward second base to
field a ground ball hit by Ike Davis, which he flipped to Cozart to
start a 4-6-3 double play in the sixth.
“I’d probably give it an 8 1/2,” Phillips said. “A lot of people just
said it looked effortless. It’s hard to really grade something when it
looked like it just naturally happened. But I practice on stuff like
that in batting practice. ... It just happened. It’s just something
that just came natural. I’m glad we made the play.”
Jose Arredondo and Sean Marshall (who earned his team-best ninth save)
combined to throw two scoreless innings, bringing the bullpen’s total
to six shutout frames on the weekend.
“We got out-pitched. We got out-hit,” Mets manager Terry Collins said.
“They’ve been doing exactly what we’ve been doing with that outstanding
middle of the lineup they have, and they came in and drove in runs.”
It was Cincinnati’s second consecutive series sweep, after taking three
straight from the Indians, who they will meet again on Monday in
Cleveland.
“We’re having fun,” Phillips said. “It’s fun winning. That’s the fun
thing about playing baseball -- getting as many wins as possible.”
Read this and other articles at the Cincinnati Reds
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