Young Matt Belisle took the mound again today after Ramon Ortiz was officially put on the DL yesterday. Belisle got battered around a bit. Well, more than a bit. He gave up four runs in the first inning, three of them homeruns. Truly a testament to the power of a kid having too much time to overanalyze his last, excellent start.

But for me, those numbers were secondary to the way he handled himself on the mound. For a guy who's 24, four months younger than my younger brother, I was impressed with his composure. No freaking out, no tantrums, no winging the ball at batters' heads.

In fact, upon closer introspection, I realize that I have the same sort of pride in Belisle's behavior that I would have if he actually were my little brother. And it seemed to be going around, since the Reds' offense slowly rumbled to life to eventually spare Belisle the loss.

Adam Dunn hit a couple of homeruns, like a true big brother shoving back a bully. Ken Griffey Jr. demonstrated some of that clutch hitting that I hear he used to do so well by singling in Ryan Freel. Rich Aurilia gave his detractors something to shut up about when he singled in Dunn and Wily Mo Penña. And the catcher, the consummate protector of the pitcher, Jason LaRue, came up big to double in Peña and Aurilia for the runs that would eventually win the game.

Maybe I imagined it, but it seemed to me that the whole game had a brotherly feel to it. If tomorrow the Enquirer says that the team gave Belisle a swirly after the game, we'll know for sure.

Every day my corporation sends an email message to all of its employees with links to news stories that are relevant to us in our fields or daily activities. Today, this was one of the links.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/technology/18blog.html

I think I'm OK for now, but should the big-wigs hand down a pro-Cardinals policy, I'm going to be looking for work real quick.

The score of the win this afternoon over the Astros matched the Reds' record: 6-5. That could be a pattern difficult to maintain through June.

The star of today's game was Wily Mo Peña. Not only did he knock a 3-run homerun in the fourth inning to take the lead, but he also hit a nice RBI double in the eighth to take back the lead that the middle relief had given away. Peña also made a handsome attempt to catch a homerun ball over the right-field wall, a catch that he might have made had he had more practice. It would be great to see Peña get more playing time. If only there were someone, anyone in the starting outfield that was off to a slow start whose place he could take for a while. If only.

As predicted, Felipe Lopez got the start at shortstop today after Rich Aurilia's two consecutive RBI games. Lopez didn't get a hit today, so now that the coaching staff has made sure that Lopez is good and cold, we're sure to be seeing Aurilia in the field again tomorrow.

Ryan Wagner continues to be a bad-ass on the mound and appears to have rocketed up the bullpen ranks to be the eighth-inning man. Rumblings on the old blog circuit are already starting about making him the ninth-inning man, especially with the dramatics Danny Graves has put us through lately.

And I have to wonder whether Graves is feeling it. At least twice now in stories on the official Reds site he's been quoted talking about how hard this game is for pitchers. The first time I noticed was in the game summary of the win against the Cardinals on April 13, Graves said “[The ground-rule double] is probably the only rule in baseball that's good for the pitcher.” The second time was a little quote about the vision-enhancing contact lenses that Nike is working on, “It's an advantage to the hitter, no question,” he said. “Anything that helps the pitcher is illegal.”

Sounds like our man Graves is feeling a little bitter, even though we all know that he doesn't have anything to worry about, especially if the saves keep coming. Nevertheless, he might gives those contact lenses another try.

“Well, now that's strange,” I say to my husband as we sit next to each other at our respective computers. This is quality family time.
“What's that?” he responds, not looking away from the page of code on the screen.
“The Enquirer doesn't have a story up about today's game,” I tell him, “neither does the Post.”
“Weird,” he says, then with his mysterious tone, “Maybe it never happened.”
“That's a pretty scary thought,” I said.

It wouldn't have been such a scary thought if it hadn't been so long since the Reds managed to pull together a win over the Astros. The Astros string of wins against the Reds was, I believe the technical term is “ass-long,” which just increases the possibility that today's win was, in fact, a hallucination brought on by a bad bunch of quesadillas.

For the moment, at least, I'll choose to believe that the game that I thought heard on the radio did, indeed, happen, and I'll be super-psyched. Yay!

Points worthy of note:

- Milton looked (sounded) great. I won't jinx things by suggesting that we might finally have a real-life starter that we can actually count on, but, well, I'll just stop. Ryan Wagner also kicked ass (again).

- The Reds scored all of their runs without the aid of homeruns. To me that says baseball with finesse. And again they seemed to make a lot happen with two outs. To me that says they aren't rolling over.

- Rich Aurilia got RBIs again! That's two games in a row! Maybe he's finally warming up, which can only mean one thing: Felipe Lopez will be starting at short tomorrow.

- The Reds playing on my fantasy team did me no good: Joe Randa went 0-for-4 and Ryan Freel contributed a strikeout. The Red sitting on my fantasy team today, Sean Casey, went 2-for-4. Figures.

- Danny Graves, as usual, was lucky to have more than one run to play with, since that's the number he gave away. I'm not one of those people who is constantly calling for Gravy's head, but must we have such drama every single time??

It's late and I'm tired, but if I'm dreaming a win, don't pinch me. Just to make sure, maybe I'd better have a plate of quesadillas before I retire.

It was a game so bereft of bright points that FSN included a shot of Wilson walking out to the mound as one of the scenes in the bumper. Big sigh.

Paul Wilson was less than stellar tonight, committing the Reds' first error of the season and then proceeding to get walloped what felt like a million times, though it turned out to be just six earned runs over 5 innings. To me, a 4.50 ERA didn't really sound that great to begin with, but even that's out the window tonight.

The Reds also continued their confounding pattern of giving up hits to the pitcher when Wilson gave up a single to Oswalt in the fifth. What is the deal? It's happened enough already that pitchers shouldn't be able to sneak up on them like that anymore. “Pitch to contact” doesn't mean “contact to pitchers,” guys.

Sean Casey made a fantastic but unsuccessful dive into the dugout after a foul ball. My favorite part of that clip was watching Jason LaRue dive after him. All the parents out there could recognize that dive as exactly the kind of acrobatics you participate in when your 3-year old is a hurtling, Matrix-style toward the concrete, but since Casey's got about 5 inches and 30 pounds on LaRue, it would have been a pretty spectacular catapult four rows into the stands for LaRue if he'd managed to get a hand on Casey.

I was very pleased to see Rich Aurilia get his first RBI of the season. I really want to see Aurilia do well because it would be good for the Reds and because Felipe Lopez strikes me, and I say this with the tenderest of care, as an impetuous punk who needs another year to grow up. The way it's been going for Aurilia and Lopez so far, though, even I am having trouble understanding why they keep playing Aurilia. The only thing I can see it accomplishing is ever-more-deeply entrenching the anti-Auriliites.

Twice in the bottom of the ninth, Astros faltered trying to catch playable foul balls, one at the edge of the stands on the right field side and one behind the plate. These peccadillos would have done a lot more to ease the sting of the 11-2 loss if, in both cases, the batter hadn't come back to immediately strike out.

All-in-all, a performance sadly unfit for my earlier Oscar Meyer Wienermobile sighting. I guess that processed meat products aren't the good omen I always thought they were.