Boxscore

I stop paying attention to baseball over the weekend, and lo and behold, the Astros (8-12) embarked on an actual winning streak. Sure it’s only two games, but that’s a start.

Roy Oswalt (2-3) seems to have returned to his old self, pitching 7 innings, striking out 6, and allowing just three runs. Former Red Justin Germano (0-2) was awful for the padres, allowing 10 runs, all earned, in his 3 1/3 innings. Ouch.

It’s nice to see the Astros offense start to come around. Berkman and Tejada both homered for Houston.

The Astros seek to continue their streaking ways tonight when Jake Peavy goes against Brandon Backe at 8:05pm EDT.

Boxscore

A day after royally blowing a save to the Reds, the Brewers (11-8) gave Eric Gagne the night off and instead turned to Derick Turnbow (0-1) to face the Cardinals (13-7) with a tied game in the top of the ninth.

Turnbow did slightly better than Gagne the day before, only Turnbow doesn’t have the four-days-in-a-row of pitching excuse. Brian Barton lead off the inning with a double and score an out later on Skip Schumaker’s hit.

Ryan Franklin (1-1) picks up the vulture win after having blown the save, and Jason Isringhausen (S 7) got the actual save.

The two face again Tuesday at 1:05pm EDT. Kyle Lohse faces Manny Parra.CA

Boxscore

As the Cincinnati Reds came to bat in the bottom of the tenth inning of Sunday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers, the situation looked suspiciously similar to Saturday’s game between the same two teams. In that one, the Brewers had scored a pair of runs in the top of the tenth to take the lead, and closer Eric Gagne had slammed the door with a 1-2-3 inning to nail down a 5-3 Milwaukee win.

Now, one day later, here were the Brewers, fresh off scoring a pair of tenth-inning runs and leading by 3-1, and here was Gagne taking the mound again for the Brew Crew. As Yogi Berra might have said, “It was Deja Vu all over again.”

Aaron Harang had pitched eight innings of one-run ball for the Reds, striking out eight and lowering his ERA to 2.83, but left with a no-decision, the score tied at 1-1 as the Reds’ Edwin Encarnacion and the Brewers’ J.J. Hardy exchanged solo homers. Then the Brewers scored twice in the tenth off Jared Burton, aided by an Encarnacion fielding error. Rushing to start what would have been an inning-ending double play, Edwin booted a grounder to load the bases for the Brewers. Burton then uncorked a wild pitch, allowing the go-ahead run to score for Milwaukee. The Brewers scored another run moments later on an RBI single by Hardy. Although Burton escaped further damage, it looked like the Reds were headed to their second extra-innings loss in two nights when Gagne took to the hill in the bottom of the tenth.

The rain-soaked fans who were still inside GABP (most of them were already in the parking lot by the time the fun started) booed Encarnacion when he came to the plate to lead off the inning. This time, though, the Reds came up with a different ending for the story.

Encarnacion and Paul Bako went back-to-back on Gagne to tie the score, and Scott Hatteberg drew a walk, chasing Gagne. Ryan Freel was inserted as a pinch-runner, and after Salomon Torres fanned Corey Patterson, Brandon Phillips beat out an infield single to set the stage for Ken Griffey Jr. Griffey wisely laid off two consecutive low pitches as Torres tried to induce a double-play grounder. Finally, behind in the count and with the dangerous Adam Dunn in the on-deck circle, Torres was forced to challenge Griffey, who smoked the 3-1 pitch over Corey Hart’s head and into deep right field for a walkoff single to plate Freel and hand the Brewers their first extra-innings loss of the season.

If you’ve been paying close attention for the last couple season, you’ve noticed that I’ve answered five questions about the Reds for blogs that follow the opposing teams. This sounds like something I would initiate, but actually, in both cases I was approached by the other blogger. It’s like we’re becoming a big NLC collective consciousness or something.

The first set of questions came from the Cubs blog Goat Rider’s of the Apocolypse, which I think I’ve already linked to. I haven’t mentioned the award that they’ve also bestowed upon Red Hot Mama, the Corey Patterson award – an award given to a blog covering a team with a player who’s failed to meet his potential. Damn that’s a lot of modifiers. And as long as you’re visiting Goat Riders’ discussion of the Reds, you can read this inexplicably passionate decrying of Marty Brennaman’s inexplicably passionate response to the idiot Cub fans inexplicable throwing of balls on the field after an Adam Dunn home run a few games ago.

More recently, the blog Brew Crew Ball posted my answers to some questions on the Reds before the current series. It’s really nice to have an interaction with a Brewer’s blog; we really haven’t had many conversations with Brewers fans around here, so here’s another link. This is where they talk about Ben Sheets getting hurt.

Continuing the theme of other bloggers who have not come to terms with the fact that RHM is no longer a Reds-only blog, I got a message about this proposal for improving the display of retired numbers at Great American Ball Park from BrianBaute.com. I kinda like the idea, and I’d put adding the names of the players high on the priority list for changes as well.

As we work our way down the emails in my inbox, here’s another episode of the MLB Roundup from DoublePlayTV.

And heck, while we’re at it, check out the new sports portal FanBunker.com, where they advertise hand-pick the blogs they pull from to give you the highest quality sports news.

If that trip ’round the blogsphere wasn’t enough for you, finish up with this bizarre song and video from Ryan Parker.

Boxscore

I saw that the Cardinals (12-5) scored 11 runs and thought, how on earth do they keep playing so awesomely? And then I saw that they were playing the Giants (6-11), which goes a long way in explaining that 11-spot.

Still, the Cardinals continue to surprise. Todd Wellemeyer (2-0), of all people, had a great start, limiting the Giants to 1 run over 7 innings. Matt Cain (0-2) got the loss, due in no small part to the homeruns he allowed to Chris Duncan and Albert Pujols.

The middle game of the series is this afternoon at 1:10pm EDT with Tim Lincecum versus Joel Pineiro.