Boxscore

A day after Edgar Renteria provided a walk-off hit, the Cincinnati Reds were forced to attempt it again. But the comeback-magic wasn’t there this time.

Bronson Arroyo had one of his bad starts, but he changed it up this time. Instead of allowing a heapin’ helpin’ of runs early and leaving the game before the 3rd inning, this time he kept the Reds in the game until the 7th. Over 7 innings, he allowed 5 runs–all earned–and all on home runs. It was a windy day at Great American.

The real kicker came from reliever Nick Masset, though. The 4 runs he allowed in the 8th were really the nails in the coffin.

The offense ended up scoring 5 runs, and were a good hit from Joey Votto away from tying it in the 9th. But like so many games recently, the Reds missed the win by that much.

This team has been tough to watch, but watch I do, continuing to hope for the luck to change. With each loss being so close and due to one pitcher’s bad pitch or one hitter’s bad swing, it feels like the team is damn close to getting on a roll. It just hasn’t happened yet, and the team can’t seem to get above .500, let alone back to really competing for 1st place.