Last Game
The Reds suffered an old fashioned walloping last night at the hands of the Diamondbacks, losing 7-1. You’d like to think that it was just the lack of Joey Votto, but unpredictable performances from Mat Latos and an offense unable to string hits together have been hallmarks of this team all year.

Next Game
The best the Reds can hope for is a split in the 4-game series if they win this afternoon. Mike Leake (3-6, 3.96 ERA) defends against Joe Saunders (4-6, 3.52 ERA) at 12:35 p.m. There’s no television coverage for this one.

Unpredictable Performances from Latos
I heard a lot of people talking about the fact that, before last night, Latos hadn’t notched a Loss since April 18, but that didn’t ring true to me. Has it really been since the first month of the season since Latos has put in a rocky start?

Yeah, no. The imperfection of the Win/Loss stat strikes again. In fact, Latos has been relatively solid for the last month, but while he’s gotten Ws in his last 7 decisions, he’s also gotten 8 no-decisions in that time, and only 3 of those were blown saves. It was as recently as June 18 when he gave up 7 runs on 8 hits in only 4.0 innings to the Cleveland Indians. The offense take the lead before the eventual loss to bail him out.

He followed that particular performance up with back-to-back complete games, though. We sure could use a couple more of those about now.

What to Say to Sound Smart at the Water Cooler
The last person to get more than 7 decisions in a row in their favor was Danny Graves. He won his first 8 decisions in 2000.