Businessweek published its list of America’s 50 best cities based on leisure, colleges, economics, and air quality, and Cincinnati made it into the top half. Interestingly, the primary reason for its high ranking seems to be Great American Ball Park.

Cincinnati
Rank: 21
Population: 292,050

Nestled on the Ohio River, Ohio’s third-largest city has a picturesque downtown that includes one of the country’s most beautiful pro sports stadiums, the Cincinnati Reds’ Great American Ball Park on the riverside. Other city stalwarts: the acclaimed Cincinnati Pops orchestra and major employer Procter & Gamble (PG).

Bars: 105
Restaurants: 600
Museums: 18
Libraries: 35
Pro sports teams: 2
Park acres per 1,000 residents: 21
Colleges: 8
Percent with graduate degree: 8.9
Median household income: $49,048
Percent unemployed: 7.2

If you’re curious about the rest of the NLC cities, Pittsburgh fared best with a #11 ranking. Milwaukee (26), Chicago (28), and St. Louis (47) all trailed the Queen City.

The Cincinnati Reds signed former Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher Zach Duke today.

Duke is expected to join the AAA Louisville Bats.

As far as the signing goes, I think the key part about it is that Duke is left handed. Currently, the only left-handed relievers in the Reds’ bullpen are Manny Parra and Aroldis Chapman. Chapman is the closer, and in MLB the way it is today, the closer pitches the 9th inning and the 9th inning only. As for Parra, his attempts to fill the role that injured reliever Sean Marshall had has failed spectacularly. His 7.50 is not getting it done.

I have to think that should Parra continue to struggle, we might see Duke. Duke has not done well in limited time with the Washington Nationals this year, but I sure can’t fault the Reds for searching for other options.

Hopefully, though, Marshall will return sooner than later. This team needs him putting up zeros in the late innings.

Well, the Reds may have been unable to take their thirteenth consecutive win at Wrigley Field today, but how about that Curtis Partch, huh? He wasn’t so much his first time out, but tonight he soaked up four of the fourteen innings in that debacle against the Cubs. Even Mat Latos only pitched six.

And they were four scoreless innings at that. Only 1 hit and 4 strike-outs. Of course, neither team was doing much offensively with those crazy shadows all over the infield, but you can’t knock Partch for that. Dude was called on to keep the Cubbies scoress until the Reds took the lead, and he did as well as could be expected considering that the Reds never took the lead. The guy even batted once.

Which brings up another salient point: Curtis Partch can’t hit. He might want to work on his game at the plate.

Meanwhile, it hindsight it looks pretty weird that the Reds lost in 14 innings and Aroldis Chapman never threw a pitch. Maybe the rule ought to be that Chapman is the second-to-last resort behind Jonathan “I’m apparently not available until the choice is between me and Chapman” Broxton. Alas poor Broxton. Does his apparently injured and velocity-impaired self really deserve the loss?

Oh, and by the way, Sam LeCure was the one to give up the lead the Reds had and force his game into all these extra innings in the first place. He’s got to be hurt at this point, right? The kind of hurt that pitchers don’t know they have because they have a constant level of pain that drowns everything else out anyway?

Oh well, tomorrow is another day, when the Reds will be back home to host the Brewers. For everyone’s sake, I hope at least 1 guy has been put on the DL by then.

The Reds sent me an email this weekend to let me know that Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips are currently the leading All Star Game vote-getters in the NL for their positions. At that time, Votto had 1,569,477 votes. Who’s in second and how much does he trail by? The email didn’t go into that kind of detail.

Getting any kind of details on where the voting stands in the All-Star Game is like pulling teeth. Before I started writing this post I combed through a week’s worth of archives on MLB.com looking for the numbers without any luck. I did stumble upon this old press release, though:

For the first time ever, All-Star Game balloting updates will be revealed live on television over the weekend, as part of MLB national broadcasts on FOX and ESPN.

This Saturday, June 8th, and next Saturday, June 15th, FOX will exclusively reveal updated voting totals for the American League starters as part of its “Baseball Night in America” pre-game show at 7:00 p.m. ET before its slate of prime time games begins.

This Sunday, June 9th, and next Sunday, June 16th, ESPN will exclusively reveal updated voting totals for the National League starters during “Baseball Tonight” at 7:00 p.m. ET prior to its Sunday Night Baseball telecast.

Well that explains it. They’re not going to give away information for free online when they want to force you to watch FOX and ESPN for it. I’m only surprised that they didn’t put it on MLB Network.

I didn’t catch the numbers last weekend, and I probably won’t next weekend either, but I can guess that Votto is leading his spot by a wide margin. The Reds know that you can motivate this fan base to vote in mass quantities with a close race. It follows that a landslide victory will cause fans to shrug and figure the All Star situation is taken care of, so they’d want to keep a big lead quiet.

On the other hand, they did give the numbers for Phillips. At that time he had 1,541,720 and was leading the Giants’ Marco Scutaro’s 1,285,076. While not a for-sure lead, that’s not exactly the kind of challenge that Reds fans took on to get Votto in as the 25th man a couple years ago. Maybe we should aim for something a little less likely. See if we can get Ryan Ludwick voted in. He ought to be just about off the DL by then.

Before tonight’s game against the Chicago Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds called up Tony Cingrani to make a start in the place of disabled ace Johnny Cueto. Henry Rodriguez was sent down to Louisville to make room on the active roster.

But this may be just a single game appearance for Cingrani this time. During Cueto’s previous time on the disabled list, Cingrani made six starts and acquitted himself well. The Reds are expecting Cueto to be ready to go the next time his turn comes in the rotation.

“I felt really good,” Cueto said after the throwing session at Wrigley Field. “I feel ready now.”

This is good news. Of course, Cueto’s absence has not been felt strongly at all, thanks to Cingrani. I wonder, though, is there any chance of having Cingrani stay around to shore up the bullpen? The relievers need the help far more than the starters.