Just as Johnny Cueto was set to begin a rehab outing in the minors, he suffered a setback.

Cueto, who is on the DL for a strained right lat, felt soreness in his oblique muscle.

“He had a good bullpen [Monday] and he didn’t experience anything in his arm but he experienced soreness in that oblique that he hurt last year in the playoffs,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said. “So, we’ll wait and see.”

Ugh. I know Tony Cingrani is dominating the majors right now, but filling in for a pitcher like Cueto is too much pressure for a rookie, no matter how talented.

Cueto’s not shown himself to be the most durable pitcher over his career, with last year being the only one of his five where he topped 200 innings pitched. Hopefully, this soreness will be nothing too serious and the healing time will serve to make Cueto healthy and ready to finish the season strong.

Hire Joe Morgan’s House

When I first saw this article about Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame second baseman putting his California mansion up for sale, I was primarily interested in the slideshow of images showing the home the athlete and broadcaster had lived in over the years.

Then I read the article. Apparently, if you’re a celebrity and choose to use a Realtor to sell your house, they will mock you and treat you like you’re an out-of-touch joke.

The Cincinnati Reds legend and integral cog in the Big Red Machine tabbed Frank Lloyd Wright associate Aaron Green to design the curvy, stone-hewn dwelling in 1980 – and, as one might surmise from the listing photos, not much has changed since that time.

Yes, exactly what you want from the real estate company you hired to sell your house: snark about how everything is old and needs to be updated. I’ve sold a house before and dealt with an agent who didn’t do a good job, but they never publicly made fun of the listing.

The article continues the snarkery, leveling one of the bathrooms.

And let’s not overlook the FernGully bathroom that has some of the most impressive green tile and leaf accents this scribe has ever seen.

The house is listed at $2.9 million, but I bet you could offer $1.5 million, citing all the problems that the website points out. Recommend that they take the difference out of the agent’s commission; I bet Morgan would be happy to work with you.

Yes, the Cincinnati Reds lost an excellent pitchers’ duel between Bronson Arroyo and Jaime Garcia last night, but you undoubtedly stayed up to watch that whole thing. What you may have missed was Jay Bruce reaching his limit of twitter abuse around midnight after the game.

Bruce has started the season slowly and has yet to go on one of his signature player of the week tears. Not to mention he ended the game last night by striking out. But lashing out on social media?

The Enquirer does a great job rounding up the response.

I appreciate all the tweets, good and bad, actually. You guys are what drive the game. I’m obviously not hitting as well as I’d like to, yet I actually feel sorry for the people on here who feel that it’s necessary to try and put me down on twitter. It really just explains [f]urther who you are, and there are obviously things in your life that you’re unhappy about and you take it out on me via twitter. I suggest you look into talking with a life coach or something to help you get over whatever you have going on in your life. There is obviously a lack of something going on, and I hope you guys get it straightened out, because you all sound like idiots Everyone have a good night. Haha

[View the story “Jay Bruce takes to Twitter after game” on Storify]

I think Enquirer reporter John Fay has the best response.

My advice when I saw Bruce looking at Twitter: “You don’t want to do that.” It[‘s] not [a] pleasant place for a struggling athlete to be.

That’s very true. I can’t imagine the grief he must receive on a daily basis. People on the internet are assholes. Sports fans on the internet are even worse, as the twitter account showcasing the self-proclaimed best fans in baseball of the Cardinals has shown.

I can’t see much good coming from Bruce’s outburst. The more knowledgeable fans already realize that one month doesn’t equal a whole season. The sky-is-falling set will just brush it off as another entitled, rich athlete making excuses for not performing up to his paycheck.

With more and more athletes engaging in social media from a younger age, this type of thing is something I can see happening more often in the future. And the only real solution to it is for the player to not engage with his fans and cancel his social media accounts. That would be a shame, considering some of the entertainment and goodwill that’s come from them, such as from Brandon Phillips’.

At the end of the day, though, I’d much rather Bruce be focusing on improving his baseball-playing ability than paying attention to idiot criticism. If the trade-off is fewer athlete twitter accounts, that’s something I can live with.

It took four tries, but Mat Latos finally overcame his streak of terrible Aprils to start seasons. That it came in his second year with the Cincinnati Reds is not really a surprise, given how much looser he was coming into camp.

Latos talked about this during spring training, mentioning the pressure that he felt after the trade in 2012.

“Who’s to say that I’m that good to be traded for four guys? That’s what killed me,” Latos said. “If I had been traded for one guy, it would have been a lot different. Something like that happens, automatically there’s a pressure regardless. You’re like, ‘Crap, I’ve got to prove that I’m worth four guys.'”

That feeling is over with this year.

And the results have shown it. Consider his first three Aprils in the majors.

Year	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	CG	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	WHIP	SO/9	SO/BB
2010	1	2	.333	6.20	4	4	0	20.1	24	14	14	5	6	1	13	0	1.475	5.8	2.17
2011	0	4	.000	4.98	4	4	0	21.2	19	17	12	5	10	0	25	1	1.338	10.4	2.50
2012	1	2	.333	5.97	5	5	0	28.2	35	19	19	4	10	0	18	0	1.570	5.7	1.80

6.20, 4.98, and 5.97. Those are not the ERAs of someone who starts the season strong.

Now look at 2013.

Year	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	CG	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	WHIP	SO/9	SO/BB
2013	2	0	1.000	1.83	6	6	0	39.1	35	11	8	3	8	0	37	1	1.093	8.5	4.63

An ERA below 2.00 and almost 40 innings. Back in the spring, Latos had this to say.

“I’m hoping to resurrect my April,” Latos said.

With those stats, consider that mission accomplished. Now if he can make this his weakest month, then 2013 will be shaping up to be an amazing year.

I’m so glad Mat Latos is a Red.

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Reds (13-10)	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	2
Nationals (11-11)	0	2	4	0	0	0	0	2	-	8	12	0

Boxscore

It took until the fifth start of the 2013 season, but Bronson Arroyo’s evil, incompetent twin Badrroyo finally made his first appearance. Arroyo pitched six innings, allowing nine hits, six runs–five earned, while striking out two. It was a bad performance that the Reds’ offense had no hope of overcoming.

The Reds scored just one run, and that was thanks to a solo home run by Joey Votto in the fourth inning off Washington Nationals starter Gio Gonzalez. Gonzalez was on top of his game, though, as that was the only hit he allowed over his eight innings of work. I wonder if Votto will be criticized for hitting a “wasted” home run. It’s probably not something he’s paid to do.

Arroyo was bad and the offense was bad, what else? The bullpen didn’t help matters much. JJ Hoover contributed a scoreless inning, which is nice to see. He’s been a lot more effective now that he’s not being called on to pitch every game. But Logan Ondrusek had a bad outing in the eight, allowing the Nationals to score two more runs. Other than that, he’s been much improved since returning to the majors this year.

Today the Reds will go again for their second road victory of the season. That’s right. They’ve won just one road game so far, having an away record of 1-6. They’ll hope for better luck tonight when Homer Bailey goes against Jordan Zimmerman at 7:05pm.