I’m sure the Cincinnati Reds can use the day off after playing about 100 games in a row away from home and losing 80 of them*. But I always miss baseball, even after stretches like that. Of course, a bunch of those games were during the day while I was at work, so it was kind of like they were off days to me, anyway.

But today is an actual off-day before the Reds start a series at home with the San Francisco Giants tomorrow. Finding content when the team doesn’t play can be challenging.

• Redleg Nation listed reasons the season isn’t over.
• Red Reporter whipped out the calculator and the maths and stuff to see what kind of holes are in the Reds’ bats.
• And C-ing Red makes fun of a billboard that the Chicago Cubs have in the outfield.

But all that sounds like work. So instead, here’s a picture of Alfonso Soriano missing a routine fly ball.

He misses fly balls and could be yours for just $57 million over 3 years!

Boxscore

The Reds finally won their second series of the young 2012 season today when they picked on someone smaller than them in the Chicago Cubs.

Johnny Cueto took the mound and provided 6.1 innings of five hit, two run (one earned) performance. He struck out seven and walked two. From there, Logan Ondrusek took over to walk a guy and strike a guy out before handing the ball over to Aroldis Chapman. Chapman finished out the seventh and also pitched through the eighth, giving up no hits and no runs, walking two and striking out one. Finally, our rarely seen closer, Sean Marshall gave up one earned run on one hit in the ninth, which was OK because the lead was two. He also struck out two.

Drew Stubbs, Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, and Scott Rolen provided the RBI today. Stubbs’ 1-for-4 day with a walk continues a modest hot streak that makes it much more pleasant to watch his at-bats. Votto went 2-for-3 with two walks, bringing his league-leading total number of walks to 17. Dude’s rocking a .444 OBP.

The win brings the Reds’ record to 7-9. Which isn’t that great, but on the other side, the loss brings the Cubs’ record to 4-12, so there’s some perspective for you. Tomorrow they take the day off before heading home to open a series with the Giants on Tuesday at 7:10. Mat Latos will take on the dreaded TBA.

You’ve seen Apple fanatics post videos of themselves unboxing their brand new iPads or Newtons. Well, at the Red Hot Household we are just as fanatical about Joey Votto as those guys are about their devices, so it just makes sense that’d we’d share our experience unboxing our VottO’s cereal.

Boxscore

The Cincinnati Reds are marching slowly back towards the land of the winning record. And they improved their record to 6-8 yesterday with the club’s 10,000th franchise victory.

The Reds are the 6th professional team to reach the 10,000 mark. Their opponents, the Chicago Cubs, had done it a while ago, as had the San Francisco Giants, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Atlanta Braves.

As big of a number as that is, it doesn’t really affect the 2012 season, one which has seen the Reds struggle offensively to start the season. That wasn’t the case on a windy day at Wrigley Field.

The Reds batted around in the first inning and dropped a nice, big 4-spot on the board. Homer Bailey contributed a quality start. The defense behind Bailey was uncharacteristically shaky, but Bailey kept his cool, going 7 innings and allowing 1 earned run (3 unearned) on 5 hits, no walks, and 2 strikeouts. It was a nice outing for Homer. After he left, the bullpen kept the Cubs scoreless, thanks to Aroldis Chapman–who should be starting–and Jose Arredondo.

The scoring had contributions from almost everyone. Joey Votto, Chris Heisey, Willie Harris, Drew Stubbs, Homer Bailey, and Todd Frazier all knocked in runs. Stubbs drove in 3 as he extended his hitting streak to 6 games.

The game against the Cubs made the Reds seem a completely different team than how they appeared against the Marlins, Nationals, and Cardinals. I knew the Reds had played only good teams so far, but it’s a little disconcerting to see that they couldn’t hang with good teams very well. Hopefully, beating up on teams worse than them will get the Reds the confidence they need the next time some good teams come around.

I saw this Sporting News article today on Redleg Nation, who are starting to beat the drum to make Joey Votto the next captain of the Cincinnati Reds. While I think it might yet be too early to bestow such an honor–the last one was Barry Larkin–it does strike me as an inevitabile choice at this point. Of course, that’s not what this little post is about. This post is about other ways Votto demonstrates his extraordinary awesomeness.

“I was getting tired of running into situations when I couldn’t communicate with my teammates,” he says. “I’d like to befriend some of my teammates and become a better teammate in general. I think speaking the same language and understanding their perspective would help a lot.”

Votto hired a private instructor this past offseason and took up to five hour-long classes a week during the winter He hasn’t had time for all the classes since the season started, but he still spends part of nearly every day studying Spanish. He conjugates verbs, works with the Rosetta Stone program and recently has made a point of hanging with Latin teammates during pregame stretches.

That is just so awesome. For most people outside of the US, learning another language isn’t an uncommon thing. Here, it often feels like an almost impossible accomplishment. Of course, that could be because the only place to practice in much of the US is in schools and classrooms.

But Votto has the perfect immersive environment. And he’s taking advantage of it, much like a certain other career Red did.

Votto isn’t the first North American in the Reds’ family to learn Spanish. Hall of Famer Barry Larkin grew up in Cincinnati but learned the language so he could get along better with all of his teammates. And as Votto says about Larkin, “He’s a good guy to emulate.”

Damn straight. This also means that someone on the team besides the trainer or Dusty Baker will be able to talk to the Spanish-speaking pitchers, including Johnny Cueto and Aroldis Chapman. Votto is so intent on improving all areas of his game that it’s even extending to learning Spanish.

Just when I thought I couldn’t like him any more. I certainly hope Jay Bruce is paying attention.