Reds starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo had to grind and he had to slog during a seemingly perpetual uphill fight vs. the Braves. The one thing Arroyo did not do was give up on trying to keep the Reds in striking distance.
Coming off of a three-game sweep of the Cubs and a hard-earned .500 road trip, the start of the homestand was a bit of a wet blanket for Cincinnati during a 7-4 loss to the Braves on Monday night.
“That was definitely a battle,” Arroyo said. “Top to bottom, that’s a really powerful lineup. A lot of threats are in there. You have to be a little bit more nitpicky. I wound up getting guys on base early in almost every inning. When you do that, it forces you to throw more pitches, especially against a lineup as deep as these guys were.”
Taking a loss for the third straight outing, Arroyo threw 97 pitches and allowed four runs and eight hits with two walks and a season-high seven strikeouts.
In the top of the first inning after a walk and a blooped single, Freddie Freeman’s lined single to right field scored Chris Johnson for a 1-0 lead. It could have been worse for Arroyo, who issued a two-out walk to load the bases but escaped with a called strikeout of No. 7 hitter Dan Uggla on his 28th pitch of the inning.
Atlanta picked up the attack in the second inning when Andrelton Simmons led off with a home run to left field for a two-run deficit.
“The only guy I really didn’t know in the lineup and wasn’t worried about hitting the ball out of the ballpark was [Simmons], and he ended up taking me deep,” Arroyo said.
Uggla hit a leadoff triple to right-center field in the fourth inning and scored on a Simmons single. Arroyo left two runners on by ending the inning with a double play from Johnson.
“That guy is a battler,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said of Arroyo. “He threw a lot of pitches because he was in and out of trouble a lot, but he got out of it a couple of times.”
Braves starter Paul Maholm retired his first seven in a row and nine of 10 before the Reds’ lineup came to life. After the first two batters in the bottom of the fourth reached, Brandon Phillips hit an RBI double to left field to score Zack Cozart, and Joey Votto scored on a Jay Bruce groundout.
Atlanta added another run against Arroyo in the fifth when Justin Upton scored on an Evan Gattis one-out double to left-center field. But Arroyo kept the damage from piling on by getting out of the inning with another Uggla called strikeout.
It was the fifth straight game where the Reds did not get a quality start.
Click here to read more of this story.
About Marion Online Sports
