The Cincinnati Reds headed into the All-Star break with a satisfying taste in their mouths, but they’re far from satisfied.
“[The win] makes for a better All-Star break,” manager Dusty Baker said. “We had a chance to take at least three out of four, maybe even sweep them but we’ll take what we got and start the second half where we are.”
The Reds got the big hit and the long ball they’d been looking for on one swing of Jay Bruce’s bat and got five innings of solid relief from its bullpen in downing the Atlanta Braves, 8-4, Sunday afternoon at Turner Field.
The win gave the Reds a split of the four-game set in Atlanta, and a 53-42 record going into the break, good for third place in the National League Central.
Bruce had his second three-hit game of the season — he was deprived of his second four-hit game of the year on a fine leaping catch by Atlanta left fielder Jose Constanza in the ninth — and snapped a home run drought of 67 at-bats, launching a two-run shot with two outs in the third inning. The blast, Bruce’s 19th, was the Reds’ first of the series.
“I really don’t pay attention to that stuff,” said Bruce of ending the 18-game homerless stretch, the second-longest of his career. “I started off July a little slow but slowly am heating up a little bit.”
Shin-Soo Choo continued his torrid July, going 2-for-3 with two walks and three runs scored on Sunday, adding a solo shot leading off the fifth, his 13th of the season. Choo was on base almost the entire series, batting .500 (8-for-16), reaching base 11 times in 19 plate appearances and scoring seven runs, also driving in two. He’ll take a 12-game hitting streak into the Break, during which he’s hitting .429 (21-for-49), with five consecutive multihit games.
Baker was actually as impressed with Choo’s base running, especially in the ninth inning, when he went from first to third on a sacrifice bunt by left fielder Derrick Robinson. It was a play Baker described as reminiscent of a more famous Robinson.
“That’s kind of Jackie Robinson-type stuff,” Baker said. “That play made that inning. It looked like it was a shoo-in game. Had he not done that and we get the other runs, it might have been a one-run game.”
Instead the lead grew from 5-3 to 8-3 and made Aroldis Chapman’s ninth-inning appearance much less urgent. He still topped out at 103 and had two strikeouts, allowing only a two-out homer to shortstop Andrelton Simmons, his fourth homer allowed in 2013.
All-Star second baseman Brandon Phillips completed a big homecoming series by driving in three runs, including a booming two-run double in the ninth, and fellow All-Star Joey Votto went 1-for-3 with a double and two walks, reaching base for the 29th straight game and for the 88th time in 95 starts. He heads to New York with a .434 on-base percentage, second in the Majors.
Cincinnati reached Atlanta starter Julio Teheran (7-5) for five runs and seven hits, with four of those hits going for extra bases. The Reds had 11 hits on the day, six of them for extra bases.
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