Reds ace Johnny Cueto rarely gives up home runs, let alone two. Cueto had never lost during the daytime this season. He also doesn’t like to be burned when the opposing pitcher is batting.
Even Cy Young Award contenders can come up short, as Cueto did during the Reds’ 4-2 loss to the Phillies in Monday’s Labor Day matinee.
“I don’t think that it will hurt. I still have five more outings,” Cueto said when asked how the game affected his Cy Young chances. “I just have to keep going on [the] outings I have. To be honest with you, I don’t think about those things. I just want to do my job, and make sure I get the job done.”
Now 17-7, Cueto was denied in his bid to be baseball’s first 18-game winner. He remains the National League’s ERA leader at 2.58, just ahead of the Mets’ R.A. Dickey (2.63).
In day games this season, Cueto is now 11-1 with a 1.87 ERA. Against the Phillies, he allowed four runs on eight hits over seven innings without walking a batter, while striking out five. He gave up two home runs for only the second time this season.
It was the sequence of events before Cueto’s first homer allowed that set the stage which doomed the makings of a fine outing.
Cueto retired a stretch of nine in a row — and 12 of 13 — until running into trouble with two outs in the fifth. Steven Lerud hit a slow roller into center field for a single, and then pitcher Tyler Cloyd followed with a grounder up the middle that went for his first big league hit.
“Every time on the bench talking to the other guys, I said, ‘The outs you’ve got to get [are the ones against] their pitcher,'” Cueto said via an interpreter. “You always have got to get the pitcher out. I wanted to have that guy out today, but I made the wrong pitch and did not get the guy out.”
Next up was Jimmy Rollins, who hit Cueto’s first-pitch changeup into the right-field seats for a three-run homer.
“He’s tough. He’s good,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said of Cueto. “He challenged Rollins, and Rollins hurt him. But at the same time, he’s real good.”
Showers fell at Great American Ball Park just as the fifth inning got started, and Cueto was struggling with his footing. After Rollins’ homer, the grounds crew worked on the mound.
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