After a dreadful outing in Cleveland last week, Bronson Arroyo said he didn’t have the “weapons” to be successful on that night. So on Monday, when he tossed eight shutout innings against the potentially lethal Rockies offense, he must have felt much better about what he had to work with.
Right?
“I didn’t particularly have amazing stuff,” Arroyo said after limiting Colorado to four hits on the way to a 3-0 win at Great American Ball Park. “But it was one of those games where things just worked out.”
Although the 36-year-old right-hander played it off like he simply had luck on his side on Monday, Arroyo spent most of the night making the game look easy. In eight innings of work, he threw just 86 pitches, 65 of which went for strikes. He tossed eight or fewer pitches in four different innings, and he didn’t allow a runner to reach scoring position until the seventh.
But according to Arroyo, “That’s baseball, man.
“I could throw the same stuff up there two nights in a row, probably have a pitching machine, and get completely different results. It’s just some days, man, the ball bounces your way. I went out there tonight with about the same stuff as I had in Cleveland. I just had a lower pitch count tonight. I didn’t grind as hard against some guys.”
The hitters Arroyo dominated on Monday were a little more complimentary.
“He threw the ball well tonight,” Todd Helton said. “Same old guy, just slings it up there. The ball’s moving a lot. But we needed to go deeper in some counts and some at-bats and make him work a little bit harder. But those pitches are tough to lay off on.”
Three innings in, Monday night’s game had the feeling of a pitchers’ duel in the making. Arroyo gave up a hit in each of the first two frames, but made it through three innings on 36 pitches. Colorado starter Tyler Chatwood also gave up a pair of hits and a walk that never materialized into a threat.
In the final at-bat of the third inning, though, Chatwood agitated his right triceps in the process of striking out Shin-Soo Choo. He returned for the fourth inning, but wasn’t quite the same, and the Reds offense took advantage on a night when runs were at a premium.
After Chatwood struck out the first two batters of the inning, Jay Bruce notched his second single of the game and proceeded to steal second base. That stolen base — his first of the season — proved vital, as Todd Frazier followed it up with a bloop single that scored Bruce and gave the Reds a 1-0 lead.
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