Reds Beat A’s 3-1

Reds manager Dusty Baker said it before Tuesday’s game and reiterated it after his team walked off the field at Great American Ball Park with a 3-1 win over the A’s.

After losing seven of the previous nine games, including a 15-2 blowout at the hands of the Cardinals on Sunday, what happened on the field Tuesday wasn’t important, so long as the Reds found themselves on the winning end of the final score.

“It didn’t matter how we won today,” Baker said. “Fact is, we just needed a win. We needed to put all the negatives and stuff behind us and get rid of what happened the other day.”

Much to the delight of Baker, starting pitcher Mat Latos made sure Tuesday was nothing but positive. The 25-year-old right-hander danced around trouble and gave up just four hits and three walks to go with a trio of strikeouts in 7 1/3 scoreless innings en route to his 11th win. The win marked Latos’ third scoreless outing of the year and the first since he blanked the Cubs and Cardinals in back-to-back starts April 24 and 29.

And he did so without being able to effectively use two of his pitches for most of the night.

“I was scuffling today with the offspeed pitches,” Latos said. “Curveballs around the neck and sliders below the toes. A lot of the credit has to go to [catcher Devin Mesoraco] on defense today. Actually, all of the credit, to be honest with you.”

Mesoraco, who has been a bright spot at the plate recently, spent much of his night blocking Latos’ pitches in the dirt. Perhaps more important, he figured out early what was working for Latos and stuck with it through the game.

“He’s maturing and he’s doing real well,” Latos said of Mesoraco. “He recognized I didn’t have my slider today, and I really didn’t have any offspeed pitch today. I found it later on in the game, but he recognized I didn’t have it early in the game, and we exploited what we thought was a weakness with them and it worked out.”

That weakness was up and in against A’s hitters, according to Latos, who recorded five flyball outs on Tuesday. And although the strategy turned out to be effective, Latos found himself in tough spots throughout the night.

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