Cincinnati Reds'

Cincinnati Reds Press Clippings May 9, 2017 THIS DAY IN REDS HISTORY 1973-Johnny Bench ties a major league record with his fourth home run in four consecutive at-bats MLB.COM Though inefficient, Davis has a shot in Cincy By Mark Sheldon / MLB.com | @m_sheldon | 1:00 AM ET + 6 COMMENTS CINCINNATI -- Through five Major League starts, including Monday's 10-4 loss to the Yankees, Reds pitcher Rookie Davis has averaged 82 pitches per game. That doesn't seem like a ton of pitches until you notice that Davis has yet to reach the sixth inning. Davis lasted 4 1/3 innings vs. New York and gave up five runs (four earned) on seven hits, three walks and four strikeouts while throwing 91 pitches -- 55 for strikes. "I know as a starter, anything less than six innings, to me, is unacceptable," Davis said. "I haven't been able to do that this year. I'm going to put a huge emphasis on pounding the strike zone with all pitches and just compete. That's all I can do." Reds starters were 5-0 with a 1.72 ERA over their five-game winning streak, which was snapped with Monday's loss. One of those games belonged to Davis, who will get more opportunities to improve. There are currently no more attractive alternatives. Robert Stephenson, who threw three innings for a save on Saturday, is still trying to find consistency. Cody Reed, who struggled with command before being sent down, pitched for Triple-A Louisville on Monday and gave up three runs, four hits, two walks and a homer in 2 2/3 innings. Also at Louisville, Sal Romano is on the disabled list with a right shoulder injury and just resumed a throwing program. Monday's game started on an off note for Davis, who didn't touch first base with his foot on Brett Gardner's leadoff ground ball to Joey Votto. It set up a big three-run inning for the Yankees. Davis faced seven batters in the inning and had thrown 39 pitches through two innings. "The thing I noticed from the first inning was they were recognizing his slider out of the hand and they were laying off it," Reds manager Bryan Price said. "He would get ahead or get behind, either way, and he'd throw a nice slider down and away, just off the corner, and no one was biting. We'll have to find a way to make that pitch a little bit more enticing and add something to his arsenal." Following Aaron Hicks' RBI single with two outs in the second inning, Davis gave up one more run over his final three innings. That stretch included his striking out the side in the fourth. "The high pitch counts and the inability to get some balls in play early in the count where we could make some plays jacked up his pitch count," Price said. "The Yankees got too much of an opportunity to see too many pitches, and I think that's the type of a team they are. They don't expand the zone a great deal." That held true for Davis even during his five scoreless innings last week against the Pirates in his first big league win. On Monday, he was facing the organization that drafted him and traded him in the December 2015 Aroldis Chapman deal. "The start against Pittsburgh, I felt really good," Davis said. "I felt comfortable. Today I felt fine, calm and collected. I feel fine out there. I don't feel like I'm pressing. I don't feel like I'm trying to do too much. It's just a matter of making pitches whenever I need to, and I wasn't able to do that in the first inning." Mark Sheldon has covered the Reds for MLB.com since 2006, and previously covered the Twins from 2001-05. Follow him on Twitter @m_sheldon and Facebook and listen to his podcast. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs. Reds lose grip on win streak, falling to Yanks By Mark Sheldon and John Fay / MLB.com | 1:08 AM ET + 414 COMMENTS CINCINNATI -- If there was any lingering grogginess for the Yankees one night after an 18-inning game and early-morning arrival into town, it didn't show up on the field on Monday at Great American Ball Park. Behind Masahiro Tanaka's effort on the mound and plenty of offense, New York took a 10-4 victory over the Reds. "It's great," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "It's a tough performance by our guys. Guys are really fatigued. To be able to come and get three [first-inning runs] and let Tanaka go to work, then to get another the next inning and put 10 on the board, it shows you a lot about these guys." A night after outlasting the Cubs in a six-hour epic, the Yankees extended their winning streak to six games while snapping Cincinnati's win streak at five. The Yankees remained a half-game ahead of second-place Baltimore atop the American League East, while the Reds dropped into second place in the National League Central, a half-game behind St. Louis. Tanaka gave a tired bullpen a break by working seven innings, allowing four runs (three earned) on 10 hits with one walk and six strikeouts. Former Yankees farmhand Rookie Davis labored in his start for the Reds, throwing 91 pitches over 4 1/3 innings and allowing five runs (four earned) on seven hits, with three walks and four strikeouts. The door was opened for a big inning for New York when Davis opened the game with an error, accidentally not touching first base while receiving a throw from Joey Votto as Brett Gardner raced to first on a groundout. It led to a two-run single by Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius' RBI single for a 3-0 lead. Aaron Hicks added an RBI single in the second inning, and after Davis was chased following a pair of one-out singles in the fifth, Gregorius added a sacrifice fly to cap a two-RBI night. In a wild top of the seventh for reliever Drew Storen, three batters were hit by a pitch -- including Chase Headley with the bases loaded -- helping the Yanks forge a 7-2 lead. Add-on runs would burn the Reds even after Tanaka's two-out walk in the seventh was followed by a Votto two-run homer. Matt Holliday and Gardner each smoked a homer against Barrett Astin in the eighth inning. MOMENTS THAT MATTERED Sanchez gets it started: Sanchez reached base five times in the game, collecting three hits and one walk around a hit-by-pitch, but it was his one-out single in the first that helped the Yankees take control of the game. The hard single through the left side on a 1-0 fastball plated Gardner and Hicks to make it a 2-0 game and set the tone. That empty feeling: Following an error by Holliday, who made a rare start at first base, to lead off the fourth inning, the Reds followed with a single by Eugenio Suarez and a rocket off Holliday's glove by Scott Schebler that went for a single. That put Tanaka in a bases-loaded, no-out situation with the go-ahead run at the plate. The right-hander still escaped, getting a popout to second base from Jose Peraza and a grounder off the bat of Tucker Barnhart to Gregorius, who turned an inning-ending double play. "Tanaka was good," Reds manager Bryan Price said. "He was throwing the offspeed stuff when he was behind in the count, and that's tough for any team. But we got our hits and we had some opportunities to score and had a couple chances to get ourselves back in the game, but we weren't able to come up with a big hit. In the same respect, we didn't play very well. They had 13 base hits and 24 baserunners. That's not a good sign." SOUND SMART WITH YOUR FRIENDS • Storen became the first Reds pitcher to hit three batters in the same inning since Raul Sanchez hit three in the eighth inning vs. the Phillies on May 15, 1960, in Game 1 of a doubleheader. "It's frustrating," Girardi said. "We're already beat up. We knew he's not trying to do it. He's struggling with his command. But it is frustrating." Headley, who took a pitch off the right leg, was the player about whom Girardi was most concerned. "I was planning on giving him a day off [Tuesday]," Girardi said. "He'll definitely get it now." "That's not going to happen too often for anybody, and certainly there was obviously no intent," Price said. "But a very unusual inning, for sure." • Pinch-hitting in the fifth inning, Arismendy Alcantara notched a single, which extended his streak of hits to seven straight plate appearances -- the longest active streak in the Majors. The last Reds player to do that was Steve Selsky last September. Before that, Bip Roberts collected hits in 10 consecutive plate appearances for Cincinnati from Sept. 19-23, 1992. WHAT'S NEXT Yankees: New York will send out CC Sabathia in the final game of the two-game set on Tuesday at 7:10 p.m. ET. It will be Sabathia's 13th career start against the Reds but first since 2013.

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