BIG Win!

Our long national nightmare is over.  Just kidding, but last night's Reds win over the Phillies even had the players admittedly breathing a sigh of relief.  The come from behind win displayed exactly the type of resolve I waxed idiotic about in the previous post. 

Fans have to be especially encouraged about Jay Bruce's clutch ninth inning, 2-out double.  He's been swinging a hot bat of late, but if you go deeper into the numbers you'd see most of the home runs and RBIs in recent games came after the team was already out of it.  Until the ninth, Bruce had missed several opportunities to drive in runs--try 0-4 with three strikeouts.  This team's progression jumps up several notches if opposing pitchers have to worry about more than Joey Votto in this lineup.

You'd like to think the win would give the Reds some momentum, but it won't get any easier with Roy Halladay on the mound Wednesday for the Phillies.  Thanks to a clutch homer by Bruce, the Reds were able to beat him last year.  I think all Reds fans know what happened the next time Halladay faced Cincinnati.  Finding a way to come out victorious would be huge heading into the final four games of the road trip.

Finally, a gracious "thank you" to the web staff at Cincinnati.com as the CincyKid14 blog posts can now be viewed on their CincyBlogs.com website.  So tell your friends, tell your neighbors so we can drive some traffic toward this site and thus, increase visibility at CincyKid14.com!