Del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Google
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Y! MyWebREDS NOTES
Hairston, Keppinger winning combo
Sunday, July 13, 2008
MILWAUKEE — It's a small sampling, but it appears Jerry Hairston Jr. and Jeff Keppinger go together like bratwurst and mustard when they bat 1-2 in the Cincinnati Reds batting order.
The last six times they've batted 1-2, the Reds have won, and for the season Cincinnati is 7-1 with the duo hitting in those spots.
"That's not too bad of a winning percentage, is it?" said Hairston rhetorically. Well, it's .875.
Nevertheless, Reds manager Dusty Baker is sticking with his D.S. — a designated sitter — every night and on Saturday, July 12, it was Keppinger.
"He'll play (today) when we face CC Sabathia, because I'm going to stack my lineup with right-handers," Baker said. "CC is a monster on left-handers. Actually, he is a monster on everybody, but really a monster on left-handers."
Sabathia was taking batting practice Saturday and was asked, "Is that Adam Dunn's bat?" He said, "I'm waiting for him to send me some."
Might be a long wait. Sabathia used one of Dunn's bats earlier this season to hit a 400-foot home run, then left a message last week on Dunn's cell phone asking for some of his bats.
Dunn said Texas will freeze over before he sends Sabathia any bats, "And I'm going to take back the one I gave him."
A win for Lincoln
Mike Lincoln is not as excited as other people over his first win in the majors since April 27, 2004 — a nine-pitch, one-inning effort Friday.
Lincoln, pitching for St. Louis at the time, already had hurt his arm, "I pitched three games after hurting it against Houston and that win was one of them," he said. "Been a long time ago."
He underwent Tommy John surgery twice and missed nearly four years before making it back this season.
"Coming out of the bullpen, I don't figure a win is as important as putting a team into the position to get a win," he said. "All I'm doing is trying to keep the team in the game, and a win is kind of a bonus."
Lincoln has retired 30 of the 33 first batters he faced and he said, "That's really my job. Minimize damage, not get wins."
Exaggerating a tad
When Reds players arrived in the clubhouse Saturday, there was a sheet of paper hanging on every locker with a photo of Jeremy Affeldt and his family from a magazine. There was a quote from Affeldt highlighted:
"Throwing a fastball over 100 miles an hour over and over and over puts a real strain on my arm."
A hundred miles an hour?
"That was when I threw 98," Affeldt said in self-defense.
Said catcher Javier Valentin, "Yeah, 98 in the dirt, then 98 over somebody's head, then 98 three feet outside. What good does that do?"
Fighting the lights
Much was made of an error charged to Milwaukee's Mike Cameron on Friday when he obviously lost Hairston's ball in the lights and the game-tying run scored.
Everybody but the official scorer thought it should have been a hit, which is usually what is called when a ball is lost in the lights.
Said Cameron, "I'd like to take the official scorer out on the field and hit him a bunch of fly balls in those lights and see how many he catches. I had two choices — duck away at the last minute or keep my head up and get hit in the face. I ducked."
Ken Griffey Jr. appeared to lose two balls in the light — one he caught and the other whizzed over his head for a run-scoring double by Corey Hart.
Griffey said Miller Park is difficult on outfielders, and Cameron agrees.
"This park has more little nuances for a center field to consider and battle than any park I've played in," said Cameron, one of the players the Reds sent to Seattle for Griffey.
The official scorer reviewed the video Saturday and changed it from an error on Cameron to a triple for Hairston.
Quote(s) of the day
"Do I have anything on my to-do list for the All-Star break? Yeah, nothing on every list." — Milwaukee manager Ned Yost.
"This game is big, and we have to play through Sunday, then think about vacation." — Reds manager Dusty Baker, before Saturday's game.
