Today’s game
Philadelphia Phillies (Cole Hamels, 5-4, 2.88 ERA) at Cincinnati Reds (Mike Leake, 2-4, 4.40), 7:10 p.m.
Johnny Cueto and Jay Bruce delivered some powerful performances Sunday to take some of the sting out of a frustrating week for the Cincinnati Reds.
Cueto struck out nine in seven shutout innings for his first win in nearly a month, and Bruce clubbed multiple home runs for the first time this season as the Reds avoided getting swept by San Diego with a 4-0 victory before a crowd of 27,501 at Great American Ball Park.
“I feel really good about how things went today,” said Cueto, who was making his second appearance since returning from an elbow issue that forced him to miss a start.
“We needed this,” he added. “My goal today was to stop what’s been happening the last few days.”
Bruce hit his eighth and ninth home runs of the year to give Cueto (4-4) all the offense he would need. Bruce launched a long solo home run in the third to start the scoring. Then after Joey Votto singled and Todd Frazier doubled to lead off the sixth, Bruce lofted a ball to right that barely cleared the fence for a three-run shot.
“That’s so big in that situation,” Reds manager Bryan Price said of Bruce’s second blast. “That’s a huge relief to create that type of situation and give the bullpen a little bit more wiggle room on the back end.”
The Reds bullpen blew late leads in back-to-back games in Philadelphia to start the week, including Cueto’s start on Tuesday, and it let a five-run advantage get away in a 9-7 loss to the Padres on Saturday.
But J.J. Hoover pitched a perfect eighth, and Aroldis Chapman set down all three batters he faced in the ninth as the three Reds pitchers combined to retire 18 of the final 19 hitters they faced.
Cueto allowed four and two walks while throwing 103 pitches.
“Every team needs that guy to come out and play stopper, who you can hand the ball to and say ‘Hey, man, go dominate,’ ” Bruce said. “And he did today. I was really, really happy to see that for the team and for himself, that he was back and in form the way he’s capable of. I saw some 96 (mph pitches) today, so he looked great.”
Cueto struggled early, giving up two walks in the first and two singles in the second. He needed 44 pitches to get through the first two innings but settled into a grove after that.
“The first two innings he was really changed,” Price said. “They got his pitch count up. They laid off some high pitches. He made a really good adjustment going into the third inning. It was a lot cleaner. The outs came a lot more quickly. He put together some strikeouts and let the defense do their work, which they did nicely.”
Bruce’s four RBIs tied his season high, while Votto went 2-for-4 to extend his streak of consecutive games reaching base to a season-high 16. Brandon Phillips went 1-for-4 to continue his season-high seven-game hitting streak, and Skip Schumaker went 2-for-4 with a double.
With his perfect eighth inning, Hoover has not allowed a run in his last six appearances. And he hasn’t allowed an earned run since April 21, a span of 15.2 innings in 19 appearances.
“Hoover was big because he’s coming in at the top of the order,” Price said. “He’s going to face the big boys, and if somebody gets on you’re going to face (Matt) Kemp or Yonder (Alonso), who’s swining the bat well. So it was a very important inning for us for obvioius reasons, to never let them get back into the game or never let them start thinking about getting back into the game.”
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