Reds lose Jim Edmonds' Debut 7-3 to Cards

[Box Score]

The one-inning undoing of Mike Leake
A 7 run inning was all the Cardinals needed last night to take the opening game of the series. As my buddies whom I attended the game with speculated, the whole inning’s trouble started when the Reds pitched to Albert Pujols after a John Jay double. First base was open, and the Reds decided to pitch to Pujols rather than walk him and set up a double play scenario. The next batter Matt Holliday then singled through the wide open right side; a right side that was vacated because they were holding on Pujols. A ground ball that would have been a likely double play.

Brandon Phillips gives the Cardinals bulletin board material.
And I like it. Here it is in case you missed it.

Skip Schumacher’s backside grand slam
This would be the equivalent of Paul Janish hitting one out to right center with the bases loaded in St. Louis. Things like that don’t happen to us very often. Do they? St. Louis is full of professional hitters. The Reds have a few, but the guys in the Cardinals lineup are very dangerous. You can’t let any of these guys have an inch or they can all hurt you. Rasmus, Schumacher, Molina, Jay; throw the numbers out the window. They’re grinders.

Yeah, Chris Carpenter is a dick.
I missed this incident with Carpenter chewing out Brendan Ryan. It’s a long line of Carpenter basically showing that he’s one of the game’s biggest pricks.

Playoff beard update:

Reds have been in 1st place for what? About a week now? We’re 1 game up. Just the goatee now. Remember the rules. I won’t shave completely until the Reds are out of 1st place (or a wild card spot).

Reds still one game up
We’ve got two games left to play. And as Paul Daugherty says, it was only one game, and one series. The beautiful thing about baseball would be that as pissed off as I was about last night, if we win tonight everything is right with the world again.