“We’ve got to stay on pace,” Reds reliever Brad Brach said of the Brewers. “They’re hot, we got to stay with them. Just stay close. They’re not going to go 10-0 all season. Just got to win games whenever we get an opportunity and we know we’ve got seven coming up against them here. It’s definitely an important stretch for us.
“We’re playing really good baseball right now. We’ve had a lot of tight games here lately. It’s been a lot of fun out there. Just hopeful we can pull out some of these close games and just keep pace with them. That’s really all you can do right now.”
Even when the Reds lost six of their seven games against the San Diego Padres last month, Reds players felt like they played them well. Seven of the team’s last eight losses have been decided by two or fewer runs.
The Reds entered Saturday with a 20-12 record against divisional opponents.
“It might sound funny being the manager,” David Bell said, “but I love watching our team play.”
The Reds should receive some reinforcements over the next couple of weeks to their bullpen. Michael Lorenzen and Jeff Hoffman are on rehab assignments. Tejay Antone hopes to return shortly after the All-Star break. Sonny Gray rejoined the rotation Friday and allowed one run in five innings.
“I feel like we’ve just been picking up momentum in the way we’ve played,” Bell said. “We’ve been playing some good teams, so we haven’t had maybe as many wins as we could have given how we played, but I do think that will continue to pay off. I like how we’re playing going into this stretch.”
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Said Nick Castellanos: “Even though we dropped the series against the Padres, we didn’t play bad baseball. All the games that we have now are important, really. If we’re going to achieve our goal and be playing baseball in October, there needs to be a lot of wins moving forward.”
Reds starting pitchers had a collective 3.59 ERA in June, which ranked seventh in the Majors. The offense had the NL’s best on-base percentage (.339) and scored the second-most runs (137) behind only the Brewers.
The bullpen had its notable struggles but entered Saturday with a 1.46 ERA in the club’s last eight games.
“Maybe we’ve turned the corner here and can kind of get on a roll,” Brach said of the bullpen. “Sometimes, it can just be one outing here or there but everyone is doing their part whenever they’re out there, throwing strikes, getting ahead of guys and just putting up zeros. That’s really all we can do right now.”
