Wrapping Up The Homestand: April 14th-April 17th

Before the first game of the 4-game set with the Reds, it was announced that Sammy Sosa was named NL play of the week. Sosa hit .478 with 7 homers, 16 RBI and 10 runs scored. Way to go Sosa! In the first game of the Series vs the Reds, Sosa sends a 3rd inning pitch from Jimmy Haynes into the crowd to help stake Kerry Wood to an early 3-0 lead. And the right Kerry Wood finally showed up, striking out 12 in 7 innings before handing it over to the bullpen with a 4-0 lead. 2 innings later, we squeak out with a 4-3 victory and Joe Borowski has his 3rd save on the season. The win improves our record to 6-1 at home and puts us a game behind the Houston Astros for first.

Game 2 finds us falling to the Reds 5-0 as Danny Graves continues to baffle us when he takes the mound. In the early season, he's 2-0 with a .60 ERA. Hopefully we won't have to face him very many times from here on out. The hitting star for the Reds was Russell Branyan, who is a classic 3-outcome guy. Usually when he's up at the dish, you'll get one of 3 results, strikeout, walk or homerun. In 52 plate appearances so far, he has 5 walks, 5 homeruns, 10 strikeouts, just under 40% of his results. And it will probably only get higher.

Game 3 featured a duel between Matt Clement and Chris Reitsma, with both pitchers leaving with the score tied at 2. In the top of the 10th, Ken Griffey, Jr hit a solo homer to put the Reds up 3-2, with their closer Scott Williamson on the mound for the bottom half. Alex Gonzalez coaxes a walk as does Aramis Ramirez and Corey Patterson of all people. With the bases loaded and Mark Grudzielanek at the plate, I figured that I may either at least get the tying run home or Grudz will only make 1 out, and still get a chance to have Sosa come up with a couple runners on. But neither of those things happened as Grudz took the first pitch from Williamson and drove it over the left field fence for a walk-off Grand Slam and a 6-3 victory. That's the thing about baseball, the most unlikely guys will sometime come up big and win you a ballgame.

With a chance at the series victory vs the Reds on Thursday, we send out Shawn Estes to take on former Mets Wunderkind Paul Wilson. Wilson, Jason Isringhausen and Bill Pulsipher were all hot young prospects coming up in the Mets organization in the late 90's, earning the nickname Generation K. Of the 3, Wilson remained the only starter of the group as major arm injuries piled up for all 3. Isringhausen is the closer for the St. Louis Cardinals, so I'm sure I'll see him a few times this season. But back to this game. After Sosa's 10th homer of the season in the 1st, Estes shut down the Reds until the 6th and 7th innings, where he gave 5 runs before being pulled with one out in the 7th. A Hee Seop Choi's solo homer in the 9th makes it 5-3, but that's as close as it gets as we split the series with the Reds and move our record to 9-7, thankfully still only a game back to Houston.

After the loss, we travel to Pittsburgh for the first time all season to take on the Pirates. We swept them last week, so hopefully we can make it out of Pittsburgh without them doing the same to us. We have Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Sergio Mitre going for us, against Salomon Torres, Dennys Reyes and Kip Wells.