Cincinnati at Arizona – Joey Votto is the Key for the Reds

Despite the Reds being shorthanded for most of the past week, Jerry Hairston Jr. and Paul Janish have been doing a fine job filling in. That a trend that Cincinnati hopes will continue as they open a series against the Arizona Diamondbacks tonight.

On the hill for Cincinnati is Bronson Arroyo who is 4-2 with an inflated 7.15 ERA. The high earned run average is in part to a 15-3 loss to the Brewers on Wednesday where Arroyo tied his season high with nine earned runs allowed on just seven hits. He didn’t help out his cause as he gave up three walks and two home runs in just one-plus innings.

Arroyo seems to either be hot or a grapefruit salesman. Wednesday he was lobbing up meat pies and threw just 46 pitches. It was Arroyo’s worst outing since June 2008 when the Blue Jays roughed him up real bad, allowing 11 hits and 10 earned runs and didn’t make it out of the second inning.

What is interesting is that game marked the start of a huge turnaround for the right hander. He ended up15-6 with a 3.76 ERA last season and was a bright spot on a not so bright Reds rotation. That could have been the pounding he needed to get himself on a serious roll.

Opposing Arroyo is Jon Garland who comes into Monday night’s game sporting a 3-1 record and a respectable 4.03 ERA. Garland’s last out came at PETCO Park and it was a gem. He held the Padres bats at bay with seven shutout innings which ended up as a 3-1 win for the D-Backs. It wasn’t your prototypical power performance as he had to get himself out of trouble a few times in the game, but he got the outs when he needed to. As they say, there are no pictures on the scorecard and a shutout is a shutout.

His defense did there part when they Padres put the ball in play as they turned three double plays and were rock solid all game. Garland has looked sharp in four of his six starts this year with only one really bad game. He’s faced the Reds once in his career and pitched very well, allowing one run over eight innings in picking up the victory. This is Garland first year with Zona as he inked a deal in January after Randy Johnson was allowed to sign with San Francisco.

Here are some trends as they relate to this game:

Cincinnati:

• Under is 27-11-2 in CIN last 40 road games.

Arizona:

• ARI are 2-10 in their last 12 games following a win.
• Under is 8-2-1 in ARI last 11 overall.
• Under is 8-2-1 in ARI last 11 on grass.

Head to Head:

• CIN are 8-2 in the last 10 meetings.
• Under is 40-11-4 in the last 55 meetings.

One of the keys to the game for Cincinnati is going to be Joey Votto who came back last game from the flu and wasted no time at all making his presence felt. Votto returned in the seventh inning of Sunday’s and drilled a home run in his first at bat but it wasn’t enough as the Reds lost that game 8-7.

Votto is batting .376 this season and has been the club’s most dependable hitter. You’d think the Reds would have struggled without him but they managed to go 3-0 without him. What that tells me is that Cincy is hot right now and when you accompany that with Arroyo’s history of coming back strong from a rough outing, I like the Reds to edge the D-Backs in this one.

The Pick: Cincinnati SU +110