The Reds have embraced negative conditions over the last three weeks as they\u2019ve played their best baseball of the season. They fought to pick up two wins in the rain over the Arizona Diamondbacks, and they closed out a rain-shortened win over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
While there\u2019s not an official stat that tracks this, there have been several games recently where the Reds have had to play through the elements. It\u2019s been a rainy summer in Cincinnati, but the Reds have been able to play through it. <\/p>\n
Francona said that after a rain delay, \u201cAll of a sudden, it\u2019s like, \u2018Ok, here we go.\u2019 They\u2019ve been sitting around for three hours. It\u2019s not easy. But if you handle it better, you give yourself a better chance to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Reds have been doing that recently. It coincides with a stretch of games where the Reds have shown late-game resilience and the ability to come back. Reds reliever Brent Suter views the Reds\u2019 success in the rain and the Reds\u2019 late game success recently as intertwined. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt tests your toughness and resilience,\u201d Suter said. \u201cSome teams have more than others. It\u2019s an aspect where chemistry really comes into play because you spend a lot of time together waiting around. You make those moments enjoyable, have fun and enjoy each other in the clubhouse. That helps a lot to withstand the delays and then have fun on the field too. Chemistry and toughness come out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Francona said rain and rain delays weigh the most on the starting pitchers who have their routines interrupted. On Wednesday, Lodolo pitched around and through the rain and the rain delay and delivered a quality start. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t try to pitch to that (the rain) or anything,\u201d Lodolo said. \u201cI had no idea what was going to happen. So, you go as long as you can until, basically like today, it happened to work out pretty good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Reds are trying to be a team that wins with an aggressive and gritty style of play. They\u2019re embracing small ball, base running and good defense, and those qualities can help a team grind out wins in unideal conditions. <\/p>\n
They\u2019re also useful skills to have when you\u2019re behind in a game. Over the last three weeks, the Reds have shown much more fight late in games when they\u2019re trailing. A dramatic win on Sunday in Detroit epitomized that. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose are the most fun ways to win, when you come from behind,\u201d second baseman Matt McLain said. \u201cWhen you put pressure on guys and they make a mistake and you capitalize on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the Reds have gotten closer into the playoff mix, the starting pitching hasn\u2019t been firing on all cylinders. There hasn\u2019t been an unexpected power surge from the bottom of the lineup. The bullpen has been fine but unspectacular. <\/p>\n
The strength of the group during this stretch has been the team\u2019s attitude. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing really great baseball,\u201d starting pitcher Nick Martinez said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to keep going. We\u2019re winning games. Everyone is invested.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds have embraced negative conditions over the last three weeks as they\u2019ve played their best baseball of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[537,5,21602,535,50,4259,2044,6095,4,1082,3892,21603,536,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-120024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-bengals-football","11":"tag-cincinnati","12":"tag-cincinnati-reds","13":"tag-cincinnatireds","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-mens-sports","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-pro-sports","19":"tag-professional-football","20":"tag-reds","21":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114720579618625045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}