4/21 D'Backs at Reds

Business Day Special to close out this 3 game series with the Diamondbacks at 12:35pm tomorrow, with Mike Leake (2-0, 5.40) facing off vs Daniel Hudson (0-3, 4.26). Let's try to steal the series finale vs the D'backs with Leake on the mound. No pun intended!

Hudson faced the Reds back on April 9th, and had a 7 inning start while only giving up 2 runs.

• If you recall from the last post on Hudson, his splits are fairly even, but RHB bat .233 to LHB .200 this season.
• In one career start at GABP he went 8IP and gave up 4 hits without giving up a run.
• 8 of his 13 home runs given up have been in the first 15 pitches of the game, so we will get an idea early on if he'll have a good start or not.
• Two players for the Reds bat .300 or above vs Hudson and they are Rolen who bats .375 (3-8) and Janish .600 (3-5), everyone else is .200 or below.

Pick to Click: Brandon Phillips

Now we'll try to look at Leake without analyzing the off-field antics! D'backs bat .409 vs Leake, check it out here.

• Leake's ERA @ GABP this year (2 starts) is 3.00, and 11.57 away from home (1 start).
• RHB are still not doing well vs Leake w. a .212 Avg while LHB are sitting comfortably at .310. This isn't good news with the LHB lineup.
• Leake's 11.57 away ERA of course came in Phoenix, and if you recall Ryan Roberts (future Reds Killer) had a three run home run vs Leake and Stephen Drew had 2 rbi.
• I fully expect to see the lefties Parra, Drew, Miranda, Montero and Johnson starting to load up vs Leake. If Leake does get through these lefties successfully I love match-ups like this for our bullpen where we can bring in Bray or Chapman (probably Bray because of Chapman's two IP tonight) and take advantage of a loaded LHB lineup.

Pick to Click: Drew

Doesn't look good for the Reds, but the past 5 games the match-ups have looked pretty good.....so we'll have to wait and see. I just post stats, and try to do a little predicting, but the main thing with stats is you can't completely rely on them or use them to predict baseball. I say the Reds win tomorrow, and it's not because of any match-up, it's because I can't see us losing 6 of 7 to the Pirates and D'backs.

Off topic stuff:

-Josh Johnson has carried a no hitter to the fourth inning in all four of his starts this year

-Billy Hamilton had an inside the park home run yesterday, his third career home run, 2 of them being inside the parkers.

-For your sport managers/marketers, you'll appreciate this idea that is being implemented at Petco Park. Great marketing, IMO. Here's a video of it.

-Former Red Aaron Harang is now 4-0 with a 1.88 ERA. Petco Park is ridiculous, but congrats to Aaron.