Reds drop to 2-11 in division play with ugly loss to Cardinals

ST. LOUIS – The Cincinnati Reds started the first day of their road trip without a pitching coach. They started the second inning without their manager.

A 10-3 loss to the Cardinals in the opener of their weekend series in St. Louis, dropped the Reds to 2-11 in division play this season – before they’ve played a game against first-place Milwaukee.

And they started to look like a team that couldn’t get out of its own way by the time they reached the sixth inning of a six-game road trip that will take them to San Diego next – and to the brink of getting buried in the division by midseason if the bats and bullpen keep looking like this.

The team that finished April in first place and in command of the National League Central has fallen like a rock since, with slumping lineup and one of the worst-performing, beat-up bullpens in the majors leading the race to the bottom.

Errors by rookie shortstop Edwin Arroyo and rookie first baseman Sal Stewart in the bottom of the first inning cost the Reds two unearned runs and most of a 3-0 lead – and cost the manager for the rest of the game when Terry Francona was ejected after an unsuccessful replay challenge.

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Stewart, who was ruled to have pulled his foot off the bag on what would have been an inning-ending groundout, immediately signaled to challenge the play and started jogging off the field.

When a lengthy review resulted in a “call stands” ruling, Francona emerged from the dugout in what appeared to be support of Stewart.

The Cards tied it on Alec Burleson‘s leadoff homer in the third off Brady Singer, who lasted just one leadoff walk into the fifth inning.

Another unearned run facilitated by Brock Burke‘s errant pickoff throw in the fifth put the Cardinals in front.

And then rookie Zach Maxwell and almost-rookie Luis Mey combined to surrender four hits, four walks and a hit batter in the Cardinals’ six-run sixth – Mey loading the bases with a two-out walk, then hitting a batter, giving up a run-scoring single off Eugenio Suárez‘s glove at third, then issuing back-to-back run-scoring walks.

Not that sixth was especially decisive given the non-pitchers’ fielding and performance at the plate after the first.

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Consider that the Reds went 2-for-3 with men in scoring position in their three-run first. They didn’t put a man in scoring position again until the seventh. Then left him there.

And it’s not like they’re exactly catching a juggernaut on a hot streak as they face their division rivals this weekend.

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The Cards haven’t won a series in three weeks and had lost 10 of 15 entering the weekend.

But the Reds might as well have asked them to hold their beer – losing their sixth in eight games and 20th since the end of April.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Reds drop to 2-11 in division play with ugly loss to Cardinals