Marc is reporting that Jason LaRue has finally decided to come off the DL. He's scheduled to catch Aaron Harang tomorrow.

For the momentito, the Reds will carry three catchers while rumors continue to swirl about an impending trade that's great in theory and nonexistant in practice. LaRue takes the roster spot left vacant by Ken Griffey Jr.'s trip to the disabled list.

Griffey plans to be back a week from Friday. Hopefully the team will have done something with Tony Womack by then, but I'm far from confident. After several apparent showcase starts at the end of spring training and the beginning of the season, Womack hasn't seen much playing time lately which tells me interest is low. The team could just release Womack if a deal isn't forthcoming, but more likely they'll just send Quinton McCracken back to Louisville.

Someday, perhaps long in the future, we'll see the Heartthrob again.

Holey crap, Eric Milton has given up six runs over the course of four outs. Three home runs, the most recent to Dan Uggla.

Can we get Tom Browning out here to adjust this man's rubber position, please? Something obviously ain't right.

The Reds gave the Marlins a serious routing Monday night, winning by a score of 1-9.

Brandon “The Pickle” Claussen took the mound for the Reds, living up to his promise to work seven innings. He gave up zero runs on five hits to get the win. Mike Burns took over in the eighth to give up a single run on two hits. Chris Hammond protected the eight-run lead in the ninth by giving up no runs on just one hit. Hammond brings his ERA all the way down to 24.00.

After a Felipe Lopez double, Adam Dunn hit his eighth home run of the year in the first inning to score the Reds first two runs. These first-inning home runs are getting to be his trademark. Score: 0-2.

The Reds continued in the second inning when Javier Valentín doubled. Edwin Encarnación reached and Valentín advanced on a fieling error to set up Brandon Phillips for a bases-clearing double to left field. Ryan Freel would knock in Phillips two batters later. Score: 0-5.

All was quiet until the sixth inning when Austin Kearns led off with an opposite field home run. Scott Hatteberg doubled and Valentín singled, so Hatteberg was ready to score when Encarnación grounded out to short. Phillips singled in Valentín. Score: 0-8.

The Marlins offense suddenly made an appearance in the top of the eighth. The bases loaded, Josh Willingham grounded into a sacrifice double play to score the fishes' only run. Score: 1-8.

But Phillips got the run back in the bottom of the inning, singling in Encarnación. Score: 1-9. It was quite a night for Phillips who is proving himself to be a solid addition to the team despite the fact that he didn't bring a corresponding trade with him.

The win brings the Reds' record to 8-5. Tuesday, Eric Milton takes the mound against Jason Vargas.

The Reds handed the Cardinals the most unexpected of losses on Friday, holding the offensive juggernauts scoreless while coming through with only a single run of their own to win 1-0.

Aaron Harang was the man, giving up four hits on seven innings pitched to get the win. Furthermore, he's the one responsible for knocking in Austin Kearns in the fifth inning to give the Reds their score.

Kent Mercker pitched a third of an inning, Todd Coffey finished off the eighth, and David Weathers took over in the ninth to continue the scoreless outing. The eighth inning was a little dicey. Harang started it off and walked his first batter, Aaron Miles. Mercker came in to get Skip Schumaker out on a sacrifice bunt and then walk David Eckstein. Coffey came in with two men on. He struck out Juan Encarnación, and limited the mighty Albert Pujols to a single. So facing the bases loaded and reknowned-pain-in-the-Reds'-collective-ass Jim Edmonds at the plate, Coffey demonstrated the bad-assedness that can only come from eating metric tons of Jell-o and struck the guy out.

Helluva game, and certainly the one I'll bring up over and over again when talking baseball with Ms. Scratcher. Pujols will have worn a hole in the left-field stands from all the home runs he hit there, and I'll just say “Harang beat Carpenter 0-1.” In fact, I've already done it a few times.

The win brought the Reds' record to 7-3 and gave them first place in NLC. They would continue the series in St. Louis with Dave Williams taking on Sydney Ponson on Saturday.

Sweet game, and I'm glad I chose to go to this one, since I figured this was the game they had the best chance to win. We walked up around 5 and got front row, infield box tickets, literally in the first row behind the Diamond Club seats and two seats to the left of the Scout seats (Section 121, if you're ambitious and/or curious. Great seats, and you should be able to walk up day of game and get them. Best section in the ballpark, methinks). Pretty amazing seats for $36 a pop. We ended up sitting outside at the Machine Room Grille before the game and watched Reds BP. Dunn was launching the hell out of everything and David Ross had an upper deck shot. First time I've gotten to see Reds BP, so that was pretty sweet. The food at the Machine Room pretty much sucks, and my Dr. Pepper tasted very much like a Pepsi, but I think I'll probably recover.

On our way out of the Machine Room, there was an XBox 360 with MLB 2K6 on it, so we killed some time playing that a little. Fun game, but baserunning is a bitch. My dad and I went down and found our seats, and the usher was surprised, especially when we told him that we got them around two hours before the game was supposed to start. Once we got there, we spent some time trying to see how many Marlins players we could identify and then, with around a half-hour to kill, decided to take a trip around the ballpark. You don't really realize how great of a park it really is until you do that. I don't think there's a bad seat in the house, to be honest, and the whole place is real purdy, just like my favorite Reds blogger.

When we got back to our seats, most of the ones around us had filled in. I was rather unhappy to see children under the age of 7 surrounding us on three sides. Turns out only one was extremely annoying, and that kid, along with the one to our left, who was extremely quiet, were gone by the 5th inning. The kid to the right was actually pretty damn knowledgeable for his age, and not at all irritating.

The game itself was pretty fun. Claussen didn't pitch nearly as good as his line indicates, but I'll take it. Phillips looked pretty good, and the entire Marlins team seems like they've been taking fielding lessons from Adam Dunn. So many bobbled balls it isn't even funny. Freel was safe on his attempted steal of 3rd, but I think the ump decided we shouldn't be stealing up 5-0 already. Edwin is still taking too many good pitches early in the count, but hopefully he'll get over that. Dunn is just in an awesome groove right now, and I really think he and Kearns can both keep it up. Both will have their averages fall, but they should see a rise in their walk rate to go along with it, and a 3-4-5 of Griffey, Dunn, and Kearns should be nasty.

I've given up on Mike Burns, and I gave up on Hammond a while ago. Hammond's line wasn't that bad, but I expect it would've been largely different if it hadn't been people like Reggie Abercrombie that he was facing. Herr Valentin looked good, and maybe, just maybe, Scott Hatteberg will start to hit over .200. I really don't mind Junior being out right now, as long as we've got Freel in CF. We should hand Phillips the starting 2B job for a month or so and see what he's got, and Freel has to be in the lineup everyday. I firmly believe he's more valuable to this team than Junior is.

All in all, I'm glad I went, had a great time, and wish we could play the Marlins every day.