Reds starting pitcher Johnny Cueto is 9-2 with a 3.39 ERA in 19 starts this season (+490), giving up just nine long balls in 116.2 innings of work.\u00a0 The right-hander is 4-1 with a 3.17 ERA in 10 road starts this season (+250), but the offense has scored just seven runs in his last four outings away from the Great American Ball Park.\u00a0 In three starts this month, he has tallied a 1-0 record and 1.50 ERA despite issuing more walks (11) than collecting strikeouts (9).\u00a0 Cueto is searching of his first career victory against the Astros, going 0-4 with a 5.22 ERA in seven lifetime starts.\u00a0 He is 0-3 with a 6.10 ERA in four starts at Minute Maid Park.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Houston\u2019s struggles continued on Friday night against Cincinnati, dropping to 1-6 in the season series, as they are the only NL Central club the Astros don\u2019t have a winning record against.\u00a0 The team has lost 15 of its last 17 meetings against the Reds, after going just 2-for-14 with runners in scoring position and stranding 10 runners on base in the series opening loss.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s not doubt that we were able to get the guys up there that we wanted to give us a chance to at least tie the thing or win it,\u201d Astros manager Brad Mills said.\u00a0 The club is now 8-9 this month (+70) and 33-36 in July over the last three years (-220).\u00a0 Houston has managed to average just 3.5 runs and combined for a .238 average against right-handed starters this season, leading to a disappointing 28-45 mark in those contests.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Astros starting pitcher Roy Oswalt is 6-11 with a 3.12 ERA in 19 starts this season, with the club\u2019s offense managing to score just four runs in his last five starts.\u00a0 The right-hander has tallied a dismal 2-8 record despite having a solid 3.48 ERA in 11 home starts, allowing opponents to hit for a combined .222 average.\u00a0 Oswalt has made three starts this month, going 1-1 with a 0.90 ERA, as he\u2019s managed to strike out 20 batters and walk just four in 20 frames.\u00a0 In 33 career appearances (31 starts) versus the Reds, he is an astounding 23-2 with a 2.62 ERA.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Bettors may get aggressive in playing Oswalt in this situation due to the Reds being 0-2 this year and 1-7 the last three years on the road with the total is 7 or less.\u00a0 The strength of this play lessens when finding the Astros being 1-5 at home in the same situation.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Houston Astros SP Roy Oswalt has absolutely dominated the Reds in his career, as he looks to become the franchise’s all-time leader in wins. Cincinnati Reds at Houston Astros Cincinnati is set to play the second game of this three-game series, which happens to be in the middle of playing 15 of 18 games versus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[78,1039,977,1982,1781,1528],"class_list":["post-5833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-houston-astros","tag-johnny-cueto","tag-minute-maid-park","tag-nl-central","tag-roy-oswalt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5842,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833\/revisions\/5842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/roy-oswalt-astros-38-150x150.jpg\")
Cincinnati is set to play the second game of this three-game series, which happens to be in the middle of playing 15 of 18 games versus NL Central opponents.\u00a0 The Reds are in second place in the division for the sixth straight day after spending the previous 18 days on top of the standings.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re trying not to scoreboard-watch too much, but it\u2019s obvious that we do,\u201d outfielder Jay Bruce said.\u00a0 Cincinnati stands at 38-27 in night games this season (+1,130) with the total being 38-24 O\/U in those contests.\u00a0 The club also finds itself in an advantageous position, going 9-3 as a road underdog of +100 to +125 this year (+750), which is consistent to the 36-29 mark its posted over the last three seasons.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n