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Dunn homers twice as Reds down Astros

Jul 31, 2008 - 5:32 AM By Andrew J. Ferraro PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

HOUSTON (Ticker) -- All-Star Edinson Volquez has been anything but that since the "Midsummer Classic." He set out to change that on Wednesday.

Adam Dunn homered twice and Volquez ended his post-All-Star break malaise, leading the Cincinnati Reds to a 9-5 win over the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park.

Roughed up for nine earned runs over nine innings in two starts since the break, Volquez (13-4) allowed just one earned run and five hits with a walk and five strikeouts over 6 1/3 innings, winning for the first time since July 12 at Milwaukee.

"The difference tonight? My head," Volquez said. "When you get your head in line with home plate, you can make your pitches. I was aggressive tonight, a lot of strikes. All my pitches were good tonight. I threw my curve and my slider."

"That was a long time coming," Baker said of his pitcher's fine outing. "He threw like he'd been throwing early in the year, except for a couple of pitches. The main thing, he was throwing early-count strikes. He spotted his fastball (and) his pitch count was low. There were a couple of mishaps, but that was the main

thing, he threw better fastballs."

Dunn, a Houston native, put on quite a show offensively, launching a pair of solo blasts in the second and the fifth as part of his three-hit night to take sole possession of the major league lead with 32 homers.

"Me and Jake (hitting coach Brook Jacoby) worked on a few little - I guess - tweaks," Dunn said. "It seems like I've been seeing the ball better this month. ... Well, not seeing it better, but I've been swinging it at pitches I've normally been taking. Maybe it's the ash bats, I don't know."

Each home run came off Wandy Rodriguez (6-4), who did not make it out of the fifth inning for the first time since April 19.

Ken Griffey Jr. also homered off Rodriguez, sending a three-run, 425-foot blast into the upper deck to give the Reds a 5-0 lead before Dunn and Edwin Encarnacion hit back-to-back shots off Rodriguez and reliever Chad Paronto to make it 7-0.

"The pitch was a fastball right over the middle to Griffey," Rodriguez said. "I tried to throw a fastball away right there, but I missed it. In that situation, I really wanted a ground ball. But on that play, he hit a home run, so all I could say was, 'Oh, no, I didn't want that.'"

Hunter Pence, who had two of Houston's nine hits, homered in the bottom half of the fifth before the Astros scored four unearned runs in the seventh to make things interesting.

"That guy really has some explosive stuff," Pence said of Volquez. "That is the bottom line and it is really too hard to hit both his pitches. The ball just explodes out of his hand.

"I was looking for a fastball and his pitch, I think, ran back over the plate a little more than he wanted. It had a lot of movement on it, but it was a ball that I could get a lot of barrel on."

Volquez should have been out of the inning unscathed, but two fielding errors by shortstop Jeff Keppinger - including one on an RBI fielder's choice groundout from Humberto Quintero - paved the way for pinch hitter Ty Wigginton, who hit a three-run homer to make it 8-5.

"It's a relief (we won), but we tried to help give it back to them," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "We've just got to cut down on those errors. I'm very happy about the game. I just hate to look at our fielding percentage. We've just got to improve on that defense."

For Wigginton, it was his second career pinch-hit homer and the Astros' fourth of the season.

Each starter had at least one hit for the Reds, who lost the first two games of the series, helping them snap a five-game losing streak and a string of eight straight setbacks to the Astros dating to last season.