Reds 3B baseman on hot streak entering Phillies series near hometown

A DAY off before your baseball team heads to your hometown for a series usually means good, home-cooked food and a night sleeping in your old bed.

For Point Pleasant, N.J., native and Reds third baseman Todd Frazier, that food came in the form of The Sawmill pizza on the boardwalk, though the weather prevented a typical June beach day. He did get to sleep in his bed Monday, though, a night before the Reds opened a three-game set at Citizens Bank Park, which is just an hour and a half from Point Pleasant.

A list of players' guest pass requests in the Reds' clubhouse showed 20 for Frazier, who said buses of family and friends were making the trip, with plenty other random locals who still remember the slugger.

The timing couldn't be better for the Reds or for Frazier, who is fresh off being named the National League's Player of the Week.

The Reds had lost 10 of 11 before a recent three-game sweep of Washington over the weekend.

Frazier, 29, entered last night going 10-for-15 over his previous four games with three homers, four doubles, six runs and five RBI. He raised his batting average from .253 to .287 over that stretch. In last night's 5-4 loss, he was 0-for-5 and now is hitting .280.

Also entering the day, Frazier was second in the NL to Bryce Harper in home runs, with 16, to go along with 34 RBI.

He hit 29 homers last year, with 80 RBI and 20 steals.

"He's becoming one of the more prolific power hitters in the National League, and he's not a secret anymore," Reds manager Bryan Price said before last night's game. "He's not forcing it. When you're locked in, you don't try to do things with pitches you can't handle."

Frazier, who made his first All-Star appearance last year, is on pace to hit over 50 home runs and tally around 100 RBI. Both would be career highs.

"It's cool to think about," Frazier said. "Hopefully, I can keep it up, and I think I can. Right now, I'm not missing the pitches I should be hitting, and that's key when you get a pitch to hit. If I keep on doing that, I think at the end of the year I'm going to have a really happy and exciting year."

The numbers aren't pretty.

The season-worst seven straight losses the Phillies entered yesterday with dropped the club to a season-worst 14 games below .500.

Phillies pitchers surrendered an MLB-worst 15 home runs in the previous six games during that losing streak.

It gets worse, too.

Entering the Reds series, the Phillies had only one hit in the previous 28 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Had enough yet?

So has Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg, who said before last night's game that the team needed some sort of spark, and he derived confidence from knowing it had sustained a six-game winning streak earlier in the season.

"It all starts, for me, with a spark at the top of the order and then getting the middle guys up there in some situations to come through," Sandberg said. "I always believe that you have to swing the bats to get out of a slump. I think that's the other place that it starts."

Sandberg was then asked whether he was worried at all about morale, given the current slump and the way things have been going this year and the previous two.

"The thing that we can do is turn it around with a new series and a new start," Sandberg said. "The morale starts with guys getting their work in and talking about the game and talking about doing something different to get things going in a different direction. And that's what I hear. I think that's a good thing."

Aaron Nola and Rhys Hoskins were named Phillies minor league pitcher and player of the month, respectively, for May. Hoskins, a first baseman at Class A Lakewood, batted .342 with two home runs, 18 runs scored and 23 RBI for the month. Nola, the Phillies' top pitching prospect, went 4-1 in six starts at Double A Reading with a 1.35 ERA and 32 strikeouts in 40 innings pitched . . . Kevin Slowey, who was with the Phillies in spring training this year, joined the Major League Baseball Players' Association staff yesterday as a special assistant to executive director Tony Clark.