In a rare occurrence, the Reds generated some offense Wednesday night. As usual, they failed to sustain it.

Ruben Rivera scored the Reds' only run with a HR. (Craig Ruttle photos) | ZOOM |

        Cincinnati had 10 hits but made the least of them, losing to the Atlanta Braves 3-1 in a game halted by heavy rain before the bottom of the eighth inning.

        The Reds' offensive futility has characterized their 2-5 homestand, which concludes today. They're hitting .184 (9-for-49) with runners in scoring position in those seven games. “That's where the money is in this game, I know that,” Cincinnati manager Bob Boone said.

        It seems if the Reds don't homer — and they haven't homered much this season — they don't score. Cincinnati's only run against Atlanta, the National League East leader, came on Ruben Rivera's second-inning homer off Tom Glavine (9-5), who surrendered all of the Reds' hits in 6 2/3 innings but won his third outing in a row.

        Monday, in the Reds' last victory, homers produced six of their nine runs. Sunday's ratio was three to five. Tuesday didn't count, be cause Cincinnati scored only one run.

        Such flimsy hitting has typified the team that ranks 13th in the NL in home runs and 14th in scoring.

Elmer Dessens lost his fourth consecutive start. | ZOOM |

        “It's kind of sad,” Boone said. “You get a three-run game; you're supposed to win some of those.”

        Instead, Elmer Dessens (6-8) lost his fourth consecutive start, a span in which the Reds have scored five runs for him. This was Dessens' best effort of the bunch. He yielded only two hits after no-hitting Atlanta for 4 1/3 innings.

        Unfortunately for Dessens, Atlanta's meager output included Keith Lockhart's three-run homer in the fifth inning. It followed a brief but telling lapse in which Dessens walked Javy Lopez and hit Mark DeRosa.

        “I didn't feel like I lost my focus. I felt OK,” Dessens said of his wayward fifth inning.

        The last-place Reds (35-59), who have lost 12 of 15 games to drop 24 games below .500 for the first time this season, fell victim to a familiar foe — Glavine, the majors' winningest left-hander in the last 12 years. The two-time Cy Young Award winner is 15-4 lifetime at Cinergy Field, where 27,458 patrons gathered before the rain drenched them.

SS Mark DeRosa and 3B Chipper Jones nearly collide at second base on a DP grounder by Ken Griffey Jr. They were playing the shift. | ZOOM |

        Glavine received help from Steve Reed, who entered the game in the seventh inning and retired Alex Ochoa on a comebacker with two on and two out. Though Mike Remlinger was warming up to face the Reds in the eighth inning when umpires stopped play and nine innings weren't completed, Reed earned credit for a save.

        The Reds jumped ahead with two outs in the second inning when Rivera, whose recent appearances have been sporadic yet spectacular, hit his eighth homer of the season, a first-pitch shot over the left-field wall.

        That temporarily sufficed for Dessens, who allowed only one Brave to reach scoring position in the first four innings.

        Dessens was less effective in the fifth, when he tried to throw Lockhart a 1-0 sinker. It didn't sink much, enabling Lockhart to drive the pitch over the right-field wall for his second homer in 104 at-bats this season.

        Dessens, who has worked at least six innings in 12 of his last 14 starts, took no consolation in his strong outing.

        “We lost,” he said. “I feel bad. I want to win every game.”

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