With all due respect to Tim Keefe and his infinitesimal 0.86 ERA for the Troy Trojans in 1880, no regular starter in baseball's modern era has had the pleasure of keeping his ERA under 1.00 for an entire season.

As strong as his start to the '08 season was, Cliff Lee had no reason to suspect he'd be the first. And after his rough outing against the Reds in Sunday's 6-4 loss at Great American Ball Park, the odds are stacked against Lee even further.

Lee's ERA now stands at an "exorbitant" 1.37 after this start in which he squared off against National League ERA leader Edinson Volquez and surrendered six runs, five of which were earned, on 10 hits with a walk and two strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings.

"I don't feel like I was locating the ball as well as I have been the past few starts," said Lee, who turned in his shortest outing of the season. "Obviously, I didn't do my job well enough."

The same can be said for the Indians as a unit. With this loss, they were swept by the Reds for the first time in the history of this Interstate 71 rivalry.

"It was a bad series," manager Eric Wedge said. "We didn't play very well. You do that, and you're going to get beat like this."

In the first two games of the series, the bullpen did the Tribe in late. In the finale, Lee couldn't keep his strong season going.

And a common thread throughout the series was the bats' struggles to manufacture with runners in scoring position. The Indians were a woeful 3-for-27 in that department.

"That was the difference," Wedge said. "That was a separator for us in a bad way. We just did a very poor job of executing with runners in scoring position and, in particular, with runners on third and less than two outs. That can't happen, shouldn't happen and it happened over and over again."

Yet the bats did come through on occasion in this loss. In the fourth inning, Casey Blake ripped a two-out single to score Asdrubal Cabrera from second and knot the game at 1. And in the sixth, Michael Aubrey, making his first big league start, got his first hit in a big way with a solo shot to right to cut the Reds' lead to 4-2.

None of that mattered, though, with Lee unable to keep Cincinnati's bats in check.

The Reds took advantage of Victor Martinez's passed ball and manufactured a run in the first. In fact, this was just the second time all season that Martinez has caught one of Lee's starts. Backup Kelly Shoppach has usually worked with Lee.

Not that Lee cared about the catching situation.

"It wasn't the catcher," he said. "It was me throwing the pitches. I just wasn't as sharp in key spots."

That was especially true in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings.

In the fourth, Lee had two out and none on when he left a 3-2 fastball over the plate for Adam Dunn, who homered for the third time this series.

"I missed the pitch to Dunn," Lee said. "It was a 3-2 pitch, and I didn't want to walk him, but I don't need to throw a pitch belt high down the middle, either."

It was the ground ball, not the long ball, that got to Lee in the fifth. Again with two out and none on, he served up four consecutive singles to Ryan Freel, Paul Janish, Ken Griffey Jr. and Brandon Phillips. The last two of those four hits were both grounders through the infield holes, and each brought home a run.

The sixth inning followed the trend. Lee had two out and none on before he gave up a double to Javier Valentin and a crushing two-run blast off the bat of Joey Votto.

"Against Votto, I got ahead with a fastball in and I tried to throw the same pitch again," Lee said. "I threw it belt high down the middle, and he hit it out of the park."

With that, Lee was out of the game and so were the Indians, who found themselves down, 6-2. They made it interesting in the seventh, when Jamey Carroll and Martinez each knocked in a run off the Reds' bullpen, but a complete comeback was not to be.

Lee's rough outing set the tone. The home runs were particularly surprising, given that he had allowed just one all season.

"He wasn't quite as sharp as we've seen him," Wedge said.

No one could expect Lee to remain that sharp all year. The numbers he was stringing together bordered on the ridiculous, and they had to end eventually.

Still, that didn't lessen the sting of this loss for Lee.

"Good players are able to ride out those streaks and limit the mistakes and make adjustments quicker," he said. "I've got to do a better job executing my pitches, especially in key spots."