So there I was at work grinding away like usual. I had heard the Reds put up 8 runs in the second inning after a God, ahem, Joey Votto grand slam, and were heading into the bottom of the 9th with a 9-3 lead. Normally for day games I will periodically check the score and try to follow most of the 9th inning from my desk, but today I was pretty busy, and thought “Hey it’s a 6 run lead… this ones in the bag. I’ll get some work done and just read the recap later.” Well you can then imagine my surprise about a half hour later when I get a text from my friend Volz reading “no ducking way.” Clearly Volz has not quite figured out predictive text, but we’ll deal with that at another time. An email from Greg shortly followed: “walk off grand slam, game over.”
At first I just assumed they were ducking with me because I mean come on.. not even the Reds could blow a 6 run lead in the 9th, but some quick research as well as a couple other angry emails/texts from friends would indeed confirm that the Reds had lost. They went into the 9th with the win in hand, and gave it up faster than Audrina at the site of a motorcycle.
To make matters worse the hated Cardinals beat the Marlins today to take over first place in the NL Central Division, or what is quickly becoming known as the St. Louis Invitational. Sure it may only be one game, and all this worrying is simply an over-reaction. I’m sure that’s how outside people or non-diehards feel about today’s game, but real Reds fans… we know. We’ve been here before, seen this 1,000 times, and will be shocked if anything but the expected lies ahead. What is the expected? About a 5-15 slide that puts us about 5 games back, causing Dusty to over-manage killing the confidence of all his young players, wearing out his veterans, and positioning us for a second half slide that leaves us below .500 and in 3rd or 4th place in the division yet again. I know I sound like Chicken Little, but we Reds fans just know when the sky is falling.
If you want to know why we lost today it was two main reasons: 4 errors (games like these happen and generally speaking the Reds have been outstanding defensively this season so we can let this slide) and poor coaching. I’ll elaborate on the 2nd one. First off you should never pitch Lincoln and Massett back to back. They are our most up and down relievers and if both are having an off night it will add up to a big inning for the opposition. You have to mix these high variance guys in with the more steady performers like Rhodes and Coco so that the inning doesn’t completely blow up in your face before you even realize what happens. Also if you are going to make a substitution, do it for the right reasons. Going into a defensive inning you do not take out Stubbs and leave Nix in the game. That is just flat out poor managing!
Hopefully this team can prove me wrong. They’ve never said die all season and are still only a half game out of first place. Unfortunately for most Reds’ fans we’ve seen this act and we know how it ends. Pretty ducking miserably.
Brian “Ugh” Reinhart
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