A brutal finish to a once promising homestand.
Late on Monday evening the Cincinnati Reds sent Santiago Espinal to the plate to face Texas Rangers reliever Ezequiel Duran in the Bottom of the 8th inning, except ‘Texas Rangers reliever Ezequiel Duran’ was actually ‘Texas Rangers utility man Ezequiel Duran.’
Duran lobbed 43 mph eephus pitches at Espinal & Co. as he escaped the inning unscathed, though the 14 runs the Reds had clobbered the Rangers with prior to that inning more than sufficed for a Reds victory.
Elly De La Cruz had homered twice, driven in seven runs, and talk nationwide about the ‘torpedo bats’ had already become exhaustive. Cincinnati, it seemed, had emerged from its opening series slumber.
Yet here we are, some 40 hours later, and the Reds sit at just 2-4. They haven’t scored since Duran’s eephuses cooled off their white hot bats, as Nathan Eovaldi, Jack Leiter, & the Rangers bullpen – their actual relievers – conspired to keep the Reds shutout completely in both of the subsequent games, taking home 1-0 victories that left poor Pythagoras laughing his ass off in the distance.
That’s baseball, truly. Hunter Greene? Brilliant, and the loser on the day. His outing mirrored that of Carson Spiers last night, tough luck pitching while trying to defend home turf only to see the once blazing offense look as lost as it ever has.
The Reds now head to Milwaukee to begin their first road trip of the season, the Brewers having already been forced to lick their own torpedo-bat inflicted wounds after the New York Yankees bludgeoned them to begin the season.
Clearly, Cincinnati is operating with a half-baked roster at the moment, as Spencer Steer and his busted shoulder look lost while Tyler Stephenson’s oblique sits painfully idle over cards with the calf of Austin Hays. Jake Fraley has yet to get anything going at the plate, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand has yet to blast again after taking a pitch off his wrist earlier in the week. Entering play on Wednesday, Cincinnati’s collective 12 wRC+ from their outfielders was the worst in the game, while the 3 wRC+ (yes, three) from their DH spot wasn’t any better. Despite brilliant collective starting pitching (and pitching altogether), the Reds once again find themselves off to a sputtering start to a season, a story we’ve been told in these parts far too often of late.
Are they close? Sure, they’re close. Opening Day was a sniff away from a victory, and back to back 1-0 losses sting more than they indict. But they made the move in the dugout to, in theory, begin prioritizing actual wins over actual losses instead of simply keeping both eyes on the future, and the first week of the season has instead kept shoving reality right back in our faces.
One more sputtering series and this becomes yet another Reds club tasked with digging out of a very deep April hole, and it’s on the precipice after they wrap a series loss in which they outscored their opponents 14-5. Baseball becomes cruel and wicked lest you tame it, and the time for the taming in Cincinnati is quickly becoming now.