Time for a recap of tonight’s titanic struggle….
FINAL
Cincinnati 0
Houston 7
WP: W. Rodriguez (1-1)
LP: Harang (1-2)
BOX SCORE
POSITIVES
–Aaron Harang would’ve had a quality start if it weren’t for the bullpen. There were a bunch of seeing-eye singles against him, but he struck out 6 while walking only 1. It’s a stretch to call this a positive, given his final line, but I’m feeling pretty good about Harang in 2009.
NEGATIVES
–Two stinkin’ hits. Against Wandy Rodriguez. Sheesh, this offense is really pretty bad, it seems. Of course, that’s what we all feared.
–I love Jared Burton. He’s one of my favorite Reds. But he’s struggling as badly as I’ve seen him struggle in his major league career.
–Brandon Phillips had an error, his second of the season. BP is making errors and taking walks (yeah, he took another BB tonight). I’d like to know who is inhabiting Phillips’ body in 2009.
–The Reds are last in the majors in team batting average (.208), 28th out of 30 in team SLG, and 23rd out of 30 in team OBP. There’s no way in the world that this team competes with a (lack of) offense like this.
ETC.
–Yeah, the offense is struggling, but this game was winnable until Burton put it out of reach. That’s frustrating.
–Remember when the Reds were searching for a slugging right-handed bat in the offseason? It really woulda been nice to have one of those tonight. I never wanted to trade Homer Bailey for Jermaine Dye, but you gotta admit it would be nice to have Dye in the lineup right now.
–I was watching while doing some other things, but there was a lot of talk in the game thread about Alex Gonzalez’s lack of range at shortstop, and how Harang got screwed because of it. You know that I’ve seen some of that from Gonzo earlier this season, but I can’t say I was watching closely enough tonight to know if it really hurt Harangatan. Those of you who watched closely: what do you think?