| Final | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cincinnati Reds (35-47) | 3 | 5 | 0 |
| Colorado Rockies (49-36) | 5 | 10 | 0 |
| W: Hoffman (5-1) L: Castillo (0-1) S: Holland (27) | |||
| FanGraphs Win Probability | Box Score | |||
The Good
–Joey Votto hit a homer. He has 24 now, 82 games in. He has twice finished the season with 24 homers. Yeah. He’s awesome.
–And speaking of awesome – holy crap, Scooter Gennett. Where did he even come from?
–Luis Castillo. I suppose he technically didn’t have the best numbers, but 5 2/3 IP with 8 Ks and only 1 walk against a really good Colorado team in Denver in his third MLB start ever, I’ll certainly take it.
The Bad
–Beyond Votto and Scooter, there wasn’t much offense, but otherwise, this was a well-played game. Sometimes, you lose those.
Not-So-Random Thoughts
–Boy, Luis Castillo is a breath of fresh air isn’t he? I’m looking forward to his starts now and it’s pretty nice given what we’ve seen out of the rotation for much of the year.
–Joey Votto’s home run was his 1500th hit, passing Ted “Big Klu” Kluszweski. There are still people who will argue that Votto isn’t the best first baseman in Reds history. These people are silly.
–The Reds traded Tony Renda to Arizona today. Renda hadn’t seen any time in the majors this year and dealt with some injuries, but I liked watching him play in Louisville.
–Even though the Reds lost today, this team is feeling a lot less disastrous than they were a week or two ago.
Why can’t this team win on the road tho?! Makes no sense.
Their more recent road games have generally been against good teams so the lack of winning makes a lot of sense since the Reds aren’t very good.
Willy Taveras, CoreyPatterson, Billy Hamilton, Jose Peraza, I am surprised the Reds haven’t signed Usain Bolt to be their leadoff hitter.
Whoops, I forgot Drew Stubbs.
Thanks for the reminder about Stubbs! What Reds fan wouldn’t want to forget him!
Hey. Stubbs actually had more than a bit of power and does not fit the mold–despite his speed. He had 22 HRs in 2010 before tailing off. That is no Taveras.
I would love Renaldo Nieamiah
That’s Nehemiah and he would have no clue on the baseball field. Idiotic statement
I’m sorry that you’re unable to decipher obvious sarcasm.
Hopefully he will start throwing more first-pitch strikes. He got behind an awful lot of hitters. But he sure seems to have a major league arm.
Was at Louisville game last night at Indy, former top prospect Robert Stephenson started and did not look sharp at all. Gave up a couple homeruns and tribe hit him pretty hard. Winker had a nice night getting on base I believe all four at bats and Ervin had some nice at bats. I have no idea who some of the players were as mine have been mentioned here. Bats lost a close game.
But Stephenson walked 0 for the 2nd straight game and had a decent K total. Agree about the HRs. Seems like a step in the right direction though.
I had high hopes for Peraza coming into this year. I’ve given up. He needs to be sent down to the minors. Don’t care who comes back. I can’t take him jabbing at pitches for the rest of the year. His defense is okay, certainly not great. Put in Gennett at 2B and keep him there. Put Hamilton back in CF and bat him 9th. Gennett, Cozart, Votto then whatever.
Watching Peraza bat is painful. Him and Hamilton are two automatic outs. At least hamilton has crazy speed and is a great CF.
I agree…I’d only add, bring up Winker and platoon him in the OF (right field probably, moving Schebler over to CF to give Billy some breaks).
Good call.
There are a whole lot of sophomore slumps going on this year, a lot. Tho I agree, some time in the minors may get his head back in the game. He’s obviously his own worst enemy right now.
Agree, but the Reds may have caught lightning with Scooter. He’s only 27; needs to be the everyday 2nd baseman. Lose a little in fielding, gain a ton in offense. Peraza needs to go down to AAA for awhile, play a little short. I would have no problem with the Reds packaging Hamilton, Peraza, and a top prospect for a young CFer that can get on base. Think of that daily lineup.
I said during the game last night that he just competes which is what you are looking for in a young pitcher.He certainly battles and that is a good thing.Often young pitchers aren’t good at damage control and so far he has done that.Of course the idea is to not get in that situation to begin with so it will come if he throws more strikes and gets ahead in the count.This of course is what all young pitchers struggle with in the big leagues but just give him the ball every 5th day and lets see what happens.Learning to pitch at the big league level with both success and failure can’t be measured.Last night he walked only one but the Rockies were in hitters counts all night long and he still battled.
I think we all said similar things about Garrett at the start of the season…lets hope Castillo pans out better (not that i’m giving up on Garrett). In re to Castillo, personally, I’d rather see command of the strike zone than 100 MPH balls.
I think the Reds anointed Amir and played around with service time by sending him down.If I remember right it was 6 years of control vs.5 years that was the issue.Well after all of that including an injury he started getting hammered.To believe he wasn’t going to have games like that would be just foolish and who knows how all of that effected him mentally.Amir can pitch but he doesn’t have the velocity of Castillo or Reed or Stephensen and therefore has no room for error.He also struggled with command just like everybody else and he always had that one inning where it got away from him.I feel the same about Castillo that I do about all young pitchers.Just let them pitch and give them a chance to fail.We haven’t given anybody a real chance.We tag them after a few starts as to who they are and what they can or can’t do.This is not sorting this is just the next man up mentality which works in other sports but not in baseball which is a 162 game grind.
I think we’re seeing just how much difference there is between Castillo and all of the the “prospect” pitchers. The others mess around, walk folks, and then can’t recover. Castillo has the stuff and ability to get out of jams. Of course, we were all anointing Garrett after his first few starts. Chris Welsh said last night on the telecast that Castillo is the best pitching prospect he has seen the Reds produce in many, many years. Hopefully he is correct.
Castillo was brought forward by the Marlins but I’m glad the Reds have him. He seems like a real building block of the rebuild.
What I like about,Castillo is he doesn’t lose his head when he gives up a hit or even a Homer. Garrett on the other hand pitched well until he got rattled and then lost it. He will learn how to overcome that in the minors. I think he will come back and be better this year. He had 12 starts and half were good. Nor bad for a rookie.
He’s very likely to finish the season in AAA. With a strong performance in next ST, he should be landing in the majors sometime in 2018. If Cozart is extended, and with Gennett playing at current level, I believe that Peraza will be relegated to a utility role and Suarez will be the sacrified lamb.
Well they have Castillo and literally everything else is up for grabs for next year? I would think Stephenson has dropped down pretty far in their pecking order but who knows? I wonder if they can even sign Feldman to another 1 yr deal? He may have pitched himself into a dangerous 2-3 yr deal from someone? Romano goes Thursday and Stephens will probably be back at some point. They need to replace Adleman in the rotation too….he is what he is. Bottom line…if they resign Feldman plus Castillo then that leaves about 10 guys to step up and fill 3 spots? It doesn’t seem that hard on paper but then again nobody thought Disco & Finnegan would miss the whole season.
Castillo has pitched 3 times. Like all pitchers, other teams will figure him out and make adjustments to mitigate his strengths. His long term success is tied to his ability to adjust to the adjustments. None of us have any idea if he can do that.
Barring injury….I have an idea that he can make this rotation. If hitters could just adjust to 100 then Chapman would be forced back to Cuba. Velocity isn’t everything but its like having a strong armed QB. If forces the hitter to commit to his swing a little earlier and gets them to chase more pitches out of the zone. A 2-0 or 3-1 fb may not get creamed like Garrett’s 3-1 fb at 91. Cmon Chuck….Castillo has talent and you know that too? Chris Welsh said the same thing I said….best Reds prospect in a decade atleast. It would be a diff story if he had Stephenson control issues coming up but his control was very good in the minors. He’ll be in the 2018 rotation if he’s healthy. He won’t be facing the Nats and Rockies in Colorado every start!
Bonilla just had 7 shutout innings in Indy. Does he go back to the pen? Also where does Rookie Davis fit in? I think he’s pitching in Arizona? Wouldn’t he come back to AAA at some point?
Chuck is right in that we have no idea about Castillo.Just like all of the rest he has to pitch.Thanks Old Cossack for the pitching data from AAA.I will have to go back and check it out but it appears Reed is dominating even more so then his last time at Louisville.I continue to hope we will see two more young guys join Homer,Feldman and Castillo for the rest of the season.Wouldn’t bother me if they gave Lorenzen a shot as well.We have wasted so much time and so many starts on others and I have to ask why when we never were going to compete for anything other then last place in the central
.735, .734, and .735. That was Daniel Murphy’s OPS at age 27,28, and 29. Now he’s a much much bigger guy then Scooter but maybe Scooter is morphing into Murphy-lite? The Reds deserve a break in our favor once in a while don’t we?
The key for Stephenson as for all the other Reds prospective pitchers is control- not just enough control to throw the ball in the strike zone, but enough control to throw it where it needs to be inside the larger strike zone.
Murphy could always hit but his power and average went up up up when he went to Washington.He went from a pitchers park to a hitters park and is surrounded by a bunch of good hitters.Not taking anything away from him but that has helped.Scooter may fall off the cliff but right now he is my every day second baseman.Peraza needs to be sent down and work with a hitting coach because he has not shown any improvement at all at the plate.You would have to be just lost at the plate to only walk 5 times in the first half of the year when playing almost every day.Day after day and at bat after at bat he just walks in to the box and starts swinging.Nobody is that bad.He either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care but what really concerns me is that we just keep sending him out there as if what he is doing is ok.
I agree with you Old Cossack that Deshields just didn’t realize about how good Winker is about getting on base.Somebody had to call him for sure.
Me either. Hard to believe he drank the kool-aid and had a revelation in the middle of the night. Whatever the cause, let’s hope we continue to see Winker at the top of the lineup and also see what Herrera can do batting right behind him.
Peraza needs to be sent down and Herrera called up to start. I’m loving what Scooter has done so far and am not discounting the possibility of him being the stating 2B one that next good team. However, in this seaosn of sorting we need to see Herrera got an extended look since (please correct me if I’m wrong) he’ll be out of options next year.
Does anyone else think that Peraza would benefit from a leg kick? Don’t get me wrong I believe his biggest issue is his approach. But, if you’re constantly struggling to get the ball to the outfield you need to try to generate power somehow.??? He has strength it’s just that he try’s to flip his wrists at every pitch he sees. It’s maddening!!!