Pie in the face was a staple practical joke in the era of silent movies. Lately, it’s what the Reds have been doing to their fans, losing to the worst teams in baseball. The Reds are now 63-77 under Jim Riggleman, 23-39 since the All-Star break.
Cincinnati Reds 3 (66-92) • Kansas City Royals 4 (55-102)
Box Score || Win % || Statcast Hitters Report || Statcast Pitchers Report
Matt Harvey pitched five innings, giving up three runs on 6 strikeouts and no walks. No matter how you look at the data, it doesn’t support the claim that he has gotten better as he has gotten healthier as the year has progressed. Coming into tonight, in Harvey’s 23 starts for the Reds over 123 innings, he has an 4.46 ERA while the NL average ERA is 4.02.
Amir Garrett pitched two shutout innings and David Hernandez did the same in the 8th. But Hunter Dozier greeted Raisel Iglesias with a leadoff 383-foot homer to left center.
The Reds, who were shutout 5 times on the past road trip, got on the board when Dilson Herrera, pinch hitting for Harvey, hit a 2-run homer. Phillip Ervin, who had singled, also scored. The Reds have given Herrera a tiny amount of playing time this year and have done little to find him any. That seems like a missed opportunity.
Ervin tied the game in the 7th with a sharp single to left field after Scooter Gennett had tripled down the first base line. The Reds had a chance to go ahead in the 8th when the loaded the bases with no outs. Scott Schebler led off with a walk. Jose Peraza grounded between short and third and Joey Votto benefited from a swinging bunt. But then Eugenio Suarez, who has been in a brutal, month-long slump, grounded out to short (force at home), Gennett struck out and Ervin grounded out.
This team is a mess. That’s all I got.
Yep.There are no words that can describe this team and its been that way for a long time.
Thanks for the Recap. Another Brutal game. I cannot think of a single staff member I would retain. Can the owner be fired?????
Why do we support losers? Is it masochism? Self-loathing? A cry for help? I’m beginning to think that 44 years is enough. Life’s too short for bad baseball.
Life is too short to not keep dreaming when my favorite team, the Reds, will get back on the winning track. But it won’t happen with out change from top to bottom. Standing pat will not get it done.
I hear you, but consider this: were it not for a geographic accident at birth that timed precisely with the Reds’ organizational peak (I was an impressionable 10 year old Cincinnati kid in 1975) I wouldn’t care less for this trash. I would be a Yankees fan. They have a nice logo (that matters when picking one corporate entity over another), budget to sign whomever they want, and routinely go to the playoffs. Winning is the goal, right? Besides, they have Aroldis Chapman and Didi Gregorious if I’m feeling nostalgic.
The Reds are now a perennial bottom feeder with a chance to overachieve to the middle of the pack.
Top, top top! weather it be ownership or GM, it all starts at the top.
Oh definitely. For those who don’t follow hockey at all, imagine Kershaw and Harper (or Trout) on the same team and both simultaneously in their walk year. Team has money set aside to sign both but neither will negotiate. Then throw in Maddon totally unleashed as manager.
I think management is going to confound all the pundits and go all in until and unless they get offered full value on these guys or the team falls apart.
With the rising youth on the team/ in the org and the ~$20M in cap space not spent they can buy their way right back into contention next season anyway.
My Rangers will sign Panarin. They will have 21 million in cap space. No better place to play than the worlds most famous arena.
Yeah – nothing like getting kicked around by the Marlins and the Royals – even the other division’s last place teams are giving us a beat down… Great rebuild…. #BabySteps #WeReallyAreBetterThaTheLast3TimesWeHad94Losses
Argh, lost a long post because my Facebook login expired. Anyhow, what I was trying to say is that right now I am glad they are losing. Let’s maximize draft position. Nothing left to prove this season. They had their moments but woeful starting pitching doomed them from the onset. Homer’s record pretty much summarizes the season. I would send him to a psychologist and give him another chance next year with much shorter rope. He is healthy. There is no telling how his season might have differed had he picked up a couple early wins and gotten some confidence. Matching up with Scherzer in the opener, not a very good beginning but he pitched well and deserved better than he got. If he can be league average and they get some outside help maybe the pitching is stabilized and they can be a 500 team more or less. Anyhow, to reiterate its all about draft position right now.
Homer bailey is finished. What are you talking about aaron. I would pay him not to pitch. Heck bring back bronson Arroyo. They can be our #1 and #2. This franchise has turned into a out and out loser. Sad for loyal fans. Bad ownership!
Manager search: Barry Larkin dodges career embarrasing moment, and won’t manage a lousy team. Film at eleven.
Jim Riggleman: I just want a job, and will do whatever the front office says if there’s a good paycheck in it. I manage the game “the right way”. Bunts, there will be lots of bunts.
John Farrell: I want to manage in the ML again, and will do what I am told. I will bring my vast baseball experience to bear, and in 2019 the Reds will win 70 games!!! Turning the corner.
Holy Cow. It is not the coaches. It is the product on the field. They need starting pitching and middle of the line-up hitting.
Top Management of the Reds has FAILED to make correct personnel decisions, and to put the best team on the field. The leadership of the team on the field is reflective of this also. There will be NO dangerous ideas that other successful teams are using being used for the Reds.
Losing, and meant to stay that way. We will lose a lot of games the right way.
No, the manager does NOT play on the field, or hit, or anything else. But institutionalizing mediocrity and a losing attitude (that starts at the top, regardless of what Castellini says, or his various mouthpieces that repeat it) does nothing for the players approach to the game. At this point, the team is just phoning it in.
They’re bad, they know they’re bad and they don’t care. Because Top Management doesn’t care, either.
Riggleman said a week or so ago that the starting lineup for 2019 was “fine”, and they would NOT play the young guys. After the 1971 season when the Reds finished 3 games below 0.500 after winning 102 games in 1970, Sparky Anderson said “nobody’s job is safe”. He probably did not literally mean it, but the attitude was that they were EXPECTED to win, and players better be prepared to put out a maximum effort or the team would find somebody else to play.
Scot you are correct. Everyone on here with all these metrics get a life. They need starting pitching #1. It starts and ends there. Players who can put the ball in play with runners in scoring position. This is a huge skill that metric people dont observe rbis. Walks are the answer or your ops will be low. Getting on base is a component but what good is it if no one can deliver. The focus point needs to be on front office. They have ruined this rebuild. Billy bean of oakland said the other day it doesnt take long to have a winner if you know what your doing. Lowest payroll in baseball. Reds leadership is simply incompetent.
Does this take into account pitcher bunt attempts or solely non pitcher bunt attempts? Good teams that get on base a lot and have pitchers go deeper into games probably have more pitchers attempting bunts.
I looked at Fangraphs and sorted sac hits (sac bunts, not sac flies) by team and excluded pitchers. The Reds had 21 sac bunts by non pitchers this year. The 2nd highest was 14. The Phillies were the lowest with 4. The Reds are a complete outlier though. Team #2 has 14 and team # 14 had 6. So you have a cluster and then the Reds, doing Redsy things, and losing.
5 innings from our starter again…….yawn. Groundhog day. Meanwhile note how the A’s are in the playoffs again. There’s a team that knows how to rebuild and the right pieces to put into place.
They sometimes make false moves, but they actually have a process to evaluate talent and act accordingly. The Reds have no process to evaluate talent. It’s all guesswork.
And it shows.
Remember the good old days just before the ASG when this team actually appeared competitive? Those were the days!
Someone told me a rut was a grave with both ends out of it. New program after the Reds games on Fox, REDS DEAD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zvn1jimBE
Watch that to feel better. Seems like yesterday, but also feels like a lifetime ago.
Look at that crowd. Late September and the joint is packed.
I can’t wait til the Reds are playing exciting, meaningful games in September again.
The lack of PT for Herrera bothers me more than most of the non-moves this year. Once the non-wavier deadline passed, I would have sat Gennet to start whatever therapy or proceedure was needed to help the shoulder and started Herrera. A sadder thought is that neither was healthy enough (armwise) to play 2B.
Sadly, the Reds kept playing Scooter so he could chase a meaningless award (the batting average title).
Sadder still is they’ve even managed to get a few starts for Brandon Dixon at second while they let Herrera rot on the bench.
It’s a nice story and he likely didn’t neet too many more PA’s to qualify. That being said, They could have even done a partial platoon and still chased both.
Works for me buddy but well it won’t happen.Billy will be back and playing 145 games in center in year 6 of waiting on him to turn the corner.So Sad.
Steve, remember the Three Stooges and the pie fights scenes in their film shorts? Remember, In those pie fights, Curly at some point would be clobbered by multiple pies in the face consecutively while still holding a pie in hand. (Cracks me up just remembering it)
This season the Reds fan got hit with multiple pies in the face by the team management:
– Pie: Not trading for Yelich
– Pie: Not signing a solid starter
– Pie: Not trading Iglesias/Hamilton/maybe Scooter
– Pie: Not trading Harvey
– Pie: Positive momentum
– Pie: Winning culture
– Pie: Seeing division rival trade for Yelich
– Pie: Seeing another division rival trade for Ozuna
– Pie: <70 win season
None of these taste like banana cream pie…
Not sure I understand the Yelich doesn’t pitch narrative. The Reds are going to keep Hamilton and Gennett and pay them $20 million next season, they do not pitch.
The acquisition of Yelich would show a desire to improve the roster. Instead we have comments that the position players are set on a 90 loss team.
The Reds how shown they are not interested in the younger prospects playing, might as well trade them.
The way this Reds team is constituted, you could say that about Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, Manny Machado, JD Martinez, Mookie Betts, Franciso Lindor, and… Joey Votto. So, the argument is that the team does not another player like any of these mentioned. The reasoning that a team needs pitching (agree), therefore it should not go after a superstar/elite everyday player as poor. A contending team needs both. A few more wins with Yelich this season, acquire top SP in the offseason may equal a few more wins, and so on…Then in a 2-3 season a contender. The team has not done that much.
The debate of whether to give up top prospects (future) for a current top player (present) is a valid one. It is always a gamble. But having a 27 yr, MVP-caliber player, with 6.6 WAR this season/25.2 WAR the last 6 seasons, and affordable for the next 4 seasons (only 9M, 12.5, 14M, and 15M [team option]) would have been a great gamble. Will Senzel produce the same-type of numbers? While it is good to be prepared for the future, the future is a huge unknown filled with a vast wasteland of unfulfilled prospects.
The Reds are wasting money on bad players as I noted that do not pitch, yet, having a great player that does not pitch is a bad thing.
Strange analysis