For this week’s question of the week we decided to ask what it was that some of the writers were looking forward to following during September with the Cincinnati Reds.
Question: With the Reds essentially out of the playoff chase, is there a statistical chase from a player that you are going to be rooting for in the final month of the season?
Mary Beth Ellis: With all eyes on Aristides Aquino, I’m gonna sit back here in my strappy 80s lawn chair and root for Joey Votto to go about banging. His recent injury must have spooked either him or the trainers to last so long, and we’re now at the point in the season in which the beer has gone flat, the playoffs are the scattered dust of the baselines in the middle of the fifth, and football has intruded. But Votto is lower in nearly every category that counts as we stand here on Labor Day weekend– although his stolen base total has doubled over last year (from all of two to all of four.) So if all else fails, this sudden burst of speed might ease the loss of Yasiel Puig and Billy Hamilton on the basepaths.
Ashley Davis: I’ll be rooting for Eugenio Suarez to surpass Pete Alonso, Cody Bellinger and Christian Yelich atop the NL home run leaderboard. Suarez hit his 40th home run on Sunday and is now three behind Alonso and Bellinger and two behind Yelich. The Reds haven’t had a player lead the league in home runs since George Foster did it in back-to-back seasons (1977-1978). In fact, the last Reds player to even finish in the top five of the National League in home runs was Joey Votto in 2010. Suarez is on pace to hit 48 home runs. Is it probable that he passes the other three? Maybe not. But it’s certainly possible. Now, someone just needs to tell the people who run the MLB Twitter account that he too is in the home run race.
Editors note: This was submitted before Eugenio Suarez was hit by a pitch on the hand and removed from the game on Sunday evening.
Jeff Carr: Hopefully today’s beanball does not place this in jeopardy, but I’m hoping to see Eugenio Suarez go for 50 bombs in a season. He has been on a tear, as of late, and just murdering any mistake that comes plate-ward. He’s already got the record for most homers by a Reds 3B, but I’d love to see 50.
Also, and this is probably going to happen very quickly, but I’d love to see Luis Castillo notch 200 Ks. He has been nothing short of phenomenal this year in taking the big step toward the A-word. Getting to 200 would just be another feather in the cap of 2019 for him.
Doug Gray: There are some good options to choose from. Aristides Aquino is chasing the organizational record for home runs in a season. So is Eugenio Suarez. But I’m going to be looking at the pitching and another chase. I’m looking at Sonny Gray and hoping he can pitch in September like he did in August and make a run at the Cy Young Award. He’s facing tough competition for the award, and he’ll need a big final month to make it happen. But he would be the first Reds pitcher to ever win the award.
The team has had a few close calls. Well, sort of. Tom Seaver narrowly lost out to Fernando Valuenzuela in 1981. Two years later Mario Soto lost to John Denny, but that vote wasn’t close. In 1988 Danny Jackson was foiled by Orel Hershiser’s 59-innings without a run down the stretch, as he ran off with the award. In the 1995 season Pete Schourek was the runner up to Greg Maddux, who got all 28 first place votes. Then there was Johnny Cueto in 2014, who lost out to Clayton Kershaw who got all 30 first place votes.
Overall the team keep fighting and figure out how to win the 1 run game.
Would love to see Aquino continue to hit a HR every 9 to 10 Plate Appearances as well as continue to hit 300 with on 380 or higher OBP. As this give the protection to Suarez (hopefully healthy) that he needs to get to 50.
Continue to watch Gray and Castillo (without the bad inning per game) occurring dominate games.
Have Disco continue to pitch (3 games with 4 or more runs since May) to keep the team in games.
Bauer get his control back and have everyone get confidence in him for 2020.
Have the team decide on Galvis or Iglesias for 2020 @ SS and stop playing both the rest of 2019 so that JVM and Ervin are in the lineup everyday until Winker comes back.
Senzel finding his hitting stroke.
Relief pitchers that throw strikes and stop walking batters to put the team in bad positions.
I would like to see Bell open up the offensive playbook a little more this September. More stolen base attempts, more hit and runs, more bunts against the shift. I think we can safely say that we will have a below average offense for the foreseeable future so we need to work on other ways to generate run scoring plays.
I hope Geno can adopt wearing some form of protection for his hands going forward.
It is literally painful to watch
No statistical chase for me, but I’ll follow and watch games if family things don’t take preference. Just the life-long love of baseball and the Reds that I’ll miss until ST and another opening day rolls around.
Question of the Week just became, “Why does Alex Blandino get the start at 2B immediately after call up while JVM sits?” Does Bell calculate his moves to turn off as many fans as possible? Of, wait, that’s two questions.
Not really looking toward any statistical chases by players the rest of the season. Would like to see players like Suarez, Votto, Bauer, DeSclafani, and Mahle finish the season on a strong note. Would like to see a turnaround by Raisel Iglesias so that the Reds can at least get one top-100 prospect for him in a trade this winter.
This winter, I would like to see Dick Williams construct a roster with eight players we can count on as being everyday players, rather than platoon/utility players. We have Votto at first, Suarez at third, Senzel in center, two decent catchers (though a signing of Grandal would be huge), but that’s about it. Nothing else is certain. Are Vanmeter and Aquino everyday players at second and RF next year? Is Blandino anything more than a solid bench player? Can we get a better offensive shortstop than Galvis? Where do Ervin and Winker fit (if anywhere) with the Reds long term? It feels like right now the Reds have a ton of AAAA, replacement-level players that are getting everyday playing time. Hence the reason the Reds are struggling mightily to score runs and committing an unsightly number of errors.
I am having the same issue. Have our authors and editors done as the Reds apparently have and thrown in the towel for 2019?
No. This was a rather complicated issue that took days with tech support to figure out. With that said, are you still having the issue? We tried something new last night and haven’t been able to replicate the problem since (and we were able to replicate the problem all week).
Still having the problem.
No new articles since 9/2.