The Cincinnati Reds left the tying run at third base in the top of the 9th inning as their late-game rally fell just short in an 8-7 loss to the Texas Rangers on Saturday afternoon.
| Final | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cincinnati Reds (8-8-1) | 7 | 9 | 0 |
| Texas Rangers (7-9) | 8 | 13 | 0 |
| W: Ragans L: Anderson SV: Burke |
|||
| Box Score | Game Thread | |||
The Highlights
Chase Anderson watched as the Reds went 1-2-3 in the top of the 1st inning. He wasn’t able to get the Rangers to follow along as he allowed four straight 1-out singles that put Texas up 2-0. Anderson would retire the side in the 2nd inning, but Texas got back to work in the 3rd when back-to-back singles to lead off the inning put runners on the corners. Nathaniel Lowe then came through with a sacrifice fly to make it a 3-0 ballgame.
In the top of the 4th inning the Reds offense finally got going. Tyler Stephenson led off with an infield single and then Jake Fraley crushed his second homer of the spring to bring the Reds to within a run, making it a 3-2 game.
Weekend raking. @jfral_23 pic.twitter.com/cNjuYNSdNE
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) March 11, 2023
Kevin Newman followed up with a single before Chad Pinder walked to put the tying run on second base with no outs, but a fielders choice and back-to-back strikeouts ended the inning without any further damage.
In the bottom of the 4th inning Buck Farmer came out of the bullpen to take over for Chase Anderson (3IP, 6H, 3ER, 0BB, 1K). He immediately gave up a triple and a 2-run home run that extended the Rangers lead to 5-2. The Reds got one of those runs back in the top of the 5th inning after Jonathan India drew a 1-out walk and later scored on a Jake Fraley double.
Hunter Strickland would give up a solo home run in the bottom of the 5th that saw the lead move to 6-3 for Texas. Joel Kuhnel took over for the 6th and he fired off 1.2 shutout innings before Alex Young came on to record the final out of the 7th and hold the Rangers lead to 6-3.
In the top of the 8th inning Daniel Vellojin, who had recently replaced Tyler Stephenson as the catcher on the day, would lead off the inning with a single. Nick Northcut then came through with a 2-out, 2-run homer to cut the Texas lead to 6-5. Northcut hit 30 home runs last season while in the Red Sox organization and was acquired as the player to be named in the Tommy Pham trade.
No doubt about that one ? @_nicknorthcut_ pic.twitter.com/8JpRTGZMx7
— Reds On The Rise (@RedsOnTheRise) March 11, 2023
While the offense was working on clawing their way back, the pitching continued to struggle. Alex Young returned for the bottom of the 8th inning and proceeded to give up three straight hits, and then fire a wild pitch later in the inning as he was charged with two runs in the frame that saw the Rangers give themselves a little more breathing room.
Trailing by three runs in the top of the 9th, Michael Siani led off the inning with a walk and then stole second base. After a ground out by Nick Plummer, Michel Triana then came off of the bench to pinch hit for Austin Romine and hit he did – hit it right out of the ballpark for a 2-run homer to make it a 1-run deficit for the Reds. Francisco Urbaez then doubled to put the tying run in scoring position for Cincinnati. A ground out moved him over to third base, but a strikeout would end the game and strand the tying run 90 feet away.
Jake Fraley went 2-3 with a double and a home run. That helped raise his line on the spring through nine games played to .375/.464/.667. He’s walked four times, struck out five times, and picked up three stolen bases.
Sunday’s Game
The Reds return to Goodyear on Sunday to host the Los Angeles Dodgers. Graham Ashcraft gets the start for the 4:05pm ET game.
It’s nice seeing Fraley pick up where he left off after his great run to end the season last year. I had my doubts about him, but he seems like he can be a good solution as a corner outfielder for the forseeable future. If he can put up a decent average and OBP (say, .270/.360) with about 25 HR all while playing competent defense, no one can be upset with that.
He’ll turn 28 this season, so the Reds should be getting his best years over the next 5 seasons, give or take a season. With India and Stephenson, that’s 1/3 of the offense sorted. Hopefully Barrero, Steer, Benson, and CES will be added to that list this season.
Good old Strickland! At least he’s consistent! One (1) inning pitched, one (1) run allowed on a HR! But he did lower his ERA to under 12 at 11.25!
Just saw this on a Mariner’s blog on yet another former Red, Riley O’Brien:
“O’Brien has been intriguing this spring–his fastball (labeled a sinker) today touched 97.4 at peak, and he pairs that with a 90-92 mph cutter that solicits swings and misses.”
This one is interesting, as the failure to develop Cody Reed lead to the acquisition of O’Brien. Reed didn’t really have much time with DJ (12) games), so there’s that. O’Brien had even less, exactly 1 game with DJ. But, point being, these weren’t developmental successes.
Not to dwell too much on the last rebuild falling on its face, but … the last rebuild fell on its face. There was a pretty fair amount of talented pitching. And yet, Garrett, Stephenson, Reed, Romano, Traveiso, Cingrani, Lorenzen can arguably be seen at not living up to their talent (injuries, too, played a big role, acknowledged).
Where we did succeed, Castillo, Raisel, Disco, Mahle, was very, very good, but not enough. This is exactly why the top to bottom organizational pitching/hitting development programs, not to mention Shawn Pender, DJ, and the hitting coordinators (Hanson and Rickkn), have an enormous amount of responsibility resting on theirshoulders. That said, we hopefully can begin to see some outcomes this year, maybe more the next.
Oh well, de-caff tomorrow.
Alot of head cases in that list and Cingrani, Stephenson,Romano had basically one pitch.
Well, one reason they needed development. It’s not just building pitches. They have to develop the intangible parts of a guy’s game as well.
It is too bad Tom Browning was forced to give up minor league coaching due to personal family issues. He was the Dragons coach when Antonne, Mahle and Wyatt Strahan were the big three for Dayton. He molded those guys and really taught them how to be professional pitchers. I’m sure he was a little bit of a renegade but that staff learned to pitch, not just throw hard.
Losing O’Brien didn’t make any sense at the time, particularly with this organization and the dire need for pitching depth.
Plus when O’Brien left then it signified a total bust on the Cueto trade.
Zilch.
I could be wrong but I thought Bob Steve had a full complement of pitches: FB, Cutter, Slider, Change.
He never seemed able…or ever was guided to put it together into a sustainable package.
He showed some real flashes, including, it sounds like the game you saw, but there was never any consistency.
Looks like the same thing happened in Colorado.
RS was a big disappointment as was Romano who seemed to get off to a good start and then fell completely apart.
Cingrani was a true head case, though.
Dude couldn’t get it together in LA.
I just watched O’Brien close a game for the Mariners. He was throwing that sinker 96-97 with late movement and guys were just waving at it. The announcers also talked about his work at Driveline, where he re-designed his curve to give it east-west movement to go with north-south movement on his other pitches. It showed nicely. The cutter wasn’t sharp today. But he was throwing 96, then 92 with the cutter and 82 with the curve.
You know at the time the experts thought the Reds really robbed KC in that Cueto trade.
@MKM>> Finnegan looked like money already in the bank. Reed was supposedly a “can’t miss” mid to top of rotation guy and Lamb a backend or long man innings eater.
Consider where these 3 were on the development curve versus many of the guys in the Reds recent minor league restocking; and, it could give a person pause about how the incoming group will fare, especially with many of them facing the rigors of learning new positions as they try to climb through the system,
We were traveling a few years ago and took in a double header in Louisville. Bob Steve pitched one of the games and threw a masterful 2 hit shutout. He was impressive, but that may also have been the high point of his career, and we were there to see it! I should have kept the ticket stub, if only I had known…
He’s been a prettydecent BP depth guy the past few years, he’s carving out a nice rebound type career.
Stephenson? The guy was terrible last year. He has had 2 decent years in his career and has a negative war for his career.
The terrible year last year was still a +fwar if we are going by WAR metrics. Hows Hoffman doing?
Would really love it if 2023 was the year Fraley “figured it out”. I know it’s still ST, but he does seem to be mashing it.
If Fraley can just keep doing what he did in the second half last season, he’ll be fine. Not an All-Star, but a very good player.
Every team needs guys that are just solid, reliable players.
Hit that home run off a lefty , which was good to see.
I think at this time, Fraley actually might be a more valuable player than Jesse Winker. Winker got hurt last season, along with having a crappy year with the Mariners, and has probably really damaged his baseball value. He was never a good outfielder, and his big asset was hitting, which now appears to be in doubt.
Fraley was a pretty highly regarded hitter in the Mariner’s minor leagues, but just appeared to be a little slow to catch up to ML pitching. Maybe…he is catching up now.
I think an OPS > .800 and 118 OPS+ is on the cusp of All Star caliber.
David, further, the Brewers are looking at Winker as a platoon 1B/DH, so you may well be onto something.
@david, i mentioned he might actually be a better player than Winker going forward at one point on here. +1
I read somewhere the Mariners were not impressed with his work ethic last year.
Arizona is stupid. I can’t believe they just signed Carroll to a 8 year deal 111M deal. I certainly hope Krall doesn’t go down this path with any player, no matter how highly they are ranked as a prospect. I forget how high Senzel (can’t miss) was ranked, but it was high.
Senzel was the fifth pick in the 1st round by the Reds. And he was pretty highly rated.
He zoomed through the minors, and came up “ready to play”. Except he was a third baseman, and Eugenio Suarez was there.
So, he got tagged to play CF, because he did indeed run pretty good, and the Reds had no one really to play CF. I thought it was a good idea….at the time.
That and inconsistent coaching from the hitting coach at the time, messing with his swing and stance that got him promoted, probably got Nick Senzel off on the wrong foot, so to speak. Plus his first name is Nick, which is kind of a curse for a Reds’ player. Probably a reasonably talented player who should have done alright in the Majors (maybe not great, but good), but now he is kind of a ML basket case. And really too bad, for Nick himself, and the Reds.
Baseball Reference says Senzel was picked #2 overall by the Reds in the 2016 June draft.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/senzeni01.shtml
Yeah, having the number 2 overall pick struggle to develop/have his development be misdirected was also a huge loss of the rebuild.
It’s past time for all concerned to cut their ties and let Nick Senzel start again with another organization. Try to get a decent reliever for Senzel.
Off topic, however does anyone know if Rece Hinds is playing games this spring training? I know a few names I haven’t heard from including Ivan Johnson and Tyler Callahan, and Rece Hinds. I know they were hurt last year off and on.
I speculated yesterday that Votto was closer than we thought and would be in the lineup Opening Day…….and there you have have it. Batting 2nd and playing 1b for your Cincinnati Reds is none other than Joey votto today. hope the game is televised.
That also explains the Pinder playing everywhere as CES would have a hard time getting every day playing time at 1b or DH with Votto and Stephenson likely getting 80% of the reps and another catcher than Stephenson catching 60% of the games and pushing Stephenson to 1b or DH. You dont want CES as the 26th guy. Hes part of the every day 9 when he arrives. Pinder or alternative versatile vet fills the 26th man roster spot as someone who can plug and play occasionally but mostly be a bench guy with not much playing time.
I’ll take Martin over Pinder. At this point anybody over Pinder.