Dane Myers’ 11th-inning single scored TJ Friedl with the winning run to lead the Cincinnati Reds to their initial win of the season, 6-5, before 38,298 on Kids Opening Day at Great American Ball Park.
| Final | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boston Red Sox (1-1) | 5 | 8 | 1 |
| Cincinnati Reds (1-1) | 6 | 10 | 0 |
| W: Phillips (1-0) L: Slaten (0-1) | |||
| Statcast | Box Score | Game Thread | |||
Myers had come into the game as a late-inning defensive replacement, and looped his game-winning hit to left-center field off Boston righty Justin Slaten. Matt McLain reached base five times (three hits and two walks). Connor Phillips was credited with the win after two innings of dominant relief pitching.
It was a game in which the Reds were five-for-five in ABS (umpire ball and strike call) challenges. Boston, on the other hand, lost two challenges early in the game and had no challenges left over the final eight innings.
The Offense
The combined box-score line for Reds hitters: 10-for-42 (.238), 2 homers, 7 walks, 12 strikeouts and 6 runs.
TJ Friedl and McLain led off the game with a single and a walk, respectively. Elly De La Cruz’s ground-out advanced them, followed by a line single to right by Sal Stewart to score the Reds’ first run of the year. Eugenio Suarez pounded one into the dirt which old friend Sonny Gray fielded and tried to swipe-tag McLain coming to the plate, but missed. The two-run first ran Gray’s first-inning pitch count to 35.
After Ke’Bryan Hayes reached on a throwing error by Trevor Story with one out in the second inning, McLain drilled a double 110 mph (the hardest-hit ball of his career) to the gap in left-center to increase the home team’s lead to 3-0.
Stewart led off the bottom of the third with a 108.6-mph bomb to centerfield, his fifth hit in the first 12 innings of the season, to put Cincinnati up 4-1. It doesn’t take a trained eye to see that this guy can really hit. It will be interesting to see what major league pitchers decide to attack as a vulnerability in Stewart’s swing, because they haven’t found one yet in the first two games of the season. Following the homer, Stewart’s batting average sat at .833 (5-for-6 in the early going), and his OPS was 2.500.
De La Cruz led off the fifth against righty reliever Greg Weissert by lining a first-pitch homer to right to make it 5-3 Reds. Cincinnati loaded the bases with two outs against a pair of Boston relievers in the sixth, but an Eugenio Suarez groundout ended the inning. Notably, the 1-2 and 2-2 pitches to Suarez, both called strike-threes by home plate umpire C.B. Bucknor, were challenged by Suarez and overturned by ABS to set up a 3-2 pitch for the inning-ending groundout.
In the 11th, with Friedl on second, McLain walked and De La Cruz struck out before Myers’ heroics.
The Pitching
Cincinnati pitchers’ combined line: 11 innings, 8 hits, 5 walks, 2 homers, 15 strikeouts and 5 runs.
Starter Brady Singer held the Red Sox scoreless on one hit over the first couple of innings, but then Story’s one-out solo homer in the third brought Boston back within 3-1.
After the Reds had increased the lead to 4-1 in the third, Roman Anthony’s two-out single scored Carlos Narvaez to make it 4-2 Reds. A wild pitch with Story batting then scored another run to make it 4-3. But with the tying run on second, Story’s at-bat ended with a called strike three that looked questionable. The Red Sox could not challenge because they were already out of ABS reviews by that point.
Manager Terry Francona brought on lefty Sam Moll to start the fifth, following Singer’s four innings. The righty appeared to have issues throughout his four innings with the portion of his index finger still healing from a blister that developed late in spring training. He allowed five hits, walked two and three runs. Moll pitched a scoreless fifth against the heart of the Boston batting order.
Pierce Johnson got the first two outs of the sixth surrounding a Narvaez hit, when Francona summoned Graham Ashcraft to face Anthony. A grounder to McLain ended that inning.
In the seventh with two outs, after Jarren Duran walked and advanced to second on an Ashcraft wild pitch, Wilyer Abreu lined a shot to right on which Will Benson tried but failed to make a grass-top catch. The double scored Duran to bring Boston within 5-4. Tony Santillan entered and struck out Caleb Durbin to preserve the one-run advantage. In the eighth, he struck out two batters around two walks. Francona brought on Emilio Pagan, who struck out Story on a disputed checked-swing.
Pagan retired the first two batters in the ninth, but succumbed to one of his foils from a season ago, allowing a game-tying solo shot to Abreu, sending the game to the bottom of the ninth with the home team against Aroldis Chapman. Needless to say, nothing happened there.
Connor Phillips took the ball in the top of the 10th and retired the side in order, leaving the designated runner stranded at second. He did the same in the 11th, and earned my endorsement for the role of closer. He struck out three and allowed no base runners over his two sterling innings
One fan’s thoughts
What was the biggest moment of the game? A home run? A strikeout? How about two consecutive ABS challenges?
As mentioned above, two consecutive pitches to Eugenio Suarez in the sixth were overturned. With the bases loaded and two outs, Suarez was down in the count 1-2. On the back-to-back successful challenges, you could hear the crowd erupt as they saw the replay on the scoreboard. TV announcer John Sadak said it was the loudest crowd cheer of the day. And admittedly it was for me, as well, here in my recliner.
FIVE — count them — FIVE times, the Reds challenged successfully today. That really says something about home plate umpire Bucknor’s ability to judge the zone. It also says something about what appears to be the Reds’ team strategy — not making borderline challenges in the early innings. It sure paid off today, as they were all in key game situations. Boston unsuccessfully used two challenges in the first three innings, and that was it for them. With Bucknor’s reputation and clear misses of at least five pitches against Reds batters, Boston probably would have been best served to save their challenges for key situations.
Up Next for the Cincinnati Reds
Boston Red Sox at Cincinnati Reds
Sunday, March 29, 12:40 p.m. ET
Connelly Early (1-2, 2.33 ERA in 2025) vs. Rhett Lowder (2-2, 1.17 ERA, career in MLB, last in 2024)
Great first win in extra innings no less. 🙂
+1+
Thanks to Dane Myers for bailing out Emilio Pagan who needs to be monitored closely for closer duties. Truth is, I have never really felt that his record or skills are those of a consistently successful closer.
Let me put it this way. I don’t think we can afford to put defensive replacements in late in the game when it’s close. Our late inning guys, Pagan and Santillan, just aren’t good enough. They give up too many HR. We need to keep our offense in just in case especially our hot hitters.
I don’t think the Reds can afford to put runners on base with crappy defense in the late innings considering their lack of a dominant closer.
I’d rather cast judgement in a few weeks than now, but maybe thats a fault on me…we’ll see
Pagan in 2025 when pitching 1 inning or less: 2.47 ERA
Pagan in 2025 when pitching more than 1 inning: 12.00 ERA
Maybe Francona asked Pagan to do something he should not have asked him to do.
IMO, One of the eat things happened last year was the late season pitching improvement of Phillips and look like he carries it into this year. The guy can be dominant but Pagan should stay as closer. He has the experience and nothing can replace that. I take another 160 games of this.
It was a nice bounce back outing for Phillips after looking shaky in the opener. We really need him to develop into a dude this year.
A dude or The Dude?
We definitely need him to be A dude, but it would be really good if he became THE dude.
THE DUUUUUUUDE lol
Bucknor is the WORST HP umpire in MLB! How does this guy still have a job! I hear my City of Oviedo (FL) Babe Ruth League is in need of some umpires! Pay is $25/game.
ABS is gonna be hard on C B. MLB may have to run him off like they did Angel Hernandez two years ago.
for the best IMO
Trevor Story is one of only six hitters in MLB history to hit 2 HR in his debut game in 2016. Bert Campaneris (Oakland Athletics) in 1964 is the only other name that I recognize. Some rookie did it on Opening Day this year.
Chase DeLauter Rookie OF for the Cleveland Guardians hit 2 HRs at Seattle Thursday Night. However he debuted against the Detroit Tigers in the ALDS last season. DeLauter has hit single HRs the last 2 games at Seattle as well.
Big win for the Reds. Go for the series tomorrow.
Guess we’re finding out just how valuable of a hitter Stewart is. He’s been amazing!
It’s going to be a fun season if McLain keeps this up.
Great win and free pizza for being at the game.
Go Reds!
If McLain scores 100 runs, the Reds are in the WS.
The Reds’ surviving haul from the Suarez-Winker deal now are Williamson and Phillips.
Watching Williamson when he’s been on has been as much fun as watching Lodolo pitch, when he’s been on.
RLN “blister rants” aside, I think the Reds should do all they can to keep Williamson and Lodolo in the same starting rotation.
The possibilities are a promising.
The storyline would be a classic.
Two 6′ 6″ LH pitchers in the rotation who went to college together.
Well, we have them both next year, lets just enjoy it the next 322 regular season games (hopefully with some additional post season games)
Great game summary Tom!
Thank you very much!
Good to see the Reds win an extra innings game. The real question is when will Hayes get his 1st hit? Or Steer for that matter.
A related question is when he will strike out. He’s putting the ball in play and elevating it. Two games in the books,
I worry about payback against teams who embarrass umpires early but run out of challenges then suffer like the Sox did tonight.
With Buckner behind the plate, It’s hard not to get a pitch overturned he misses so many calls. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
It will be interesting to watch strategy unfold on ABS as season progresses. This game truly could flipped if Boston hadn’t squandered their challenges.
Personally, i suggest if you are going to keep lousy umpires on the field, then you should flight them and give teams more challenges based on the umps prior year % of missed calls
4th tier Bottom 25%, you get 5 challenges, 3rd tier25%, 4challenges etc.
you don’t liked getting challenges, get better or get out.
An interesting strategy to put the onus on the umpires, rather than the teams.
Is it true that b / s calls have gotten worse, or has our ability to better track and visualize pitches revealing a range of accuracy that may always have been there.
Umpires are really good and their accuracy has increased the last 10 years for the most part. The Reds opening day game umpire Dan Iassogna also had the worst day of all MLB umpires that day at 88%
Sam Moll quietly getting it done. Could be very important when used like this.
One of the key factors for the Reds’s rise to current mediocrity has been dependable LF relief pitchers.
I hope Moll can fill that role while other things improve.
This game was really disputed , seems like a dead or live one, just incredible for the 2nd game of the season…
When McLain can hit , the offense looks different especially when join Stewart
It’s curious Louisville Bats won 6-5 in extras in a walk-off and the Reds did the same with the identical score…
Bucknor should retire after this season, the ABS challenge system will put him on evidence…
McLain is the key to this offense. Tito knows that which is why he was so stubborn last year keeping him in the 2 spot
I wish every baseball fan would go umpire just one little league game, at the least. It is so much harder than it looks. I know it is their career, and they are paid to be the best, but just like the players, sometimes you have an off day. And the umpires have certainly gotten better with balls and strikes over the years. I hope we can take a perspective of the ABS being there to help the umps get it right, rather than make them look bad.
CB Bucknor has an off day every day.
10,000% agree. I have to believe hitters and pitchers grind their teeth going into a game when certain umps are behind the plate. He has to be near the top of the list.
I agree. And umpires that have bad grading should be dealt with, like any other profession. Just hoping that people see that it isn’t as easy as it looks. Watching on TV with the virtual strike zone makes it look easy. There are many variables when umping live.
As an umpire myself, I agree completely. But CB Bucknor has had a questionable strike zone for 30+ years. He is one of the main reasons that ABS has been implimented. I question his positioning (he uses the scissors stance) and mechanics – he ducks down on high pitches (we’re taught not to move our heads), etc. With as much as these pitchers spin the ball now-a-days, and with the +100, it’s a difficult day at work – regardless who the umpire is. But he definitely should have called a ball low on Story. You can’t accurately feel the speed, judge the movement AND determine if the batter offered at the pitch or not. The Reds would have lost that appeal. And who knows where the game would’ve gone from there?
I fear that an umpire with so many years in the game will find it very difficult to adjust his strike zone. It’s like muscle memory. What I find difficult to understand with Bucknor, is that he’s as bad on the inside corner as the outside corner. I mean, HPU is standing right above and looking down at the inside corner. Difficult to miss that.
Happily, the younger umpires who are coming up seem to have a better control of the zone. Wait until Macon Hammond comes up (he was a AAA crew chief last year). He is sooooooooooo good.
He and Dan Merzel were at the WBSCE clinic in France a couple years ago when I was there. Great guys.
+5,000
Good stuff Brayan. Thank you.
Awesome comments. Thanks for sharing!
I can agree with that, but the guy had a bad game behind the plate and missed a few calls at first on opening day. Everything aside let’s Go Reds!
I did. Babe Ruth, High school,advanced Babe Ruth and collegiant summer leagues. Obviously not major league but I’ve been back there. I know you can’t get them all right, but MLB has enabled Umpires to create their own strike zones and left hitters and pitchers to adjust. That’s a problem. The game is hard. Not getting low strikes or corner pitches that are strikes with a majority of the umpire population is unacceptable. I suspect MLB is going to start looking at umpires with higher ABS overturned numbers. We could see this as a reason to move some existing bad umpires out ultimately.
I also agree that relearning a strike zone, or changing your positioning would be a tough thing to do.
I still feel more ABS challenges available for awful umpires ( and there are more!) is going to be necessary. Selfishly, it helped the Reds in this win, but the primary focus should be to get the call right, and the tool is now there to do it.
MLB has been grading umpires via video (questec) and then the various pitch tracking devices we’ve all seen with the gameday and now Statcast stuff since 2001.
Great job by Phillips. Happy to see Myers come through. I think he is a great fit for the role they brought him in for…good defender that can play CF, good speed, decent bat off the bench, good against lefties, and a guy you can feel comfortable with placing in the lineup to give Friedl or whoever else a day off. I think he will thrive in this role.
Great headline, Tom! I like that!
Thank you for the kind words!
ABS has already begun to do some damage to the game. Trevor Story being angry at Bucknor’s call was because Bucknor knew he could call anything he wanted and not have to account for it — because the “mature” Roman Anthony decided in the 3rd inning to squander his team’s allotment on one at-bat. Story was right to complain. His problem was, he had no ammo.
ABS has created some interest, like the dreaded torpedo bat from last year that turned offenses into the 1976 Big Red Machine. If this system isn’t any better than this, the 5 fortunate calls the Reds got aside, it’s not going to make umpiring better. It proved today it can make umpiring worse — and pitches a 10th of an inch off the plate aren’t not the only problem with it.
Even without ABS, umpires are graded after every game. The umpire has a ton of incentive to try and get calls right. The call that angered Story would not have been reviewable. Story felt like his swing was borderline and wanted the HP umpire to defer to the 1B umpire. A called swing is not currently reviewable in the majors.
“A called swing is not currently reviewable in the majors.”
I hear it’s being tried in the minors though.
@Melvin, I think the 45-degree angle experiment at AAA on checked swings does not start until the first full week of May (beginning with games of Tuesday, May 5). However, has already brought full 4 man umpiring crews to AAA, the lack of which I’ve never understood at the last stepping stone to MLB.
OK, I will revise my rant to concede that Story’s complaint was over the check swing, but rarely does a hitter get that fumed up. (Votto maybe did.) I still think it went deeper than that with Story’s at-bat and I’ve focused on that to make a larger point.
The ongoing yarn that MLB grades the umpires might be true, but since I haven’t heard of any umpires being “fired” or “sent down” because their grade was too low, we might just be buying the story based on some Twitter moments.
ABS is not going to improve the strike zone consistency that the game promoters tell the fans is going to happen. “We just want to get it right” is pabulum. Some outfit developed a black box, sold it to baseball and resigned itself to letting MLB pawn it off as good for the game.
Not being a fan of Cora, to say the least, I have been thinking the Story reaction as well as Cora’s reaction and ejection failed to accept any responsibility for how the Red Sox arrived at those moments.
The ump sucked, but so what? The Sox made their own bed. It was Cora’s ABS strategy (allowing early, aggressive use of ABS) and a young, uber aggressive player, Anthony’s, failure that put the Sox in the situation they were in. For Cora to overlook that, even in protecting Story, is pretty questionable.
But doing questionable things is not new for Cora.
If you were in the sun, the game was quite comfortable. In the shade, it was cold. I didn’t like Francona’s strategy of pulling Johnson with two outs in the sixth. How many times did our relievers finish an inning and then return to pitch the next inning in Spring Training? Johnson was pitching well; pulling him after just seven pitches to sorta play matchup in the sixth inning seemed like over managing and left the bullpen out of kilter until extra innings. A cold day, early in the season seemed like a bad day for the strategy.
ABS was a ton of fun in the ballpark. We attended the game with our daughter and three of her friends, all mid 20s. They all absolutely loved the extra drama (two Reds fans, two Red Sox fans). I’m not sure how much fun it was to be the umpire, but the crowd was really into it, both Reds and Red Sox fans alike. Especially, from Suarez’s double challenge at bat on, the crowd was dialed into the game. At least today it added to the atmosphere.
Dane Myers was an unlikely hero, but a hero nonetheless. Connor Phillips deserves a ton of credit, too. He pitched really well. There was a great crowd at the park today. Hopefully, we’ll have another good crowd tomorrow.
Good think you brought back a win. Wouldn’t want to disown you. 😉
Thank you for not disowning me 🙂
Gotta do the same tomorrow though. 🙂 Counting on you.
Come back with a win or not at all
“Come back with a win or not at all”
…but have a good time. 🙂
Bringing relievers out of the dugout in the regular season with mid-inning pitching changes drives me nuts too. Especially when it’s cold.
I can accept that yesterday’s game might have called for some desperation though. Going down 0-2 would be no fun, and Tito likely felt the Roman Anthony at-bat in the 6th was the game. Anthony’s their best hitter. Ashcraft is your best bet to keep a LH power bat in the park. Johnson had already been the goat in game 1. So they played it safe and hoped GA could give them 1.1 innings. For me, that move was OK, bringing Santillan and Pagan into jams too was overkill. That’s probably how you play it in October though and it worked out in the end. Now they’re into the win column and they can play normally.
What was the biggest “moment” of the game for me? The clutch pitching of Connor Phillips.
Everything involved with keeping consecutive ghost runner innings scoreless on defense deserves a special call-out.
Agreed. IMO Phillips gets the game ball. Maybe some skyline as he went two innings.
I caught some of it streaming on my computer and the game winner, but idk about the Reds in Indy on tv this season? I thought Francona did a pretty good job trying to stretch the Reds pen. Ashcraft trying for 4 outs didn’t work. Tony and Pagan tried for 4 each and neither one of them got it done either, but Francona pushed buttons atleast. Phillips did save the day and it was an obvious move converting him to relief. He seems to be confident there. Pen overall is a little iffy and our OF is questionable, but just take it game by game.
I’m really not sold on Steer, KBH, or Friedl at the top of the lineup. Elly MM Sal would be a really solid 1-2-3 and go from there. They could move Geno to 3B and open up the OF for Hinds, but they’re committed financially to KBH for quite a while. Still don’t understand the reasoning there?
Tomorrow will be interesting too. Lowder and Burns OTJ training will probably determine whether they’re around .500 or have a shot at postseason
A lot of pitchers, Williamson, Lowder and Burns that they’ll have to cap innings on too. They’ll be using a lot of starting pitching no matter how successful they may be too. A lot of interesting storylines this 2026 season.
Great win. Starting off 1-0 in extra innings when they fared so poorly in extra inning games in 2025 is great too.
We won today. If we win tomorrow – that’s called a winning streak. It has happened before. /s/ Lou Brown
Great to see the bats wake up. Sal is special. Good to see McLain carry over his hot spring training too. Moll keeps on getting it done just like ST, and I’m a fan of Phillips good to see him go out there and shut it down.
I’ve long been a proponent of “robot-umps” and the challenge system is already highlighting how many times an umpire gets the ball/strike call wrong. The most important thing is get the call correctly, and I’m at least glad there’s a challenge avenue now to correct the call.
Being that we are in the era of “every pitcher throws 98” what separates them is location and confidence. Connor Phillips is definitely throwing the ball w confidence. I have a bad feeling Suarez will not be taking significant at bats for this club by the all star break. Hopefully saying that means he will hit 2 long ones today. McClain looks locked in and if he stays that way we will win some games this year. Everything about him looks different, his approach and his balance looks so much better. We need production from the top, the bottom doesn’t look very scary so far.
Is Stephenson platooning this year? Was wondering why Trevino was in there after a day off.
Lineup isn’t deep…thats for sure. Friedl doesn’t scare anyone. Neither does Steer or KBH. Geno is going to be streaky. Elly and McLain can’t go on long slumps. Not too worried about Sal. He’s a natural hitter. Marte and Hinds are the 2 that could put us over the top. If either one developed they could score enough runs. Benson getting the majority of at-bats vs rhp over Marte doesn’t help.
Singer did way better with Trevino last year. 3.58 ERA in 5.4 IP/start in 22 games with Trevino, 6.14 ERA in 4.9 IP/start in 6 games with Stephenson. Make of that what you will.
Trevino’s six inches shorter and Singer pitches down in the zone, it might be as simple as that.
My expectation for Geno is a low .200’s average, 30 hrs, and 90 rbi’s. Hope he exceeds it, but I’m not expecting last year’s numbers out of him. I think he will be in the middle of the order all season, if healthy.
Geno at 3B today over KBH. Not sure I get that exactly because KBH has been solid vs lhp (.279 .766 ops) over his career although horrible last year. Steer was his usual underwhelming self vs lhp last year .229 .727 ops.
Hayes has a bad back. He’s going to get days off for that reason alone, I’d imagine.