Archive for the '2006 Season' Category

By Thaq Diesel

Think of all the close losses.  Meltdowns by the bullpen.  Errors that ended games with a loss.  Runners left on base.  Strike outs.  I think about how close this team came this year, yet as of today, they’re in the same position as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays:  sitting at home.  I hope this sentiment inspires the team and they play every game next year like it’s the one that eliminates them.   

Nobody thought the Reds would be even this close, including yours truly.  In fact, the number of positive surprises this season are almost too many to recall.  The starting pitching yielded two studs and durable starters (Arroyo, Harang) when there appeared to be none.  Scott Hatteberg had some great moments, especially early on.  David Ross was a monster at the plate.  Aurilia had his second-best year hitting ever.  Brandon Phillips quickly became my favorite player and has all the tools to be a star. Griffey played more than 75% of the year.  The Reds divested their surplus talent in the outfield and converted it into young arms (and a deep if not mediocre bullpen).

The bad times were equally as pronounced.  The defense was abysmal, second-worst in the league.  Adam Dunn hit 40 dongs, but had slumps this year where it looked like he couldn’t hit a baseball if he was swinging one of those oversized red wiffle ball bats.  In the field, Dunn was average but would mentally check out at times and people hustling would get extra bases when he would lob the ball in to the infield.  It’s probably just the way he is, but Dunn carries himself like he’s playing softball for some American Legion league. There was no closer for the year and that cost the Reds numerous wins, at least enough to have gotten them the two wins they needed at the end of the year.

The Reds ended this season better than they started it.  Wayne Krivsky should get most if not all the credit.  A couple free agents, some prospects panning out and this team could get the 10-20 wins needed to get them to October next year. 

Lamenting (complaining) aside, the Reds kept me interested the entire year.  I really couldn’t ask for much more. 

By Thaq Diesel

The Cardinals are indeed doing an impersonation of the 1987 Blue Jays.  In fact, St. Louis may be heading toward one of the worst collapses of all time to end a season.  Sadly, the Astros are capitalizing on it more than the Reds to this point, but we’re three games (well with the St. Louis optional game on Monday, 3.5 games) away from the end of the season and Cincinnati is still not eliminated from the playoffs.  It’s tougher now, however;  Houston needs to simmer down and quit winning so much and St. Louis needs to continue to pull the noose tighter.  Two variables.  Well and the Reds need to win every game, so three variables.  I realize now that they HAVE to win just how uncertain the Reds pitching staff is.  At least the Reds have Harang and Arroyo starting the next two days.  That’s a good start.

In case you were wondering, the real reason the Reds are still alive has to do with my shower – bear with me here.  Our laundry is piling up and I realized that we were basically out of towels Sunday morning.  So I went to the beach towel, which is – you guessed it – my Cincinnati Reds towel.  Since then, the Reds are 4-1.  I’ve told everyone in my family to not touch the towel under any circumstances.  If the Reds do make the playoffs, the towel could get kinda stale.  I guess we’ll deal with that if it happens.  I’m willing to take one for the team.

The Reds signed Juan Castro.  With Castro, the Reds get great defense and a great clubhouse leader.  His batting is below average (pretty weak career OBP @.271) so it’s somewhat of a push there.  He is a known quantity. 

The Reds enter their final week and like every other year in this decade, the Reds fell short of a post season appearance.  While they finished closer then they have in recent memory, the late season collapse was particularly troubling.  The Reds did finish their home schedule though and fans who showed up to the ball park had a better then even chance of seeing a win.  At least that’s one thing to build on.

This was a weird year.  The Reds seem to strike gold with the Bronson Arroyo and Brandon Phillips trade.  Then they flushed it down the toilet in grand fashion when they traded two guys who could have been the cornerstone of a championship team.  Yes, that trade.  No Austin Kearns and no Felipe Lopez.  Instead we get Juan “.610 career OPS” Castro for two more years.  The word vomit comes to mind.

And then there’s Adam Dunn.  They have yet to come up with a long term deal for the slugger which then brings up the question of whether the Reds want him.  Another pertinent question is, does Adam Dunn want the Reds.

If the Reds finish 5-1 the rest of the way, they’ll finish with a winning record for the first time since 2000.  That was Ken Griffey, Jr.’s first and only full season since joining the Reds. 

By Thaq Diesel

I found myself in Chicago for the Saturday game against the Reds (with seats behind home plate next to the players’ wives tickets).   Since I had nothing planned for Friday, I found my way to Wrigley to scalp a ticket.  How much would I have to pay to see the last-place Cubbies late in the season? 

The first non-shady looking guy I see is in the Taco Bell parking lot.  He leans over the back of a large truck and covers up the tickets as though I’m trying to cheat off him for the SAT or something.  Scalping tickets is illegal in Chicago and people must be conditioned enough about the police to act paranoid.  What’s insane is that the Cubs basically sell out from the start of the season so all you can buy are scalped tickets.  Ah – the legislature at work.

The best this guy can give me is $50 bleacher seats.  I tell him too high.  He says $40.  I tell him I can watch the game at a bar.  Then he get gets angry.  “Go ahead then!  GO!!!”  Not wanting to get shot (in a Taco Bell parking lot no less – I think that would void my life insurance policy), I saunter over to a ticket selling place across the street from the stadium and get upper deck seats for $10.  Much better.  On my way to the gate I notice vendors selling some pretty explicit T-shirts.  One was addressing the “Green Bay Fudge Packers.”  Another showed a picture of Ozzie Guillen kissing a White Sox player after they won the Series last year.  The title:  “The Fag Sox.  Hey Ozzie – it takes one to know one!”  At least that was  somewhat creative.

I enter the stadium.  I’ve been here four times before, my favorite being a 14-inning affair where we sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” twice and Harry Caray had to be held by his suspenders to keep from falling out of the booth.  I’m 33 years old.  And yet I unexpectedly get goosebumps entering this place.  It truly is one of the best venues in baseball (maybe the best).  I ask the man selling if I may buy a scorecard. He says, ”Well we finally got rid of Sammy Sosa so we can finally afford to make them again.  Now if we can just get rid of Wood and Prior…”  I’ve now witnessed a new low of bitterness and hell for baseball fans.  Then again, it has been a long, long time.  I didn’t stick around long enough to hear his Steve Bartman rant. 

I buy a beer on the way to my seats.  A pretty good indicator of the area around Wrigley, and many of the fans at the stadium, was embodied by this exchange in front of me.

• Yuppie woman being handed beer at concession stand:  “Thanks.  Um – do you have lime?”
• Grizzled concession stand employee with disgusted stare and a ‘no you didn’t!’ posture:  “…….”
• Yuppie, in can-do voice:  “I’ll just pretend I have a lime.”

With a scorecard in hand, a limeless beer in the other, I found my seat on the first base line three rows from the top.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  It was 75 degrees.  There was a light breeze.  I have never been more comfortable.  Just after the anthem and just before the first pitch, a group of Europeans (judging by their accents) sit in front of me.  A waif-thin six-foot (two meter) tall woman sits right in front of me.  I can tell immediately that a) she’s wearing low rider shorts b) she’s not wearing underwear and c) she’s showing copious amounts of butt crack, almost plumber amounts.  I just can’t decide if I find this sexy or not.  Four incredibly loud, large, bored women are sitting directly behind me.

The third pitch of the game is a foul ball landing two rows directly in front of me, which shows that even the upper deck is somewhat intimate here. The Cubs pitcher (Mateo) works quickly and dispatches the Reds in order for three innnings.  Arroyo struggles a bit early but pitches out of jams.  He is throwing junk, but it’s keeping the Cubs off balance.  Mateo leaves inexplicably (injured , and the Reds pounce on two walks to score four runs, including a home run with major english on it to left by David Ross.  I must also note that Aurilia has had a great year, the second-best of his career.  The Reds cruise from there. 

I’m into my third beer now.  After much internal debate, I’ve settled on the butt crack being sexy if not gratuitous.  The 7th inning stretch comes around and I get more goosebumps.  It is amazing how into the moment the entire stadium is for singing that song at Wrigley.  It is special, a rare and unique moment in sports. 

The 8th starts with the large women behind me singing 80’s songs. It then gets interesting as they delve into the finer points of Flavor Flav’s VH-1 show,  ”Flavor of Love.”  They decide that the woman named “Crazy” was getting a bad rap.  Specifically, I believe the sentiment was, “They hating on Crazy!”  I just love this stadium.

By Thaq Diesel

I attended Wrigley Field this past weekend, taking in an afternoon game on Friday and again on Saturday.  It was in many ways a fitting end to the Reds chances for the post season.  Taking 2 out of 3 games was a must, but the bats fell silent for the entire series and the result was the other way around.  If it wasn’t for a pitching gem (a grind-em out one at that) by Arroyo on Friday, the Reds likely would have been swept.  And they would have been swept by the worst team in the National League, which many feel is as bad as it has been for a long time.  The pitching on Friday was great, Saturday was sufficient, and today, well, Uncle Milty said it best when he said, “I probably shouldn’t have been out there today.”  It’s good to be a gamer but it’s a killer to your team when you force the issue.  The sad part is that it takes six or seven runs for Jerry Narron to distinguish between a normal Milton and one who doesn’t have any stuff at all. 

I know Griffey is out, but even he wouldn’t make much of a dent in this team offensively.  I didn’t think the trade of F-Lo and Austin Kearns would hurt this team’s run production, but now I wonder if it did?  It may just be that the reliance on the home run has finally caught up to Cincinnati.  They’re second in the majors in home runs [206] and also conspicuously third in striking out [1094].  For a team with that many dongs, they’re 18th in the majors in runs scored and 27th in batting average [!].  Not a lot of contact hitting going on out there.  I fear that’s the straw that broke the camels back this season – the poor hitting and the at-times abysmal defense. 

Coming later this week – my game log for the lone Reds win on Friday at Wrigley.  It gets pretty descriptive, especially around the third tall beer. 

First off, since I haven’t wrote in for a while, I have to point out that Adam Dunn hit his 40th homerun last week.  It’s his third straight season in which he’s hit 40 and he’s now two short of his 200th career homerun.  Another great season for Adam Dunn.  These guys are crazy if they don’t lock him up for a long, long time.

Now, let’s talk about those Padres.  The Padres took two games this week and that leaves the Reds with sort of an inverse magic number of 13.  So if the Padres go 8-9 in their last 17 games, the Reds have to go 12-4.  And that would be just to tie and it would assume the three other teams between the Reds and Padres drop off.  I’m not a math expert, but that’s a pretty tall task.  In fact, it might actually be easier to reach the Cardinals.  They only have to deal with one team but it’s just pretty tough when you’re six down in the loss column.  It also doesn’t help that the Reds are done with the Cardinals this year.

If there’s one piece of good news, the Reds have ten games against the Cubs and Pirates left.  So if they go 8-2 in those games, they only need to go 4-2 against the Marlins and Astros.  Yes, I’m reaching.

While I still hate that trade (you know, THAT one), this season did show that Edwin Encarnacion should be a very good third baseman.  And the Reds have some quality arms coming up through the system, so there’s light at the end of the tunnell.  And the Reds didn’t even have an ERA over 5.00 this year so things are looking up.

By Thaq Diesel 

Make no mistake – going into extra innings the season was on the line.  I kept trying to tell myself it wasn’t, but it’s time to put up or shut up.  The wildcard is muddy right now and requires a win almost every day.  Jason LaRue ran out one of the more indignant home run trots in recent memory.  It’s been a tough season for Jason, but he more than made up for it tonight.

The strangest part – Uncle Milty leaves the game with stiffness in his elbow in the 6th.  You think this is divine providence – rather than let Milton stay in past his time and give up the lead (not that we’ve ever seen THAT before), the bullpen comes in after Milton gives up only one run.  Ryan Franklin subsequently fills in for Milton and does the job for him.  All seems lost; yes we’ve seen this before.

 The Reds scrape out a critical home run in the 8th, yet again without a home run (whoo!).  Then the bullpen holds the lead into extra innings.  I’m going to enjoy this one.

By Thaq Diesel

The Reds scraped out a series win vs. the Pirates.  Better still, in today’s game the Reds won with great starting pitching and they scored runs without relying on the home run.  They also beat a team they should beat, for once.  The Pirates can ankle-kick some teams as the schedule winds down; they play San Diego, Houston and the Reds to end out the year. 

Next up is a critical series vs. the Padres.  Winning not only closes the gap in the wildcard, it also lets the Reds tread water as the Astros and Cardinals play a series. This weekend I will be making a pilgrimage to Wrigley Field to drink beverages and watch the Reds move into first place.  Expect a recap one week from today.  Cincinnati shouldn’t lose to Chicago any more. 

I think they should put a sandwich behind the mound for David Wells.  He can’t pitch well with a full stomach, right?  I swear he has gained 80 pounds since he pitched for the Reds. 

It’s a time to control your destiny, Reds.  Don’t lay an egg in these games. 

September 7, 1976 at Riverfront Stadium 

Astros 10, Reds 5  (88-51)

Fred Norman and the Reds offense was cruising along in this one until the proverbial shit hit the fan in the seventh inning.  The Reds were up 5-2, and the Astros rattled off eight runs in the seventh off of Norman and Pedro Borbon to open the game up.

Johnny Bench and Tony Perez both hit their 15th homerun of the season.  Bench drove in two runs and Cesar Geronimo had two hits and a run.

By Thaq Diesel

I guess I’ll have to take the blame for a God-awful 2-8 road trip, one that single-handedlly may have knocked the Reds out of the playoffs.  Like me, the Reds have apparently spent their summer passed out in the back yard on a lawn chair with “Cheeseburger in Paradise” on endless repeat.  Now, sunburned, their arms tired, the neighbors ready to kill them for hearing the same song all summer (Only for the Reds it’s the twangy song titled “We Win If We Hit More Homeruns Than You,” by Adam Dunn.), the Reds return home in the last month of the season to try and salvage an almost miracle run atop the wildcard this year. 

The timing of the West Coast road trip was bad (late in the year, right after the new Christina Aguilera album came out) but you had to think that the Reds could manage at least a .500 swing, given their relative success away from home this year.  The Reds, however, were chewed up.  Worse, it was by the teams they were hoping to stay in front of for the wildcard.  I guess the positive spin, like it’s been applied all summer, is that they’ve played about as badly as you could expect the past two weeks and are still 2.5 games out of a playoff spot.  You just keep waiting for an 8 or 9 game win streak to happen; it just hasn’t.  It will sort itself out with two series each against the Cubs and Pirates (teams the Reds should beat, but haven’t done so regularly thus far this season).  The Reds also play the Giants, Padres, Houston and Florida – all teams that have to be looking at the wildcard as up for grabs, the same way Cincinnati is right how.  Winning series against the Giants and Padres would really help the cause. The Reds still control their destiny somewhat.

The wildcard looks to be the single goal now that the Reds are 6 games out of first with now more games against St. Louis.  Mr. Poo-holes is waking up again and the Cardinals have had some pretty good pitching of late.  The Reds need to get some good starts and get the lumber working again, right quick. 

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