When you look at tonight's starters, you can see how grim it is to be bad. The Astros are running out two guys (Woody Rogriguez 6.86 and Ezequiel Astascio 10.98) to the mound who are bad enough to pitch for Cincy. Even with the caveat that Rogriguez's stats are magnified by one really bad outing, that's nothing to be proud of. We are, in comparison, bringing our "ace" Aaron Harang, and Ramon Ortiz, an absolutely atrocious pitcher thus far. In a post last February entitled what does .500 look like, I took a stab at what you might find in a .500 season for the Reds. What kind of numbers would you need? Essentially, I thought the Reds could, if healthy, score 800 runs. As of today, the Reds have scored 4.92 runs per game, and the club is on a direct line to 800 runs this season. We are second in the National League in runs scored. Don't let anyone kid you, the offense is doing its job. Now, the defensive side of the equation was always the challenge. Using phythagorean methods, at 4.92 scored/game, we obviously need a 4.91 ERA (or so, not counting unearned runs). Last season, our ERA was 5.19, so it is reasonable to say that if DanO and the FO had lowered our ERA by .3 runs per game, we'd be in the running for a .500 season. Doable? Last year's team suffered through 115 innings from Todd Van Poppel and 157 innings from Juan Acevedo. Even better, a 4.63 ERA--a .5 reduction--would have put us in the range of 89 wins. Put that in perspective. A 4.91 ERA would be 13th in the NL this year. A 4.63 ERA would be 12th. That's the tragedy of this season. Even if our pitching was bad, and still well below average, we'd be in the running for a winning season and maybe a wild card berth. Instead, our ERA is 5.66, last in the NL and .5 runs worse than last year. All DanO had to do was build a pitching staff that wasn't putrid. And he failed. I'm so proud.