Opening Day can only do so much for a lack of offense; Reds lose 2-1

But on the plus side, I finished off one mediocre beer + a 22 ounce bottle of New Belgium Mothership Wit, and I’m feeling a lot better.

Jay Bruce flied out. COMMON!

What’s with the “545” in the middle of that graph?

.. I know Bruce hit one off the wall in the middle innings but how high/far/hard was his fly out in the first?

I seem to remember him impressively fouling off a Santana pitch or two with some quick choppy defensive swings but I don’t remember the out itself.

I do however remember Votto’s K in the 8th.

I think in 2010 the Reds win this game 4-2.

This game was pretty much what I expected. At least the ballclub only gave up two runs…but its hard for anyone to score in 35 degree dampness.

The Reds are averaging 1 run(s) per game!

… on the other hand, they’re at 2 runs allowed. :)

Hernandez’s hacking in the 4th aside, I was very encouraged to see the Reds draw 4 walks against Santana. He’s not a Schilling in terms of his walk prevention, but still, to draw 4 against a guy who averaged 2.1 per 9 last year is impressive.

Santana + cold = low run scoring environment, so we shouldn’t get all bunched up about scoring 1 run. Volq will return the favor on Wednesday!

I’m not really sure what to think of Harang’s outing. He looked pretty sharp, but he really racked up the pitches. Could’ve been worse, but I’d like to see less baserunners and a bit more control on the breaking ball. His fastball command was real sharp, though, and the movement and velocity were pretty good.

Darnell McDonald showed why having a guy make his first opening day squad in an 11 year career is a bad thing, not a good thing. Hopefully some of his terrible defense was just a result of the sloppy conditions, but it looked like he was getting some downright awful reads on balls. Hairston’s defense was pretty terrible today as well. Both were extremely unimpressive at the plate.

Aside from those two butchering everything that came near them, the rest of the team did a nice job defensively. Gonzo, Edwin, and BP all made some nice plays, and Bruce showed off his cannon.

I still have no idea why Danny Ray is on this team. Can someone please explain why anyone thinks he’ll be a decent major leaguer? I’m just not seeing it. He’s tiny, his control is mediocre, and I just can’t see his stuff tricking a whole lot of major league hitters for very long. I see him giving up a whole boatload of homers if we leave him in the LOOGY role for very long. Bring back Bill Bray!

I’m not really worried about it long term, but Votto had a couple embarrassing at-bats today. Bruce looked pretty nice, though.

Edwin showed some nice discipline and he crushed the ball for one of his outs.

BP wasn’t swinging at everything, but he was still doing the silly swing for the fences routine when he did swing. Ugh.

Ramon Hernandez had an ugly day at the dish, but hey, at least he can catch a ball from the outfield.

Aside from the obvious Hairston/McDonald debacle, Dusty didn’t really do anything to piss me off today. I guess that’s a good thing.

Santana was pretty clearly not on his game, at least early on, so I was pretty disappointed that the Reds did nothing to capitalize on it. It’s tough to score runs on a pitcher that good and it’s tough to score runs when your lineup sucks, so you’ve gotta take advantage of every opportunity you get. That didn’t happen today.

Did anyone else notice just how girly David Wright runs? He looked ridiculous right before getting gunned down at the plate.

Not much HAVOC today. They should’ve sent Dickerson when he got on in the 8th, Putz is a hell of a reliever and with K-Rod coming on in the 9th, I think we needed to take a chance to try and get the tying run across. Edwin’s baserunning blunder was irritating, though slightly understandable thanks to Church pulling an Edmonds on that ball and making the play way harder than it should’ve been.

I think Wednesday will be more telling than today’s game. The weather should be better, we’ll have our best pitcher on the mound, T-Virus should be back, and we won’t be facing Johan. Hopefully we’ll manage at least 3 or 4 runs.

and then again in the ninth…Wherefore art thou Adam Dunn

wtf is up with that? didnt nix sign a minor league deal? And mcdonald looked like shit out there, sure the catches he missed weren’t easy, but him over gomes is just plain retarded IMO. Hairston in CF and Gomes in LF would have been a much more solid opening day lineup (that is, if you want to call that “solid”).

I have some confidence in this team, but it’s waning for sure.

From Baseball America:

Cincinnati Reds
Released: RHP Derrick Conatser, RHP Enrique Garcia, RHP Justin James, RHP Luis Pardo, LHP Ron Flores, LHP David Torcise, C Eddy Rodriguez, OF Adam Greenberg, OF Jacque Jones
Recalled: OF Norris Hopper
Optioned to Triple-A: RHP Josh Roenicke, RHP Daryl Thompson, OF Norris Hopper
Outrighthed to Triple-A and removed from 40-man: OF Norris Hopper

I guess Adam Greenberg’s feel-good story isn’t going to have a happy ending, at least not in Cincinnati.

Also, Eric Milton was released by the Dodgers, then re-signed to a minor league deal. He’ll be playing for the Albuquerque Isotopes.

And the Orioles purchased the contract of one of their minor league catchers yesterday. No, not Matt Wieters. Chad Moeller.

I hope that Rosales gets called up and soon. Jannish is a great defender but we are going to need all the offense we can muster. Rosales can spell Gonzo and more importantly come off the bench and actually make contact with the baseball with his bat.His bat speed in Sarasota was impressive.

Poor Darnel…he waits 11 years for today and just about everything that could go wrong did. The McDONALD was overmatched today (even though he got a hit and scored) defensively and for the most part at the plate.

Tough For Danny Hererra too. He started out throwing strikes and was just not getting the calls Then his day crumbled too.

Well enough of that…send Darnel down asap and give Danny one more shot…

Uncle Joe Stalin style:

#612

About the outfielders, about Danny Ray, or anything.

—Dusty Baker wasn’t overly alarmed with the bloopers that fell in the outfield: "Guys are learning each other, they blooped some in there, some guys are learning the field."

None of two bloopers that fell led to runs.

—On Danny Herrera, who walked two including pitcher Johan Santana, leading to what would be the winning run scoring: "He was (nervous). The pitch to Santana was close. He’s going to be all right."

—The biggest positive: "(Alex Gonzalez) playing nine innings. It’s good we have an off day tomorrow."

—On the game in general: "There weren’t many negatives. They played a good game and beat us. There’s 161 to go."

Dunn homered, doubled, drove in 4 runs, and STRUCK OUT AGAIN today and his team LOST. . . . that’s why he’s a loser.

1. The Reds offense sucked, but that is to be expected. Cold weather + Johan Santana + Hairston/McDonald at top of lineup = misery.
2. And speaking of McDonald, he’s terrible. He has no business being on a major league team, and batting him No. 2? Really? Thanks, Dusty, for giving us Corey Patterson v2.0.
3. Harang had his moments, but struggled too much with his control. He was nibbling too much, but the ump also had a tight strike zone. Reds were lucky not to lose by much more with all the runners the Mets left out there.
4. I don’t care how good of a hitter he is, if Micah Owings is your best power bat off the bench, then your bench sucks, and your team’s management has failed.
5. Still don’t understand the Gomes decision.
6. David Wright looked like Sean Casey rounding third before being thrown out at the plate. I thought he had some speed. I could’ve made it home faster.
7. Herrera….not impressed. Already of sick of hearing about his guts, and how he has “the heart of a lion.” Gag.
8. Rhodes and Weathers looked solid…..too bad Cordero is still shaky.
9. It’s just one game….at least we won’t have Hairston/McDonald leading off Wednesday. T-Virus and Dickerson can’t do any worse, can they?

‘ol Pops got a bit wound up at the game with Frenchy and we ended up at Bootsy’s, where my wife was hit on by the AE Doors guy. I came up and kept yelling at him that “we don’t want to buy any goddamn carpet.” He said," no, it’s doors." ….“But I told you I don’t want any goddamn carpet.”….“No, it’s doors.” He never got my joke.

The wall by the back door at Pop’s house