Reds win the battle of starters; relief, not so much. Final: Pirates 3, Reds 1.

Whatever happens, CoCo needs a break.

Also, FTH is up with Sunday afternoon games, middling lefty starters, and zero offense?

and I got goose bumps

DFA Cordero’s ass and bring in an outfielder.

(only being 4/5 sarcastic)

Baker also said Cordero is the closer, period, end of story.

"I know people are hollering for this person or that person … He’s our closer," Baker said. “I feel terrible for Coco because he’s a great teammate and we need him.”

It looked for a little while like Cordero might have actually turned it around. Time to abandon that hope.

Dude sucks.

Leave CoCo in these same situations and ruining a playoff run for the rest of the organization (mostly because Dusty is stubborn and doesn’t want to hurt his veteran closer’s feeling/confidence) or experimenting with other options while we have a little leeway the last few weeks. While it’s true Dusty has pulled the team together in his non-situational management -they are a good team, and he’s saddled with injuries and a closers bad contract, said closer needs to be changed. At least try before the playoffs.
Dusty is acting like a turd-with his comments. He’s already on record saying he would put the feelings of his veterans before winning.

It made sense in my head, and then I wrote something incorrect. Alas.

or at least soften the damage by only pitching him in every other save situation.

players were much smaller back in the day

to live or die with CoCo in save situations. Depressing. A Reds playoff run is going to be partly decided by this.

I saw this on my fantasy baseball page:

Sun, Sep 12
Bruce (sore right side) is available to pinch-run and play defense on Sunday, reports Mark Sheldon of MLB.com.
Recommendation: The report also mentions that the Reds are targeting Tuesday as a return to the starting lineup for Bruce. Once he does return, he is unlikely to play every day. Doctors say he won’t be fully healthy until he has time to rest over the winter.
(Rotowire.com)

Send us your outfielders, please.

He was supposed to be a “break glass in case of emergency” OFer. At 30, he’s not a prospect, so exposing him to waivers shouldn’t be a problem. He appears to be a CFer by trade, and hit well enough in Louisville.

He’s listed as on the “temporarily inactive list.” That might just mean the Bats chose to leave him off their playoff roster. So why isn’t he called up?

2 HR’s so far

Over/Under 10 Blown Saves total for Cordero by the end of the year. Remember, he had a week off, then faced the Pirates, and go wrecked 2 of the 3 days. And who is going to be called up, my guess when we DFA someone then we bring up Dorn, I just like his name. Danny Dorn, rhymes with corn, porn, Beast (whaaa???).

“Too gd stressful relief appearance for closer” percentages:
Games allowing 2 or more base runners. [not adjusting for innings, also not counting where 1 allowed and was homerun]

Wagner 10/62 0.161290323
Rivera 9/54 0.166666667 (includ……ed since you cite his hbp blown from the weekend)
Lidge 11/41 0.268292683
Street 12/39 0.307692308
Wilson 21/62 0.338709677
Bell 20/57 0.350877193
Hoffman 17/47 0.361702128
Coco 27/67 0.402985075

was at the game today and it was a gut punch. The offense was listless again, but Cordero cant’t do that 2 out of 3 days, he just can’t. I was prepared for it to happen, though , so maybe it didn’t affect me as much as it used to, but it was still difficult to watch.

Nevertheless, I had nice seats, got to go with my dad (he doesn’t get out to many games) and it was a beautiful day—thinking postivie here! We have to resolve that outfielder issue though. That is putting too much stress on three guys who are already pretty well fatigued.

I really didn’t expect that game to go that way. I hope the Reds come out looking better tomorrow. They looked very fatugued and weak against the Pirates. They won the series, though, and that’s what matters.

As of this writing the Reds are 6.5 ahead og the Cards…although that may drop to 6.
I’ve been unable to follow the team as the FMM was able to effectively schedule every minute of every day in Washington with really cool stuff to do.
Lets see if I have it right:
!. After a brief couple games where CoCo looked OK, he’s back to sucking. Unlike everyone else, I believe that Coco may suddenly come up with a ‘sore pinky’ and have to take a few days off. We may see some Masset action soon. I doubt that Anybody in the brain trust is willing to give Androidis a shot.
2. BP has sucked since returning from his hand injury: It (his hand) is prolly not full healed.He’s prolly back too soon. If this is the case then ‘Bad Dusy! Bad!’.
3. Jay Bruce is still hurt? : What is the deal here? If he’s hurt he should have been on the DL retro-active and Wlad the Impotent should have had a some starts.
4.Rolen and Arthur are worn out: Well there’s this kid named Valiaka who swings like a girl…and then there’s Androidis again.
5. Gomes is running low on steam: What’s the story with Laynce?

Good news is that this team has shown great resilience and is just going to have to grind it out. And I predict that they will. And I predict they win the Central, win the Pennant and we’ll see how it goes against the Yanks in the WS.

So we saw: Memorials, Sculpture gardens, garden gardens, Botanic Gardens, Smithonsians, Old Towne Alexandria, Takoma Park, silver Spring and Georgetown, went to Mount vernon (Monticello is way better), several historical houses,The Capitol, the Treasury, The National Gallery, The Renwick Gallery, The Cochoran Gallery, The Phillips Collection Gallery, antique stores, billions of great restaurants, did the White House, had brunch with Barry and Shelly and the Kids, got 2 texts from Daedalus, camped for 4 days in Maryland, stayed at the Hotel Goerge (or George the Hotel) and had a great time. I’m sure there’s other stuff that I can’t think of right now. Oh hell yeah…mmmmmmmmmmm
DC women are very attractive…a fit and stylish bunch..especiall enjoyed the summer frocks and the everyone out running around in well running gear… I would like to have gone to some shows or caught a local band but time would not permit…oh and of course all the DC pages.. like this group of studious young women.. and I learned a lot about George Washington on this trip tooo… He was the Father of our Country and not jch….

is it overly optimistic to want to write Friday off to rust and today off as a product of being used 3 days in a row.

this was really a “hard hit balls ending in gloves” day for the offense. Pedro Alvarez played like Brooks Robinson for some weird reason.

I’m pretty grumpy right now myself, but there’s a four-game series against a real subaverage Arizona team next, and they’re coming from Colorado so their bats will be as out of whack as the Reds’ were last series. So lets see a blowout happen.

Oh yeah, and maybe giving Valaika some 2b time and grabbing a couple outfielders would be nice, kthx?

Way to groove one right down the middle for McCutchen. The Pirates announcers were really trashing Cordero from the first pitch, and I didn’t disagree with anything they were saying.

At least the Reds made it interesting in the bottom of the 9th. Good little rally, even if it fell short. Even Heisey’s PA was a pretty good little battle, despite the taken third strike.
-j