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This team is dangerously close to losing a bunch of fans for this season. Yes, they are only 2.5 games out of first place. Yes, they still have a winning record, though a loss today puts them at .500. And yes, they still have a ton of good pitching left in them. But we've all been through this far too many times over the last decade. It's basically the same story every time. The Reds start hot and get fans excited that this year will be different. Slowly, the major flaw in the team starts to show itself. Eventually, that major flaw becomes a full-blown issue, but nothing is done to fix it. Eventually, the team falls too far out of the race to recover and fans turn their interest towards crappy football and complain about that.
This season is starting to look very familiar. And I don't blame Reds fans for starting to lose interest in the team. There are only so many times Granny Weatherall can be jilted before she gets pissed off.
And now we're at the point where the Reds will be scraping in order to get a .500 road trip against the teams with the 2 worst records in baseball when the series started. All this team has shown us this trip is that without Joey Votto, they're not a playoff team. Heck, even with Votto, they'd have a hard time being competitive with the way everybody is hitting. We knew the offense was going to be a problem going into the season, but this crevasse goes much deeper than I expected.
Thankfully, the Reds have their best pitcher going today to try to save face. And thankfully the Royals have a pitcher who is more than happy to put runners on base. This should be a game the Reds win, but the way things have gone the last 3 days, who knows?