Another Red Reposter and another pilot featurette leeching onto the Reposter brand. The HDMI will greatly expand on that mothballed feature Scrabbles and I did last year that brought you a single statistic plucked hastily from Baseball Reference. HDMI will potentially run every Wednesday in the Reposter, providing an inventory of numbers, people, memes and other discrete pieces of info-trash floating around during the previous week.
4-0 Current Reds record, equaling their best start since 1990. That squad started the season, appropriately, 9-0 - with Jack Armstrong earning credit for 1/3 of the wins during that stretch. For those that believe in the Baseball Code, a 4-0 start means we can count every four letters in the current Reds roster to uncover this chilling prophesy: "R O E N E O Y."
35,056 Average paid attendance at Great American Ballpark for Opening Weekend.
11,821 Paid attendance during last night's victory over the Astros.
600 Approximate number of dogs in attendance during Sunday night's Bark in the Park and victory over the Brewers.
Jay Bruce and Paul Janish: Only regular starters who have yet to hit a home run, through four games.
404 Farthest "true" HR distance by a Red, marking the number of feet Jonny Gomes clubbed a ball on April 3 vs. the Brewers.
7 Highest IP and Ks for a Reds starter, both marks belonging to Travis Wood.
5 Number of fewer walks issued by Mike Leake in last night's start vs. his 2010 debut.
Mark Sheldon bring us the happy news that Brandon Phillips is just fine
Or so says BP. While not being able to "breath at all" is often a classic sign of total corpuscular shut-down, Phillips just had the wind knocked out and was removed as a precaution. Walking it off and taking a few swigs of All Sport always worked for me. Also buried in this post is the revelation that Mike Leake was never headed to triple A, even if the posturing during spring suggested otherwise. Which raises the possibility that either Leake or Bailey could wind up in the bullpen when Cueto and Bailey are both returned to the rotation.
According to CBS, Reds rank sixth in ROI for home wins
Between March Madness and Sheen Madness, CBS is everyone's favorite corporate overlord this time of year. Their Money Watch outfit made up a system to weight home victories, home runs, runs scored and opponent strikeouts and ranks the Reds sixth on the "cost" of these outcomes, derived from ticket prices. I'm not sure how much a system that ranks the Pirates that highly is worth, but the Reds performed well - and hit for more power - at their home park last year at a relatively affordable price of admission. The test will be whether the expectation of a good value will translate to more revenue this year.
Cueto, Bailey are both making "steady progress"
Pitch counts are rising, but Bailey appears to be closer. It's premature to accurately project a return, but getting them back in action seems a lot less urgent than it did a week a go. At this point, "100%" should be the hard-and-fast standard.
The Columbus Dispatch gives it up for Reds' "patience at the plate"
Just another indicator of the pervasiveness of the formerly-maligned SABR wisdom that "a walk is pretty much as good as a hit." Either that, or the Reds have been good about waiting to receive their SportSlop. Which is a nutritional slurry I assume athletes have to eat.
The Crawfish Boxes previewed the current series from the Astros perspective
How the other half lives. Always interesting to see the different subcultures on SBNation. I'm a company man, but the baseball blogs do a thorough job, each in their own way. In the comments section, CB member David Coleman looks at the match-up with clear eyes: "That offense is scary... Nelson Figueroa might get wrecked." Tonight's game will show, but I'd say he figures to.
Reds owner Castellini to throw first pitch at new Summit ball field