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The Reds were able to salvage their first game in five days on Saturday, despite the fact that the infield Cubbed it up and Aroldis Chapman performed selected scenes of Carlos Marmol's upcoming one man Broadway show. The Reds will attempt to take the series this afternoon in Arlington against the Rangers; bringing an end to a long quasi-West Coast road trip. In order to be successful, the Reds will have to defeat a very good Yu Darvish. Going against Darvish will be the Reds de facto ace, Mat Latos
Darvish is a pedestrian 7-3 this season, but sports a 2.95 ERA and is on pace for 286 strikeouts in 2013. If counting stats aren't your thing, he also has a WHIP of 1.003 and is striking out 12.1 batters every nine innings with a K/BB ratio of 4.33. No matter the language or statistic, he's one of the best pitchers in the American League that doesn't go by "Verlander."
That's not to say that Mat Latos, also with 7 wins on the year, isn't up for the challenge to outperform him in a pitchers duel. The challenge exists due to a Reds lineup that, despite Devin Mesoraco's heroics last night, still appears to be fairly anemic. Granted, any lineup that will feature Jack Hannahan or Chris Heisey as a designated hitter will appear on paper to be vastly inferior to an American League team that has invested most of its money on offense.
The past week has been a test for Reds fans and how well they respond to an underperforming team. At the risk of going full C.Trent, the reaction has not been a great one. The bandwagoners are jumping ship and buying Clint Barmes jerseys, the children are complaining to John Fay about the few consistent hitters throughout this slump, and the rest of us are asking everyone else to let us know when the Reds are winning again.
In most cases, this can be remedied by a few more wins against good opponents. In other cases, we may need to bust out the hot mops and high powered water guns to literally drown out some of the more annoying critics. Or, we could just insult them. That being said, I'm not one for insulting other fans since we're all in this together, more or less. And, I'm not going to go ahead and insult someone for being depressed about the Reds. To an extent, I am too! Instead, I will say it's rather daring of some fans to constantly bemoan how awful a winning team is. Passive aggressive? No. It's the fine art of subtlety:
So, go ahead and get a good read going. Throw some shade. Do it for the House of Xtravaganza, Pepper Le Beija, and Dorien Corey. More importantly, do it for the Reds, my favorite team!