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The Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Star of the Game
Todd Frazier whacked a dinger, and oh what a dinger it was. His solo shot was his 23rd on the season and came as an initial attempt at a comeback following the early hole in which the Pittsburgh Pirates buried the Reds.
Unfortunately, Todd needed a bigger shovel. Or some friends with shovels. The point is, the Reds got buried early and I'm terrible at making bad metaphors 136 games into a disappointing season.
Honorable Mentions are due to: Alfredo Simon, who settled down after his costly early jitters to sit the Pirates down rather routinely for another 6 innings; and, wow, I'd say nobody else, but I already put a semi-colon in this sentence and wrote the first part as if there'd be a series, so now I'm stuck. Apparently I'm terrible at making bad sentence construction 136 games into a disappointing season, too. Jumbo Diaz pitched a scoreless inning, so there's a mention.
Key Plays
- Andrew Lambo smacked a single in the Bottom of the 1st that was probably aimed at Murdock, and after Andrew McCutchen walked behind him Neil Walker mashed a honker on the first pitch he saw for all 3 Pirates runs on the day.
- Frazier countered with his solo bonk in the Top of the 4th after each and every one of the first 10 Cincinnati Reds was sat down in order by Vance Worley, whose sweet glasses and 7.21 ERA in 2013 earned him a "purchased by" on his BBREF page this March. The Reds stumbled into a bumbled run in the Top of the 7th thanks to some conveniently placed grit, but that was that. Reds lose, 3-2.
Source: FanGraphs
- I won't lie. I watched football, football, and nothing but football during the entirety of this game. The wings were delicious.
- Walt Jocketty dropped some quotes for Joel Sherman of the New York Post, and they were unpredictably less nebulous than usual. Sherman went as far to say that no team will have a tougher off-season than the Reds this winter, and Walt boosted the confidence of Reds fans everywhere by informing us that we still have "a small window" to compete in the NL Central despite owning the largest payroll in the division. He then cited injuries for this season's slide while not mentioning once that the front office did absolutely nothing to augment the team mid-season in spite of those injuries. For a team with a now publicly admitted "small window," doing nothing to improve a club on a short leash seems both odd and counterintuitive. Classic case of talking out of both sides of one's mouth, frankly.
- Tunes.