It’s time to win some games, Reds

The proximity to Opening Day has reached the annual crescendo where ‘next’ becomes ‘this.’

Opening Day is this Thursday. Five more nights, and then we’re there.

The Red Reporter Podcast Collective sat down to discuss things with real baseball so close around the corner, diving immediately into just what ‘Opening Day’ constitutes as we enter the second season of pandemic-altered play. How is the city Cincinnati prepping for things? How is the mood? Just how excited can a city be after both a down decade of play and a thirteen months of a daily COVID grind?

From there, we moved on to the team’s pitching staff, and how the transition from one year ago’s corps to today’s has evolved even more with the spate of minor injuries in camp. Who’s going to be available to start the season? In which roles will they be? Just how much are the Reds leaning on Kyle Boddy, Driveline, and Derek Johnson to be a new market inefficiency here?

We later get into Aristides Aquino’s precarious position on the roster and, most importantly, what the Reds are going to have to accomplish this season that’s been impossible for them in recent years - getting off to a fast start and, frankly, winning some f*cking games. And while frugality has largely defined this club both in the long-term retrospective and the short-term, the looming decision about what to do with Jonathan India come Opening Day might be a chance to step mercifully in a more positive direction.

You can listen by smashing that big orange play button embedded in the SoundCloud player below or, if that’s stripped outta here for some reason, you can listen by clicking this here link.