The Cincinnati Reds almost didn’t lose tonight

Tommy Pham doubled off the wall and homered. Mike Moustakas doubled off the wall and homered. For a time, there was some Cincinnati Reds optimism under the roof at whatever it is they call Miller Park these days!

The thing is, though, they still did not win tonight. The Milwaukee Brewers took care of that end of the transaction, thanks to some early high pitch counts from Tyler Mahle and some timely hitting on their part.

It dropped the Reds to a miserable, unfathomable, hardly readable 3-20 on the season, a fumble so bad to start the season that the next five months have already become unwatchable before we ever got around to thinking about them.

Thanks to the everyday nature of baseball, though, we’re going to have a hard time avoiding the inevitability of the Reds playing through it. In fact, they’re going to try, try, try again tomorrow in Milwaukee, and will do so with Vladimir Gutierrez on the mound. He’ll be looking to lower his 7.41 ERA on the season, but the Reds offense will be tasked with getting hits off the ever-stingy Freddy Peralta to take home a win.

It’s tough to continue the Sisyphean task of covering this club with anything approaching a straight face. It was a 6-3 loss, and in all honesty it felt like the closest they’ve been to a win in so long I’m actually writing about such a false concept in the first place.

Tony Graphanino