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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > September > 14
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Meet the one-run wonders
It wasn’t like watching paint dry, it was like watching the third coat of paint being dried with a hair blower.
It would have been more exciting to sit in the middle of the Sonoran desert at high noon counting cacti, or maybe watching the Cincinnati Bengals, than watching the Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks foist futility on 27,297 in Chase Field Sunday.
The Diamondbacks, reputedly in the chase for the National League West title, stranded 17 runners and were 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position, waiting around long enough for Corey Patterson to hit a 10th inning one-out home run off the right field foul pole for a 2-1 Reds victory.
When the much-maligned Patterson homered, the Reds had only two hits and 19 straight hitters had gone down impotently. But it enabled the Reds to finish 4-2 on the trip to Milwaukee and Arizona, with all six games decided by one run.
Cincinnati starter Johnny Cueto used more pitches than a bad salesman, 115 in five innings. At one point in the fifth inning, Cueto had thrown more balls (54) than strikes (53). He walked six.
He finished with 56 balls and 59 strikes, tying Chicago’s Carlos Zambrano and Baltimore’s Daniel Cabrera for most balls thrown out of the strike zone in one game this year.
But the only run he gave up was a fifth-inning home run to Justin Upton, a home run that tied it, 1-1, after Jay Bruce hit his 18th homer, leading off the fourth.
Then 19 straight Reds went down until Patterson’s home run.
“Cueto threw a lot of pitches, but he really battled,” said manager Dusty Baker, referring to the fact the D-Backs left one on in the first, then two each in the second, third and fourth against Cueto.
The stranding continued against the Reds bullpen — two, three, three, zero, two over the last six innings.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team score one run and strand 17 batters,” said Baker. “They were threatening every inning and we were fortunate to come away with it.”
The D-Backs stranded 13 Saturday in a 3-2 10-inning loss to the Reds. In the two games, they were 1 for 24 with runners in scoring position.
Former Reds outfielder Adam Dunn stranded 10 runners over the three-game series, five Sunday. His only RBI came Saturday when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.
The Reds did walk him twice intentionally with runners in scoring position. He hit into a double play in the first with two on and struck out with the bases loaded in the eighth against Bill Bray.
Arizona starter Max Scherzer, 24, the team’s No. 1 draft choice in 2007, held the Reds to one run (Bruce’s homer) and two hits over six innings, walking three and striking out nine.
But the D-Back pinch-hit for him in the sixth when they had two on and one out, going for the downs on that one. But pinch-hitter Jamie D’Antona and David Eckstein popped out against lefthander Adam Pettyjohn, making his debut for the Reds.
But with the tying run on second and the winning run on first, Cabrera caught Young looking at strike three.
“I can tell a difference in the way we’ve played since we played the Cubs at home, then Milwaukee and these guys (Arizona) on the road, all contenders,” said Patterson. “Those teams were all down for playoff spots and to us this was our playoffs. And we’ve played great.”
Patterson, hitting .204 with nine homers this year, has been an offensive mirage, but his defense has been exemplary most of the year, including two near-the-wall stabs in this series.
The fact the Cincinnati Reds are 5-2 over a span of seven straight one-run games through Saturday was impressive to Eric Davis, but he wants to see the team do better, like 7-0, and do it in April, May and June — when it counts.
“Our main objective here is to change the mentality,” said Davis, the former Reds superstar outfielder now traveling with the team as an unofficial coach. The mentality, of course, is a losing one — eight straight years of it.
“That’s what we’re working on, how to win, what it takes to win,” he said. “We lost a one-run game in Milwaukee Wednesday that we should have won and we lost a one-run game Friday in Arizona we should have won. Those games make a huge difference over the course of a season.
“We need to learn what to do and what not to do in those kinds of games,” he said. “My message to young players is to do what you can do and don’t try to do more and don’t do less.
“We have the core players here to be good,” he added. “Just a piece here and a piece there and change the mentality.”
The seven straight one-run games isn’t close to a record, not even a franchise record. The 1967 Reds played 11 straight one-run games.
“The only way to learn how to play one-run games is to play in them,” said manager Dusty Baker. “And you can learn something from the losses, too.”
Amazingly, the Reds are 26-18 this season in one-run games — 26 of their 68 wins are by one run.
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TweetOh, those one-run games
By the way, whoever told Jessica Simpson she could sing (and I doubt anybody did) must be tone deaf. At one point during her postgame concert Saturday, screeching while I was trying to write, she said, “I was going to give up singing at one point, but I thought I should continue to use my God-given talents.”
Huh.
OK, back to baseball.
Entering Sunday’s game against the Diamondbacks, the Reds had played six straight one-run games and were 4-2. Is that a record? Not even close to a franchise record. The 1967 team played 11 straight one-run games. Amazing.
“The only way to learn how to play one-run games is to play ‘em,” said manager Dusty Baker. “I just hope they learn something from losing one-run games as well as winning one-run games.”
Amazingly enough, the Reds are 25-18 in one-run games this season. They are 8-8 in extra innings, 10-14 in two-run games and 5-4 in shutout games. They also are 28-24 against lefthanded starters?
Dang. How is this team 67-81?
Seems as if a lot of you are getting excited about the way the Reds are playing these days and, yes, it is different. But don’t get overly optimistic about it.
As Baker himself says, “You can easily get fooled in spring training games and you can eaisly get fooled in September games.”
Remember this. The Reds are way, way out of it. No pressure. None. The teams they are playing these days are contenders under extreme pressure. While the Reds are as loose as tires without lug nuts, the other teams are as tight as an unopened olive jar.
Baker, though, likes what he is seeing.
“These last two weeks, we want to play through the end, not just to the end,” he said. “These guys are doing it. They’re playing hard and they’re playing tough. We want to finish with the best possible record we can and as high in the standings as we can.”
They can improve their record, but they are 11 games behind fourth-place St. Louis, so moving up to a higher rent district isn’t going to happen.
And those who wonder why Paul Bako still catches any games, well, it is because Baker doesn’t want to totally wear out Ryan Hanigan. He already has caught more innings than at any time in his career and he isn’t a big kid. It isn’t feasible to catch him every day the rest of the season. Why break him down for no reason?
How about Wilkin Castillo? He is listed as a catcher/infielder/outfielder and on Sunday he was walking through the clubhouse wearing shin guards.
Will Baker catch him? Probably not.
“That’ll be tough,” said Baker. “Do we do it now or wait until spring training. We don’t want to do anyrthing to hurt the team right now or embarrass the player. He had a tough time the other night catching Jeremey Affeldt in the bullpen - but a lot of people have that problem with Affeldt.”
Asked if he had ever heard of a major-league player listed as a shortstop/catcher, Baker said, “No, never.”
OK, so if you need a photographer for your wedding, don’t call Baker. He did it once for an old friend, Leon Brown, who played a few games for the Mets and visited Baker in his office Sunday morning.
“I was the photographer with a video camera at his wedding,” said Baker. “No kidding, I was. Never done it before. But he couldn’t afford a real photographer, so I did it. You should see all the shots of the floors and ceilings I got for him.”
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TweetPutting Jessica on hold for four hours
Jessica Simpson put on a postgame concert in Chase Field after the Cincinnati Reds-Arizona Diamondbacks game, featuring her first country music album, “Do You Know?”
Yeah, we know.
We know we saw something incredible — a few incredible things — Saturday night in Chase Field.
Most incredibly, we saw pitcher Micah Owings (he plays for the Reds now, you know?) rip a run-scoring pinch-hit double in the 10th inning to lift the Reds to a 3-2 victory over the Diamondbacks.
We know that Owings, formerly with the Diamondbacks, joined the Reds Friday to complete the trade of Adam Dunn to Arizona and we know manager Dusty Baker said, “Owings probably won’t pitch the rest of this year, but I might use him as a pinch-hitter.”
And so he did. And so the Reds won.
We know that Owings spent nearly a month with a sore shoulder, which is why when Baker was asked, “When will Owings pitch for the Reds,” Baker said, “Next year.”
So how much has Owings swung a bat in that month? “I took batting practice yesterday and today,” said Owings. “They wouldn’t let me swing during the treatment for my shoulder.”
Nearly a half hour after his hit, Owings said, “I still haven’t comprehended what I just did. But it means a lot. I was grateful for the opportunity. I thought it might hook foul, but it stayed fair.”
Barely.
“When I told him in the 10th that he might hit, he couldn’t wait to hit and he came through big-time,” said Baker. “How ironic is that he he came through like that in his first game back here?”
We also know that Baker made an eye-popping decision in a throat-narrowing situation with 25-year-old rookie pitcher Josh Roenicke.
And it nearly led to a 2-1 defeat, a defeat avoided only when the Reds tied it in the ninth, 2-2, to send it into extra innings.
The Diamondbacks had runners on second and third with two outs of a 1-1 game in the seventh when Baker took the baseball from Jeremy Affeldt and handed it to Roenicke for his major-league debut.
Not surprising, Roenicke walked Chris Young on four pitches to fill the bases, then hit Adam Dunn with his second pitch to force in the go-ahead run, what looked like a loss until the Reds rallied.
“I don’t think it was baptism by fire,” said Baker. “First base was open. I wouldn’t have put him in with the bases loaded. Then he loaded them himself. It was a tight situation, but he did have first base open.
“He was a closer (at Louisville) and he has been on the fast track. That’s one of the things we have to find out, what he can do in that situation, for next year,” Baker added.
Simpson’s boyfriend, Dallas quarterback Tony Romo, wasn’t there, but 45,075 watched a couple of pretty good throwers of the baseball variety — Arizona’s once wondrous and still darn good Randy Johnson against Cincinnati’s wondrous and getting-better Edinson Volquez.
Johnson, 45, and the possessor of 294 career victories, walked Jerry Hairston Jr. to open the game and he came around to score on Joey Votto’s double for a 1-0 Reds lead.
That’s all the Reds got off Johnson before he left after six innings — one run, five hits, two walks, three strikeouts.
Volquez, 25, pitched six-plus innings, giving up two runs on five hits, but he walked six, hit a batter and threw a wild pitch among his 121 pitches as Baker desperately tried to get Volquez his 17th victory.
Instead he stayed at 16-5 and could only start three more games, so 20 victories is gone.
Volquez, 25, had some hat-tugging dilemmas in the first three innings, coming away undamaged each time.
Arizona tied it, 1-1, in the fifth, through no fault of Volquez’s.
Justin Upton blooped one down the right field line that first baseman Votto could have caught, that second baseman Adam Rosales could have caught, that right fielder Jay Bruce could have caught.
None did. That ball made a divot-dive into the right field grass for a double, Upton took third on Stephen Drew’s bloop single to right and scored on Angie Ojeda’s broken-bat squibber to second base, tying it 1-1.
Volquez went back out to start the seventh but didn’t get an out, giving up a double to Justin Upton and a walk to Tony Clark.
Jeremy Affeldt took over and with two outs Baker made his decision to toss Roenicke into a pressure cooker with the lid screwed down.
“We tried to stay with Volquez for as long as we could to give a chance for that 17th victory,” said Baker. “He was denied, but we’ll take the victory. He is still the victim of early high pitch counts. He is going to get better at commanding that strike zone.”
The Reds tied it in the ninth when pinch-hitter Danny Richar singled to left and took third on pinch-hitter Javier Valentin’s single. Corey Patterson flied to right and Richar tagged at third and started home.
But he stopped. Fortunately for the Reds, D-Backs catcher Miguel Montero bungled the throw home, enabling Richar to score and make it 2-2.
The Reds had two outs and nobody on in the 10th when Chris Dickerson walked. Owings then dropped his double just inside the left field foul line to make it 3-2 and closer Francisco Cordero pitched a 1-2-3 bottom of the 10th with two strikeouts for his 30th save — four hours and one minute after this one game.
All that, Jessica, we know.
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