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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 > 2009 > May > 11
Monday, May 11, 2009
Kicking sand in the D-Backs’ faces
Some staggering stuff:
A fabulous, fantastic start for the Cincinnati Reds deep in the Sonoran Desert, a 13-5 sandblasting of the very feeble Arizona Diamondbacks.
And where are the Willy Taveras naysayers now? Yeah, I was guilty, too - afraid of last year’s low on-base percentage that this season keeps going up, up and up. He began Monday’s game at .355, then got on base five straight times, all on hits, and scored four runs. And now his on-base average is .381 - just what they want from a leadoff guy.
For those who are not fans of hitting coach Brook Jacoby, well, here is another case of him working clandestinely with a player outside the spotlight where nobody can see. Manager Dusty Baker said Jacoby has worked tirelessly with Taveras to get him to drive the ball instead of hitting fly balls and ground balls. And it is showing.
Typically, Jacoby keeps a low-pro and said, “Willy is a good athlete and he is just starting to do what he has done before. We worked hard on those things in spring training and he is putting them into play.”
For the Reds:
13 runs. Most this season. 18 hits. Most this season. Eight extra base hits. Most this season.
When are teams going to learn that Jay Bruce does more with his left arm than cut steaks and sign checks? He threw out Arizona’s Eric Byrnes trying to stretch and single into a double, his sixth assist this season, No. 1 for outfielders in the National League. As far as the Reds are concerned - hey, keep on running, knuckleheads.
When Laynce Nix and Adam Rosales hit back-to-back home runs in the fourth inning Monday, it was the first back-to-backers of the season for the Reds. Nix and Rosales? What are the odds it wouldn’t be Votto/Phillips or Phillips/Bruce? Rosales circled the bases so fast that it seemed he was back sitting in the dugout when his home run landed in the left field seats.
Is there any other pitcher in baseball who is 5-2 with a 7.02 ERA. Those are Bronson Arroyo’s numbers, a guy who obviously knows on what day to pitch. Meanwhile, Aaron Harang has to be sitting in the dugout wondering, “Hey, guys, where are my runs?”
Four of Aroryo’s five wins are on the road and he shrugs as if mystified and says, “It has been a funn year for me up to this point. I have a high ERA but I have more wins at this point than I have at any time in my career, other than ‘06 (Boston). I’ll take what they give and I’ll take the wins if they want to keep giving them to me. I’ve had two of the four years here where I’ve been lights out up to this point and beedn 2-4. I’ll take wins all day long.”
Love Rosales and his racehorse hustle, but does he EVER field a ground ball cleanly. A bobblehead for him would be appropriate. Fortunately, his very strong arm makes up for his current pandemic of dropped grounders.
Going to take a tour Wednesday of Goodyear and the emerging spring training facilities of the Reds for next spring. In the words of Bill Cunningham, “I’ll give you a full report.”
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TweetNotes, Quotes from the Arizona desert
I’ll give credit where credit is due: thank you, Delta, for getting me quickly and safely from Dayton to Phoenix today - on time, no incidents. But boring. No excitement, unless you count me pouring water in my lap when I dropped my book and tried to catch it. Fortunately, it happened early in a four-hour flight, time to dry.
And when I got to Phoenix I discovered it was 102 degrees (in May?). And it will be over 100 all three days the Cincinnati Reds are here. Yeah, I know, dry heat. But tell that to me right hand which nearly suffered third-degree burns when I touched the iron railing on the balcony of my hotel room.
SO WHAT’S it like in the clubhouse of a team on a roll, a team having fun, a team winning? Well, fun.
Every day, four of the Latin players sit at a table in the middle of the room playing cards. “Casino,” said Edinson Volquez. “You know, 21?” Participants include Coco Cordero, Ramon Hernandez, Willy Taveras, Edwin Encarnacion, Volquez and Johnny Cueto. All I know is there is a lot of laughing and insults shouted in Spanish. And, of course, Latin music punctuates the air from a large black box in Taveras’ locker.
AND THEY watch TV as they dress and prepare. On Monday in Arizona, Deal or No Deal was on and Jerry Hairston Jr. watched as he pulled on his green t-shirt from the Mexican team in the WBC. “I don’t understand some people,” he said. “They have a change of a lifetime, a chance to win $1 million. And some of them stop in the game at $22,000, which means $14,000 after taxes. What’s the matter with those people.”
JAY BRUCE tried a practical joke on Joey Votto Monday. Didn’t work. Bruce put up a bogus lineup card that had himself batting third and Votto batting fifth. The usual lineup has Votto third and Bruce fifth.
As I stood looking at the card, wondering if manager Dusty Baker had wigged out, Bruce tapped me on the shoulder and said, “That’s not the real lineup.”
So, I went to Votto and said, “You like batting fifth?” And he said, “What do you mean? I’m not batting fifth.”
Somebody had replaced the bogus card with the real one and that’s the one Votto saw. When told about the other card, an attempt by Bruce to make Votto mad, Votto laughed and said, “That’s a bad joke right there. It didn’t work. I didn’t even see it. I wish I had. It would have been funny. But it misfired.
THEY PUT out an interesting note today. It said that the pinch-hit home run that pitcher Micah Owings hit Sunday was the second pinch-hit home run of his career and both tied games. The note continued that the only other pitcher to do it even once (tie a game with a pinch-hit home run) over the last 50 years was Brooks Kieschnick of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2003 and 2004.
One problem with that: it isn’t fair to Owings. Here’s the difference. Owing is a pitcher, always has been - a pitcher who happens to be able to hit. Kieschnick was an outfielder throughout his career and the Brewers had him do some relief pitching. He still played the outfield and first base, too.
So in my book, what Owings has done is more impressive.
REMEMBER Kevin Jarivs. He pitched in the mid-90s for the Reds and is now a scout for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was in Great American Ball Park Sunday and happened to look at the scoreboard where it said: “On this date in baseball, Pat Jarvis pitched a two-hitter in 1995 against the Mets.”
Kevin Jarvis stared at it a few moments, then thought, “Hey, I pitched a shutout that day. That’s me, not Pat Jarvis.” There was another Jarvis, named Pat, who pitched in the majors. “How ironic that I was in Cincinnati’s ballpark when they put that up,” said Jarvis (Kevin, not Pat).
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