If you managed to stay up late enough on Monday to watch the Cincinnati Reds lose to the San Diego Padres, I applaud you. I apologize to you for your pain and suffering, but I applaud you for your diligence.
The Reds are an absolute mess right now. Depending on the depth of your parameters, you can claim they’ve been a mess for a whole lot longer time frame, but lately they’ve been proponents of some of the worst-played baseball I can remember. Their pitching, for the most part, has been awful – particularly
in the bullpen, where it’s been a turnstile of pitchers out-of-options and on the fringes. The hitting has been untimely.
And, on Monday in San Diego, it was their defensive fundamentals that got the laugh-tracks going.
During a 7th inning rally, the Padres once reached on three consecutive bunts, the first two being labled ‘singles’ while the final one officially going into the books as an error by reliever Tejay Antone. At least one of the singles could’ve been labeled an error on a number of different Reds. Defensive indifference? Defensive incompetence? Whatever it was, it blew open a game that, to that point, had been controlled rather well by starter Andrew Abbott, who allowed just a lone earned run through 6.0 IP before being tasked with beginning the 7th by manager Terry Francona in a move that backfired almost instantly.
To be quite clear, the Reds offense scored just 2 runs on the night, the latest in a run of poor offensive form that has seen their roaring May crumble into a brutally austere June. The bullpen, to its credit, at least kept the ball on the infield (even if the Pads, by design, took advantage of that). Even poor Zach McCambley, who came on to pitch the Bottom of the 8th, at least threw strikes and mostly hit his spots before an inability to get guys out led to a 30+ pitch inning in which he was gassed and punished by the end.
All told, it was a 6-2 loss for the Reds, another game in which they both led late and lost.
They’re really finding new, impossible ways in which to lose these days. Now, they’re 3 games under .500 and at risk of flushing this entire season down the toilet before the middle of June.
