Posted by Under Argo on 8. July 2009 00:46
Tonight the Reds beat the defending world series champions, the Philidelphia Phillies, 4-3. Usually, that is reason to celebrate, it is always good to beat the team that won it all the year before and it's always nice to beat a team that shares a state with Shittsburgh. However, the night before, the Reds lost to that same team 22-1. There is no doubt in my mind that the Reds are still in the race in the NL Central and even though they did get beat 22-1, it only counts as one loss. Just because they got blown out doesn't mean that they get 4 losses in one game. It should be easy for me to shrug it off and forget the game but for some reason I just can't.
Watching this team get slaughtered made me remember all of the tiny problems that I think the Reds have. For example, I'm not completely convinced that Dusty Baker knows where he is all the time. I'm not convinced that Bronson Arroyo can ever put together a complete season without the fastball that every major league pitcher seems to have (lets face it, we all know that Arroyo isn't ever going to be the next Greg Maddux). The teams batting average is still not where it should be if they want to play in October and after the usual starting 5 pitchers, there isn't a lot of depth (more on that in a minute) so when somebody gets hurt, there are holes in the rotation.
I'm not a bandwaggon fan. I will root for the Reds just as much tomorrow as I did in the beginning of the season. Watching them beat the same team that slaughtered them the night before goes to show how inconsistant the team is and to me, it exposes the glitches that need to be fixed. Like I said before though, the Reds are still "in it" and we're just beginning to see advertisements for the All-Star Game so there is plenty of time left.
There is one thing that I've seen over the past couple weeks that excites me and that is the play from Homer Bailey, especially with his performances on June 27th and July 3rd where he pitched a combined 12.5 innings with 6 hits and 5 runs and 1 win (his only win of the season). I don't need to tell you about Bailey's history of getting called up to the show and getting rocked, then getting sent back down and doing okay, then getting called up and getting rocked, then getting sent down and doing okay, so on and so forth. This is the first time recently that I can remember him puting a few decent games together. Is this the end of the endless Homer Bailey cycle? I hope so.
