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Message #: 31677
Another week of doing what the Reds do best: choke, and choke again. HAL took his boot off the Reds' collective throats just long enough to let the series finale slip away from him, but the unluckiest team in baseball still should've swept this three-gamer (even against a very good Atlanta team) instead of coming a pitch away from being swept.... Game 1: Cincy's offense treated all-World starter Greg Maddux a bit rudely, reaching him for 8 baserunners in less than 6 IP (4 scored!) and rubbing it in with 6 stolen bases (but also 2 costly CS). The Reds and starter David West took a 4-0 lead in the 6th before one of the 2 costly CS's ended the rally. Surely that wouldn't be important. Not coincidentally, West picked that moment to run out of gas (double, surgical split-card gopher, shower), and when you find yourself of gas, who better to call upon than the Arson Squad? Jeff Shaw was deceptively effective at first, retiring 5 of 6 batters. CIN OF Chad Curtis had a chance to give the Reds a critical insurance run with a home run, but his split card was not quite as surgical as the one Atlanta got. Curtis rolled right at the limit -- plus one. Shaw's deceptive effectiveness vanished in the blink of an eye in the ATN 8th (single, game-tying gopher) and so Shaw passed the gas can to Jeff Brantley -- our "closer" with the 5+ ERA, in accordance with a long string of destructive Cincy closers throughout history. The Reds could have won the game in the 9th when Thomas Howard led off with a double and Eddie Taubensee executed a nice sac bunt to put the speedy Howard at 3rd with 1 out. That was Barry Larkin's cue to find a timely gb(B) so that Howard could be nailed at the plate, and the rare two-out single from Jeff Huson would be rendered meaningless. Well done! Brantley conjured up a little bit of trouble in the bottom of the 9th, but escaped that jam in order that the CIN offense fail on 2 more split card chances at hits in the top of the 10th, and so that Brantley could choke up the final, fatal 2-run gopher (our third multi-run gopher of the game) to Ryan Klesko with 2 outs in the bottom of the 10th. Final score: Braves 6, Nobody Chokes Like The Reds 4. ============================================================================== Game 2: After the Reds LOBbed 2 RISP in the top of the first (just a small part of our 13 LOB today -- EIGHT of them in scoring position), the Braves required just 3 batters to take a 1-0 lead against Brian Williams. But Williams performed very well after that while the CIN offense racked up 13 baserunners in 5.1 innings against ATN lefty Tom Glavine -- and some of those 13 actually scored! Williams had a 5-1 lead after 8 innings and was working on a 5-hitter, with 3 walks and 9 strikeouts. After hitting into a perfectly timed GIDP with the bases loaded in the 7th and scoring not at all, the CIN offense resumed dormancy but surely that (and 13 LOB in the first 7 innings) wouldn't be important. But these are the Reds, so of course it was a critical failure. With a 4-run lead and just 3 outs to get, HAL reached into the drawer and pulled out his sharpest scalpel. Williams skulked away from the mound after getting 1 out in the midst of 3 singles, so with ace arsonists Shaw & Brantley still in line at the gas pump the Cincinnati manager called on Hector Carrasco and Carrasco did not disappoint. The home crowd. HAL cut up Carrasco on the pitcher's own card for 2 hits that made the score 5-3 and left the bases still loaded with still just one out. After an accidental strikeout of Eddie Murray reduced Carrasco to his final chance to complete the choke, he calmly uncorked a wild pitch which plated run #4 and helpfully moved 2 other runners up a base so that they could score automatically when Klesko delivered again. This time it was a double instead of a gopher. Final score: Braves 6 (with 5 in the bottom of the 9th), Nobody Chokes Like The Reds 5 (with 13 LOB). ============================================================================== Game 3: The Reds finally got the idea that amassing a sizable lead was not in their best interest, so today we avoided scoring runs, or even getting many baserunners (only 7 LOB). Two singles, an HBP and a sac fly gave the visitors a quick 2-0 lead, but half of that margin was erased moments later when Jose Rijo was smacked for back to back doubles by The Immortal Klesko and Chipper Jones. John Smoltz then suddenly turned into perfection personified on the mound, giving the Reds just 1 hit, 1 hit by pitch and 2 walks in the 7 inning span from the 2nd through the 8th. But somehow the Braves had not scored again either, and Rijo left with his usual truncated pitch count (6 IP, 4 hits, 1 BB, 7 K, 1 run) and turned things over to the -- gulp! -- Arson Squad. Brantley was the first to play with the matches today, and he wasted only a short amount of time in choking away the lead and depriving Rijo of a well-deserved win. The Braves got a runner to third with 1 out in the 8th and Brantley induced a grounder -- but unlike a similar critical moment in the series opener when the roles were reversed, there was no convenient out at the plate, so the score became tied at 2. Then two amazing things happened: a Cincy comeback and the lack of a Cincy choke to follow it! With one out in the 9th, Atlanta summoned lefty reliever Pedro Borbon Jr. to face lefty Jeff Branson. The Reds countered with Mark Lewis, who stunned everyone in the house by getting a split-card triple (even our usual 20 would have been a double though) and Benito Santiago followed with the same 3B/2B chance and the Reds reverted to usual form by getting the inferior result. But the double was still an RBI and it didn't matter that we scored no further (LOB: +2). But it almost did matter a lot when Cincy reliever Mike Mimbs allowed a 2-out double. However Shaw came on and recorded his second save of the season by fanning pinch hitter Tony Tarasco on 3 pitches. The Reds thus averted a second choke in the contest and eked out a 3-2 win. Four Cincy pitchers combined for just 1 walk and fanned 10 Braves. The unluckiest player (Eric Anthony) on the unluckiest team in the majors had another chance to help out as a pinch hitter, but flew out and merely racked up some more RLISP 2-out. Actually, Anthony qualifies as only the second-unluckiest player in the majors: among players with 15 or more AB, the Reds had the Daily Double at the very bottom of the list coming into this week, two players for whom even achieving the Mendoza Line is an unrealistic fantasy: 1. CIN: Jeff Huson, 2 for 30, .067 (MLB average: .248) 2. CIN: Eric Anthony, 3 for 40, .075 (MLB average: .269) Alan |
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