OBSERVATIONS: Being ‘old’ isn’t helping the Reds

By Hal McCoy

UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave, battling the heat in the garage so I can stubbornly smoke my cigars. Some people whistle while they work, I puff while I produce.

—The 2022 Cincinnati Reds would be finalists in any contest in which a team looks like a baseball team.

They wear nice uniforms, they all use regulation gloves and mitts, they carry the same bats to home plate as other teams use.

Then they play the games and sometimes those bats are as useful as broken umbrellas in a spring shower. And the bullpen? They should put three Yale locks on the gate and bury the keys at second base.

As my friend Brad Schmaltz, former Reds beat writer for the Columbus Dispatch put it, “The New York Yankees just won their 50th game. At their current rate, the Reds will win their 50th on the day Ohio State opens its football season against Notre Dame on Sept. 3.”

Everybody worth their wishbone-C knows the Reds had a contender last season and could have contended this season if management hadn’t staged a yard sale.

And it certainly wasn’t to give a bunch of young prospects a chance. Amazingly, the Reds are the third oldest team in baseball. The roster averages 30.1 years old.

The top seven are — and see if you notice something noteworthy: New York Yankees (30.6), San Francisco Giants (30.4), Reds (30.1), New York Mets (29.8), Houston Astros (29.8), Los Angeles Dodgers (29.7), Milwaukee Brewers (29.5).

And the answer is. . .six of those seven teams are headed for the playoffs. One isn’t and, yes, it is your ‘rebuilding’ Cincinnati Reds.
—From Pete Rose while he was being roasted at the Hard Rock Casino in Cincinnati: “I would only hit about .200 if playing in today’s major leagues.”

Because of the shift?

“No, you’ve got to remember that I’m 81 years old,” he said. Rose, with his spray hitting, would have shredded the shift.

—QUOTE: From Pete Rose, The Hit King and master of the quip: “I was born on the day Abe Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.” (Also, on April 15, 1892, the General Electric (GE) Company was founded and Pete Rose was baseball’s version of electricity.)

—If the Milwaukee Masher, or if you prefer, the Brew Crew Bashers, played all their home games in Great American Small Park and faced the Cincinnati Reds’ pitching staff, their record most likely would be better than the New York Yankees.

In nine games, the Brewers have obliterated 25 home runs, nearly three a game, and have won seven of the nine games against the Reds this season.

They didn’t have closer Josh Hader, the Supreme Commander of the Save, this past weekend and still swept the vastly undermanned Reds. Hader was off on paternity leave, but the Brewers still showed the Reds, “Who’s your daddy?”

Even without Hader, the Brewers bullpen, led by former Reds No. 1 draft pick Brad Boxberger and Devin Williams pitched nine scoreless innings during the three-game sweep.
—QUOTE: From Buster Guru (Who?): “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, according to the losers and their parents.” (Add sportswriter Grantland Rice to that list. He said it first.)

—Walter Johnson was the best pitcher of his time and one of the best all-time with a fastball that sang ‘Kumbaya’ as he hummed past hitters.

There was one pitcher, though, that held the upper hand head-to-head with him, beating Johnson the first four times they met in 1915. In five 1915 meetings, this pitcher gave up only two runs to Johnson’s Washington Senators in 37 innings.

His name? Babe Ruth. Yes, he pitched for the Boston Red Sox. It wasn’t until 1918 that the Red Sox wised up and put him in the outfield, but he still went 13-7 as a pitcher with a 2.22 earned run average.

For his pitching career, The Bambino was 94-46 with a 2.28 earned run average. Babe Ruth was Shohei Ohtani way before Ohtani’s grandpartnts were born.

—QUOTE: From Babe Ruth on pitching: “As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.” (And for The Babe, hitting pitchers was even easier.)

—BetOnLine in Las Vegas is now projecting that the Reds will win 67 games, third fewest in the majors, ahead only of Washington (65) and Oakland (63 1/2) — and only Oakland could win half a game.

Before the season began, the Reds were predicted to win 76 1/2 games. Their 9 1/2-game dropoff is the most of any team.

—QUOTE: From New York Mets manager Casey Stengel when his Mets were en route to 120 losses in 1962: “The only thing worse than a Mets game is a Mets doubleheader.”

—There is nothing to read into this, but I found it interesting. On a night when the Reds lost to the Dodgers, 8-2, the Seattle Mariners beat the Oakland A’s, 8-2.

With the additions of Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suare, the Mariners are underperforming at 30-39.

On the night of the 8-2 win, the Mariners went back-to-back-to-back with home runs, the last two hit by Winker and Suarez.

And, yes, both Winker and Suarez are underachieving. Winker is hitting .214 with five homers and 26 RBI. He has 43 walks. Suarez is hitting .227 with 13 homers and 36 RBI.

For what it is worth, both Winker and Suarez are outperforming Joey Votto: .214, five homers, 22 RBI — almost identical numbers as Winker, but Winker has 43 walks to 27 by Votto.