By Hal McCoy
UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave, chair reclined, cigar in hand, ready for baseball’s post-season. As Willie Stargell once said, “They don’t say, ‘Work ball.’ They say, ‘Play ball.’”
—LOOK OUT, LA: The Cincinnati Reds stagger into Los Angeles carrying cement blocks, the barely-made-it third wild card team matched against the defending World Series champion Dodgers.
Matched or mismatched?
They are in the same posture as the 1990 Reds entering the World Series against the Oakland Athletics and The Bash Brothers. Massive underdogs.
And we all know what happened — A four-game sweep for the Reds. So it can happen again.
The Dodgers certainly will be confident, maybe a tad overconfident. They won five of the six games against the Reds this season, outscoring them, 30-15.
Four players hit 50 or more home runs this season — Cal Raleigh, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. Three players hit 40 or more — Ex-Red Eugenio Suarez, Juan Soto and Junior Caminero.
Cincinnati’s top home run hitter was Elly De La Cruz with 22, after going 43 games without one.
There were 12 pitchers with 200 or more strikeouts, none wearing a Reds uniform. In fairiness, if Hunter Greene stayed off the injured list, he would have more than 200 strikeouts.
There were three pitchers with 200 or more innings, none wearing a Reds uniform.
No Reds pitcher won 15 games.
In a short series, a best-of-three affair, all that can be thrown off the top of the Dodger Stadium stands.
The Reds have Hunter Greene, Zack Littell and Andrew Abbott lined up to start, a formidable force. The Dodgers average five-plus runs a game but they’ll have a tough time doing it against the Reds strong pitching that includes a lights-out bullpen.
So where’s Nick Lodolo? He’ll be in the bullpen. Why? For one, he didn’t look very good during his short relief appearance Sunday against the Brewers. And maybe there is a health issue?
And Littell isn’t a bad choice. On July 30, he pitched five scoreless innings on two hits and four walks against the Dodgers.
An uneducated guess. . .Littell goes through the Dodgers lineup once, maybe twice, and if he is healthy, Lodolo comes in.
What the Reds need, what they’ve needed all season, is some productive offense, some hits with runners in scoring position.
A lot of that will revolve around De La Cruz, even if manager Tito Francona keeps him at the fifth spot in the batting order. A year ago, De La Cruz said, “LA is my town.”
He needs to prove it.
Yes, the Dodgers are defending World Series champions. No team has won back-to-back World Series since the New York Yankees won it in 1998, 1999 and 2000.
No National League team has gone back-to-back since the 1975-76 Reds. So somebody is going to beat the Dodgers and why not the Reds.
The Reds, of course, will have to put muzzles on LA superstars Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, despite the rumor that all three once slept in a manger.
My prediction is as useless as a tee-ball catcher, but I say the Reds will win Game 1 and Game 3, their first post-season series win since 1995.
—NO RESPECT: The MLB network gives Ohio baseball as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield says he gets, “No respect, no respect at all.”
The network ranked the 12 teams in the post-season and placed the Cleveland Guardians 11th and the Cincinnati Reds 12th.
On July 8, the Guardians trailed the Detroit Tigers by 15 1/2 games and set a major league record by coming back from the largest deficit that late in the season to win a division.
Even though they clinched the division before the end of Sunday’s games, the Guardians put an exclamation point on their season in Game 162. Trailing by three runs at home against Texas in the 10th inning, Brayan Rocchio hit a walk-off grand slam home run.
—JAYS JUMP HIGH: The Toronto Blue Jays went from worst to first this season. After finishing last in the American League East last year, the Jays finished first this year.
Before this season began, the Blue Jays hired former Reds manager David Bell as their Director of Baseball Operations & Assistant General Manager.
After the Reds fired Bell, they hired Tito Francona. Raise your hand if you wish the Reds had kept Bell.
No hands in the air, huh?
—CATCHER OR DH?: If I had a vote for American League MVP, and I don’t, I would consider Aaron Judge and his gaudy numbers.
Then I would vote for The Big Dumper, Seattle’s Cal Raleigh. His 60 home runs have come while he played baseball’s most difficult position, catcher.
While Raleigh blocks pitches in the dirt off his chest and shoulders on defense, Judge mostly sits in the dugout drinking coffee while his team plays defense.
DH or catcher? No discussion. Raleigh has played more than 600 innings more in the field than Judge.
—HAZARD PAY?: Norm Charlton’s legacy is as a member of the 1990 Cincinnati Reds bullpen triumverate — the Nasty Boys of Charlton, Randy Myers and Rob Dibble.
Charlton, though, did start some games with the Reds, and he posted a message this week on Facebook to former Reds pitcher Joey Hamilton about this era’s pitchers.
“I think we need back pay or some sort of compensation because of the conditions we had to work under,” he wrote. “It has to be inhumane treatment to let a starter go more than five innings and a reliever to pitch three days in a row. Yep, except we would not trade it for the world.”
—EXPRESS-LY RYAN: The Nolan Ryan Lore never ends. If they ever chisel a Mount Rushmore for pitchers, Ryan goes front-and-center.
During his career he had 198 quality starts in whch he didn’t get a win. His record in those 198 games was 0-107 with a 2.27 earned run average.
—QUOTE: Reggie Jackson’s take on facing Nolan Ryan: “Everybody likes fastballs, just as everybody likes ice cream. But you don’t like it when somebody’s stuffing it into you by the gallon. That’s what it’s like when Ryan is throwing fastballs by you.”
—BULLDOZING THE REDS: When Roy Oswalt pitched for Houston and Philadelphia, the Cincinnati Reds should have called in sick. Oswalt made them sick. In 34 starts, he was 23-3 with a 2.81 earned run average
While pitching for the Astros in 2005 he kept talking in the clubhouse that his secret desire was to own a bulldozer to use on his 1,000-acre ranch.
Owner Drayton McLane heard about it. So before Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, McLane promised Oswalt a bulldozer if he won and sent Houston to the World Series.
Oswalt allowed one run in seven innings to beat the St. Louis Cardinals and became the proud owner of a Caterpillar D6NXL bulldozer valued at $200,000.
—SKINNY ON SKENES: He isn’t saying it, but how could anybody blame Paul Skenes if he said, “Get me out of Pittsburgh and do it now.”
After his last appearance of the season against the Cincinnati Reds (six innings, no runs, four hits), his earned run average was 1.97.
He is the first MLB pitcher in history to record 200 strikeouts and post a sub-2.00 ERA and not have a winning record. He was 10-10.
—PLAYLIST NUMBER 112: As composer Pablo Casals put it, “Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”
—Jump (Van Halen), Valerie (Steve Winwood), Can’t Get It Out Of My Head (ELO), This Time I’m In It For Love (Player), Listen To The Music (Doobie Brothers), The Captain Of Her Heart (Double), Promises (Eric Clapton), Make Love Stay (Dan Fogelberg).
—The Long Run (The Eagles), Pretty Little Angel Eyes (Curtis Lee), Dream A Little Dream (Mammas & The Papas), Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles), She Thinks I Still Care (George Jones), What This World Needs Now (Jackie DeShannon).