All Quiet on the Reds Front? Not Exactly

If your reading this title and thinking this is about a trade rumor, then I’ll disappoint you this time. That was a post from last night. Not pertaining to that at all. It pertains to a tweet I believe the majority of us saw last evening during the game.

It does pertain to this…

This tweet by Jim Day could not have proven to be more correct last night. Here were the Reds rolling along with a 5-0 lead when this hit the BRM Twitter timeline. And JD is spot on with this. When the Reds are playing well and seemingly breezing through a game, the Twitter chatter is calm. Some Reds fans will usually engage in a conversation with other Reds fans and the game, while it will gain a mention or two, won’t be on the topic of the game itself.

Not long there after, the explosion.

The top of the 8th inning. Johnny Cueto is headed back to the mound with that 5-0 lead, but having thrown 101 pitches. The chatter picked up. Some lamented that Dusty Baker should have not allowed Cueto to start the 8th and brought in Sean Marshall (the request of the majority) or Logan Ondrusek.

After allowing two hits to start the inning, retiring the next two Pirate batters, but permitting a Neil Walker single to plate a run (and 17 more Cueto pitches), and still two runners on base, Dusty decided to pull his starter. The chatter sent my timeline into a virtual scroll. The tweets came so fast I had zero time to read them.

But more was to come.

After pulling Johnny, Dusty summoned Ondrusek. After all, Andrew McCutchen was coming to the plate and a righty-righty matchup was perfect, right? Right?

Um, no. For the season, the Big Ondrusek has splits that are better against lefty bats. RHB have a slash of .271/.300/.417. LHB: .194/.356/278. The OBP is elevated against lefties because Ondrusek walks more lefty batters, but righties hit him with a bit more power.

And that’s exactly what McCutchen did. He deposited Ondrusek’s second offering into the seats located in right-center. Reds 5, Pirates 4. A game that should have been an easy win is now one that is in peril.

The anti-Dusty brigade kicked in. Can’t say I blame them for opining on this sentiment. Sure, it would have been nice to see the Reds ace finish another inning, but when you own the best bullpen in baseball…

The night before, the ‘pen had to account for six innings. No question J.J. Hoover wasn’t available. Same could be said for Jose Arredondo. Both had hurled two innings the previous night. Alfredo Simon and Sean Marshall pitched one inning each. That left Ondrusek, Sam LeCure and Aroldis Chapman that did not pitch in the previous game. We know Marshall can work on back-to-back days. Same for Ondrusek.

After the McCutchen home run, Marshall was brought in to retire Jose Tabata. End of the inning.

Cueto got the win after Aroldis Chapman entered in the 9th to get the save Cueto had three runs added to his line that maybe should not have been on it.

And yes, my Twitter timeline was once again sent into a scroll…