Things We’ve Learned – NL Edition

And now for the Things We’ve Learned National League Edition.  The following are things that we have learned after the first weekend of baseball.

1. Cardinals’ closer Ryan Franklin should spend less time grooming the rodent growing on his chin and more time trying to figure out how to avoid allowing a HR to Cameron Maybin (a guy with 13 career HRs) in the 9th inning of Opening Day.
2. The 2011 season may look a lot like the 2010 season: the Reds win games they shouldn’t; the Brewers’ bullpen blows leads that should hold up; the Cardinals find ways to lose games they should win; the Pirates will have everybody wondering at the end of April if they can “keep the pace” this season; and the Cubs will make it 103 years since their last World Series victory… and the Astros will make both the Cubs and Pirates look like contenders.
3. The Phillies rotation will single-handedly prove Jimmy Rollins win by winning 100 games just between the starters.  Halladay, Lee and Oswalt will win 30 games each, and  Hamels and Blanton will split the remaining 10 victories.
4. The NL West will be much like the AL Central – most competitive division, but not because the teams are actually good.  And Aubrey Huff will have more errors than hits… and he’s going to have quite a few hits.

That’s what we’ve learned after 3-4 games in the National League.

ORSP: Cincinnati Reds

We’re back in the Senior Circuit this week by looking at the NL Central.  With six teams, this one is going to bleed into next week, but next week’s division is the AL West, which only has 4 teams, so it all evens out.

Biggest Additions: Edgar Renteria, Fred Lewis, Dontrelle Willis, Jeremy Hermida

Biggest Subtractions: Orlando Cabrera, Arthur Rhodes, Aaron Harang, Laynce Nix, Mike Lincoln

Offseason Review: The Reds were pretty quiet this offseason.  You would think that adding a World Series MVP would be a big move, but nobody really blinked when Renteria signed on for the mid-2000’s Cardinal reunion tour with Walt Jocketty in Cincinnati.  He’ll be part of the left-side of the former Cardinal infield with Scott Rolen.  Short of that move, everything else is a bit of a gamble for the reigning Central champs.  Four years ago, losing Harang would have been a big deal, but he has fallen off a cliff since his impressive.  The best thing the Reds did was sign Votto, Bruce, Arroyo and Cueto to extensions.

Season Preview: A large part of the Reds’ plan for 2011 revolves around Joey Votto repeating his MVP season from 2010.  To be perfectly honest, and there’s a little bit of a bias here, there’s no reason why the Reds were as good as they were last year.  They were steady, which is more than what the rest of the division was.  They’ll be steady again this year, but don’t plan on seeing similar results.

Final Record: 83-79, 3rd in NL Central

 

>Passing of a Legend

>In case you haven’t already heard, Sparky Anderson the first manager to lead teams from both leagues to victories in the World Series passed away earlier this week.  Anderson managed the Red and Tigers to World Championships.  Incidentally, only one other manager has led teams in both leagues to a World Series Championship – Tony LaRussa, who led the Cardinals and the A’s to baseball’s version of the Promised Land.  Sparky will truly be missed, after all, with a name like Sparky, you know he has to be awesome.

 Stories of Sparky’s generosity abound.  Here he is about to share a piece of gum with Cecil Fielder.

 Sparky cared a great deal about his players.  

Some would say he could only be faulted for caring too much.

 This picture is awesome because pipes make a person 35% more awesome.

Here he is letting God know that they’ll be seeing each other soon.

>Phillies Advance to the NLCS

>The Philadelphia Phillies advanced to the NLCS following another embarrassing game by the Cincinnati Reds, who were no-hit, shut-out and gave the other away with 4 errors.  If you were looking for a way to lose at something, then just take a look at this series.  I guess you could say the Reds really dropped the ball on this one….

Obviously the talk of the series was Roy Halladay’s no-hitter, and the ensuing whining perpetuated by some players… okay, it was mostly just Orlando Cabrera.  The talk of the next series will be on whether or not the Phillies can make it to their third straight World Series, something that hasn’t been done since the Yankees made four straight at the turn of the century.  “Turn of the century” makes it sound like it was a long time ago…. it was just ten years ago.

In other, less exciting, news, that now makes it 12 straight playoff losses for the NL Central, who haven’t won since the Cardinals wrapped up the 2006 World Series.  The Cubs were swept in 2007 & 2008, followed by the Cardinals last season, and now the Reds.  Way to go NL Central!

>How Good was Halladay?

>The playoffs supposedly started yesterday.  One of the games was the Reds visiting the Phillies.  A lot of the talk prior to the game revolved around how pitcher Roy Halladay would fare in his playoff debut.  We see it all the time, a star pitcher who has never been in the playoffs before then throws a mediocre game his first time out.  Fairly, or unfairly, he gets labeled by that appearance until he has about 10 more games to turn it around.


Halladay….. well, he fared pretty well in his playoff debut…. by throwing just the second post-season no-hitter in history.  Touche, Year of the Pitcher, touche.


However, after the game, Reds SS Orlando Cabrera said, “Another umpire, he [Halladay] wouldn’t have thrown a game like that,” Cabrera said. “He was getting every pitch. We had no chance. We had to swing.”  


I know a lot of people think things like that during the game, especially if you go  0-3 with a strikeout.  However, Brooks Baseball has a pretty neat little graphic displaying pitch location, and for Halladay’s debut, it looks a little like this:

Now, I know that it’s a little difficult to see, but let me just tell you what the chart says.  Basically, its says that Orlando Cabrera is a whiner with no factual basis for his comments, or, as teammate Brandon Phillips may say…. well, we won’t go there.


There is exactly one called strike that was located outside of the strike zone.  In fact, there were four pitches inside the strike zone that were not called strikes.  There are several pitches outside of the strike zone that were swinging strikes, but the Reds have nobody but themselves to blame for that.


Big congratulations goes out to Halladay for following in the footsteps of Don Larsen, the only other person to throw a post-season no-no (and his was the perfect game in the ’56 World Series).  And just to point out something, an NL Central team still has not won a post-season game since Game 5 of the 2006 World Series when the Cardinals ended it against the Tigers.

>Cincinnati Hates the Reds

>While the Cincinnati Reds are starting their (short-lived) run into the postseason, perhaps we should take a minute to explore just how much the Queen City hates its hometown team.

After the Reds clinched the NL Central title with a win over the Houston Astros, the team was celebrating in the clubhouse, and as everything else is in today’s society, it was televised.  Of course, a handful of players decided to celebrate as though they just had a baby by lighting a cigar in the clubhouse.  The problem: Ohio has an indoor smoking ban… including Great American Ballpark.  No less than five different people called the health inspector to report the violation.

Of course, it’s amazing that five people called it in, because it’s amazing that five people were actually paying attention to what was going on.  The Reds ranked 19th in baseball for attendance this season with just over 25,000 people per game on average.  To give them credit, though, attendance was actually up from a year ago when they averaged 21,500+ and ranked 26th in the league…. oh, and they were 13 games out of first place at the end of last season.

They actually had a game in mid-September where only 12,000 people showed up.  It was a Monday evening.  The seating capacity at GAB is 42,000+.  Just how many times have the Reds sold out the stadium in their NL Central championship season?  Twelve times, the Reds have played before crowds above 42,000.  The only time it was in Cincy: Opening Day.  Where were those other games played?  In Los Angeles: 3 games; in Philadelphia: 4 games; in Seattle: 1 game; in St. Louis: 4 games.  That’s right, folks!  The Seattle Mariners had a bigger draw to a Reds game in Seattle, than the Reds did in Cincinnati all season long.

The only logical conclusion in all of this is that Cincinnati hates the Reds… and that I’m mildly bitter that the Cardinals gave away the division this year.

>Reds Win NL Central

>As much as it pains me to write this sentence, the Cincinnati Reds are the National League Central champions for 2010.  Unfortunately, it may be a short trip into the playoffs since the Reds are a combined 16-33 against playoff contending teams (including the 2nd place Cardinals).  Depending on who wins the Wild Card, the Reds will be facing the Phillies (if the Braves win) or an NL West division winner (if an NL West team wins the Wild Card).

In honor of their glorious (and hopefully short-term) victory, here’s your Reds picture, brought to you courtesy of Reds rookie pitcher Mike Leake, who just farted.  I’m just sayin’ – the smeller’s the feller.

And your bonus picture: Super Gomes!  He can leap tall outfield walls in a single bound… unfortunately, he just can’t catch a baseball while he’s doing it.

>Masset Forget Where Home Was Located

>If you didn’t see it, you should check out Chris Nelson’s steal of home from a recent Rockies-Reds game.  You can check it out here.  Go ahead…. I’ll wait….

Done?  Good.

Okay, now if you’ll notice, when Reds pitcher Nick Masset steps off the rubber, he doesn’t look towards home. He looks at second base.  I guess you could argue that Masset didn’t think somebody would be crazy enough to try to record his first career steal by swiping home in a 5-5 game, but then I would counter with the fact that you would be making a stupid argument.

Of course, for the Reds fans who watched their team blow a 5-0 lead in the first place, perhaps this was just the most demoralizing way that they could have lost the game.  Regardless, the Reds are still trying to let the Cardinals back into the division race, but the Cardinals do not seem to be interested at this time.

>No Love for Phillips

>In the Cardinals-Reds series at the beginning of August, Brandon Phillips had some rather inflammatory remarks for the St. Louis ballclub… calling them “little b*tches.”  The Cardinals took exception to Phillips’ remarks and proceeded to sweep the Reds to reclaim first place in the division – and then went 4-13 to fall 8 games back in the standings.  Over Labor Day weekend, the Cardinals hosted the Reds for the first time since Phillips’ remarks, and for the last time this season.  Cardinal fans let the Reds 2B know that they don’t have a short memory.

Phillips received a standing ovation after his first inning strikeout, and was booed for the rest of the game.  However, the most interesting part – one of his foul balls was thrown back onto the field.  As you would expect, a person is ejected from the stadium after throwing something onto the field, and that was the case in this instance as well.  That should be the end of the story…. should be.  However, the person that was ejected, according to a tweet over the weekend, was none other than a grandson of Cardinal great Stan Musial.  Oops…

>Reds Attempt to Recreate Cards of 2004 Falling Apart

>Walt Jocketty, former GM of the St. Louis Cardinals and current GM of the Cincinnati Reds, has put together a team in Cincinnati that resembles another team that wore red back in 2004.  When he traded for Jim Edmonds, Jocketty had pieced together five members of that 2004 Cardinal team: Edmonds, Russ Springer, Scott Rolen, Miguel Cairo and Jason Isringhausen (who is pitching in Triple-A).

Unfortunately, the 2004 Cardinals were dominating 6 years ago, which means all of those players are 6 years older (and they weren’t exactly spring chickens at the time).  Well, Father Time is starting to catch up to them.

Jim Edmonds, just 3 for 22 with the Reds, is reportedly heading for the DL with a strained oblique where he will be joining another former Cardinal, Russ Springer, who is going to miss the rest of the season following back surgery.  It’s only a matter of time before they call up Izzy and he starts coughing up leads late in the game.