July 4, 2010

It’s the Walks, Stupid

By
Zeldink
Posted at 10:31 am

Walks Will Haunt!!!
During that magnificent 7th inning of the second game against the Chicago Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds TV broadcasters were seemingly dumbstruck about how the Reds had blown open the game with only 2 hits. Why, just the day before, hadn’t the Reds eked out only 3 runs–and one of them on a possibly missed interference call–with 16 hits? Baseball sure is an unexplainable game.

It seemed obvious to me. In that 16-hit game, the Reds walked all of 2 times. In the blowout win, they had 8 walks, 6 of them in the amazing 7th inning.

Reds manager Dusty Baker hasn’t uttered anything quite as idiotic as that wonderful chestnut about walks clogging the bases in his tenure with the Reds. Maybe he’s starting to understand that they can be valuable.

One thing’s for sure, the Cubs understand their importance. As do all Reds fans who caught games at old Cinergy/Riverfront. “Walks will haunt.” And on Friday, they haunted Chicago.

Posted in Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, NL Central, Random Ramblings.
2 Comments
«
»

2 comments to “It’s the Walks, Stupid”

  1. KC2HMZ says:
    July 5, 2010 at 6:32 pm

    Just Soriano, Zambrano, Ramirez, Fukudome, and Lee alone make more money this year than the Reds’ whole roster and they’re a 11-1/2 games behind the Reds. Maybe the problem in Chicago wasn’t Dusty Baker to begin with?

    JK

  2. Zeldink says:
    July 6, 2010 at 11:57 am

    Chicago has had–and will forever continue to have–problems that are more than one mere human can fix. A horrible GM is a tough thing for a manager to work around.

    Still, Baker did very little, if anything, good while in Chicago. A team collapsing and sucking the way the Cubs did under Baker is never an accomplishment for a manager to put on a resume.