Boxscore

The Reds continued to display a complete lack of leadership and motivation yesterday as they lost to the Astros.

There was one thing about the game that stuck out to me that I think best exemplify why the Reds suck and what the solution is.

The Dusty-ball approach to batting does not work. After the Astros took a 5-0 lead, the Reds proceeded to swing at any and every pitch Astros ace Roy Oswalt tossed up to the plate. Oswalt had 3 consecutive innings where he threw fewer than 10 pitches. (6 in the 3rd, 8 in the 4th, and 6 again in the 5th.) He just missed a fourth in the 6th when it took a whopping 12 pitches to retire the haplessly managed Reds.

It seems to me that the better approach to coming back from a deficit might, just might, be to be more selective with what pitches you swing at. Make the pitcher work: he’ll get tired sooner and the chances of a mistake pitch increase. Or you can follow Dusty Baker’s wisdom and become the the 2006 Chicago Cubs.

You can see the frustration in the players. Jay Bruce fluffed a fairly easy fly-out to right field. (A play that was hilarious because it ended with Corey Patterson, a player who wasn’t even involved, flat on his ass.)

Hopefully, the Reds wise up before Bruce and the Reds other young talent, as well as the fans and blogger, give up hope.

Boxscore

The Astros beat off both the Cubs and the rain yesterday, as 4 pitchers combined to blank Chicago.

That bizarre trade for Latrell Hawkins is looking golden now. He pitched one-third of an inning for the save! One-third! That’s a whole out.

The game had two different rain delays. The first one lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes right after the 5th inning was completed. The second delay was in the bottom of the eighth and lasted only 39 minutes before the game was called.

The Astros have now won 4 in a row, while the Cubs modest 2-game winning streak was broken.

Just as AOL’s “partnership” with the scantily-clad-and-poor-cue-card-reading Fantasy Sports Girls was giving women sport bloggers a bad name, 15 women who don’t need a sleezeball pervert to write their suggestive commentary for them were launching Playing the Field.

Per their–our–about page:

Featured on this site are some of the best female sports bloggers on the net. These women are smart, sports savvy, and will kick your butt in fantasy ball. Consider this your hub for the best writing women in sports have to offer. You’ll find stuff that will make you laugh, make you think, and sometimes make you crazy. But that’s just like a woman, isn’t it? Throughout this site we will cover everything and anything about sports that deserves our attention. And probably a few things that don’t. But we promise to always entertain you and make you wonder why women don’t rule the sports blogging world. Yet.

Ideas for PTF content include everything from fantasy sports advice to our vision of what our favorite players’ blogs would say, (if they actually wrote them for themselves). Whatever the topic, you’re sure to find something interesting in each woman’s box.

Boxscore

It’s getting harder and harder to watch the Reds. I don’t foresee this ending anytime soon, not until Dusty Baker is fired. I mean, there are only so many jokes and laughs you can have about Corey Patterson leading off.

Patterson’s average is .183, in case you were wondering. His Not Out Percentage is 21.6%. That’s right, he’s made an out 78.4% of the time. Sounds like a prototypical Dusty Baker leadoff man to me!

This was the game I switched to once the Cubs-Brewers game turned into a blowout. I don’t know what I was expecting, certainly not good baseball from the Reds.

Bronson Arroyo, who took the bold, courageous stand of desiring to play for a wannabe-last-place team, was terrible, allowing 6 runs in 6 1/3 innings. Way to show how much you deserve to stay, Bronson. Of course, he did drive in 1 of the 2 runs, so that’s something. At the least, it’s more than Patterson’s done since June 21.

The Reds have now lost 5 in a row and sit in last place, 13.5 games out.

Boxscore

This week on the podcast, the CTS and I take the day off work to visit Victory Field where the Indianapolis Indians took on the Charlotte Knights for a business person’s special. The background noise is all AAA ball, but the subject matter is all NLC.

In addition to a minor sunburn, our seats on the third-base side gave us a great view of the Indians pitchers warming up in the bullpen.

I imagine the CTS took this photo in direct response to me giving him a hard time about taking pictures of the Reds cheerleaders at the last game we went to.

He’s safe!

You can’t beat the up-close experience of a minor league ball park.

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