OPENING DAY, defined. . . In Cincinnati, an occasion marked by pomp, circumstance and lots of attendees who won’t go to another game all year.
Wait, Doc. You’re going to be cynical about OD? You have issues with the Easter Bunny, too?
I love what the Day represents. Hope, renewal, a rare demonstration of civic unity. All the poetic stuff. Certainly, the fact that baseball is back and a daily presence in my life for the next six months is fantastic. After last year, I will never again assume baseball’s comforts.
But the Day itself? Eh.
Especially in years like this one, when game time temps are expected to be in the low 40s. That’s awful.
Give me a warm, clear night in July, the moon over my right shoulder, sitting in the View Level in rightfield. I’ll take a Sunday afternoon in August, the hotter the better, when I ditch the press box for a seat in the Sun Deck in left.
I understand the Opening Day hype, but it’s antithetical to what baseball is all about: A 161-game (yes, 161) grind in which little moments are cause for celebration. Plus, the traffic sucks and there’s no place to park.
I’ve said this many times: The season truly begins with Game 2, a night game in the impossible cold where 12,000 fans sit mummified in blankets. Those are real fans, not Event Fans, and they’re witnessing Game 1 of the season-long struggle, not partaking in some undeclared holiday enjoyed by people who couldn’t pick Eugenio Suarez out of a lineup.
Is this heresy? Is it?
Then how come the Reds don’t draw 40K every game? (Or this year, 12K.) Is baseball worthy of our undivided attention only one game a year? Between Game 2 and Oct.1, the Club will come close to selling out only a few times and at least one of those times will feature a bobblehead giveaway.
We claim to love baseball like a wife around here, but we don’t always show up.
Like much of life, Opening Day functions better as a concept.
Now, then. . .
AND THIS IS ON THE GABP MENU this year. . . Smore's Frybox: Crispy fries topped with marshmallows, chocolate syrup, cinnamon graham crackers and M&M’s.
That’s the worst food combination I’ve ever heard.
HOUSEKEEPING. . . Got some indignant feedback re my remarks Monday concerning how Shot 2 made me feel. Let me say this about that: I didn’t suggest people not get the shot(s). I’ve been advocating the vaccination since one was available. I am, in fact, proud to have done my small part to try to pull us out of the Coronahole. I’d do it again. I urge you to get vaccinated.
OK? OK.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND the conventional logic for why West Coast quasi-amateur basketball teams are chronically underrated. To wit: East Coast media experts don’t stay up to watch them play.
Huh?
That’s why God invented the DVR. Being a “national college basketball expert’’ kind of implies you watch a whole nation of games, not just those that suit your sleeping patterns.
The experts completely blew it this year. The Big 10 is great, the Pac-12 is not. But they slept well.
ANY SMOKE FROM THE VATICAN IN CLIFTON? No? Does Deonta Vaughn have any eligibility left? John Williamson, Jamual Warren, Marvin Gentry?
I hear Connor Barwin’s free.
KELVIN SAMPSON IS COLLEGE BASKETBALL IN THE MIRROR. A coach who twice got bounced from big-time jobs for breaking the rules is two wins away from a title. Sampson had a problem using the phone as a recruiting tool, when such a thing was an NCAA violation. It got him fired at Oklahoma. After that, he spent five years as an NBA assistant, got the head coaching job at Indiana and. . . committed the same offense again. And got fired again.
A Washington Post story sums it up neatly:
Sampson was “a serial NCAA violator who made hundreds of impermissible recruiting phone calls at Oklahoma and again at Indiana. For those sins, he lost a dream job with the Hoosiers in 2008 and received a show-cause NCAA penalty that effectively banned him from college basketball for five years. He outworked his shame. He went to the NBA as an assistant coach and turned stops in San Antonio, Milwaukee and Houston into a hoops pilgrimage.’’
So, either Sampson didn’t believe what he was doing at OU and IU was wrong. Or he didn’t care. But the man can flat out coach, so he’s center stage again. How are we supposed to feel about that?
ALWAYS INFORMATIVE, FANGRAPHS declares the Reds have the 6th-best starting rotation in baseball, based on Wins Above Replacement. With a however:
“Counting on Wade Miley” is usually not where you want to be in life, but here the Reds are. Castillo is awesome; he was already great before 2020, then added a tick of velocity and started bullying hitters in the strike zone, raising his strikeout rate while limiting walks. You can’t hit what you can’t see, and batters looked blind against him. Gray is right there with him; judicious use of two breaking pitches has unlocked a new level for him, though a nagging back injury limits how many starts we think he’ll make.
Mahle was effectively wild last year; he missed the zone more often than ever, but unleashed a new cutter that opponents swung through 42.5% of the time, which led to a sharp increase in strikeout rate. It’s a volatile profile, but also a valuable one; the Reds are banking on their ability to harness his newfound stuff while sanding down the edges. Lorenzen is blazing a path Antone hopes to follow, going from relief weapon to swing starter with upper-90s heat and a nasty slider.
But again, they’re counting on Miley for 130 innings of competent pitching. You can always hope for 2019 Miley (4.51 FIP, 1.9 WAR in 167 innings), but his career has been all over the place; healthy and good, healthy but bad, injured but good, injured and bad. Our projection, which works out to “sometimes healthy and sometimes good,” is the weak link here, though honestly, he might stand out less on a team with more question marks. The Reds just have so much going on elsewhere that Miley’s relatively ordinary projection is a strong contrast.
I’m not buying that the Reds have the 6th-best rotation in Baseball. Not even close. You?
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . For all you Southern Beach Music Lovers out there, which around here pretty much comes down to me and The Famer. A good ol’ good one.
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