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Originally Posted by SC Reds Fans
Well, the first "W" was rained out, vs Philly, but right now, we're right on schedule  RW is gonna take his licks, but he'll bounce back..no worries. |
Agreed. I thought we'd split with the Cubs, though by beating Mitre and Maddux, not Wood. I thought we'd take 2 of 3 from the Phils. The damning part is that
sans bullpen self-destruction, this 3-3 stretch *should* easily be 5-1. It's not a "what if" or "shoulda, woulda, coulda" scenario. It's a matter of stating that 4-0 leads with 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th can't turn into 6-4 losses, and 10-7 leads in the 8th can't turn into 11-10 losses. And, though we might not have rallied today, you can't stay within 2 runs into the 8th inning of a Jimmy Haynes start, and then lose 8-1.
Even with a few bad starts in the stretch (Wilson, Harang, Haynes(?)), this lineup, parts of the rotation, and even some of the bench did everything they had to do to put us in a winning position, only to have it repeatedly yanked out from under them by the bullpen. If that becomes norm, rather than exception, this team will play sub 500 during the span, rather than the 5+ games over they potentially were striving towards.
During that span of a mere 5 games, Graves (decisive 2HR inning versus Cubs), Wagner (drubbed by Phillies and Cubs in 2 separate huge, decisive innings), Norton (drubbed in each of his 3 appearances), Jones (2ER inning vs Cubs) each had 1, or more, decidedly horrid showings. Even when some scoreless innings were being placed on the board, it was often the case that the pitcher was getting slapped around but benefitting from at'em balls, or baserunning snafus. And it wasn't all Wrigley (some was, some wasn't), as the worst of the performances started in Philly, and the Cubs better relievers ala Hawkins, Farnsworth, Wellemeyer etc... weren't having many problems. Only Riedling (who should be our primary setup man), and Reith (maybe the closest we can come to filling some of Sullivan's middle relief role) pitched well during that span... We can't survive that kind of BP epidemic. We probably need to make re-assign some roles, and tinker with the design and/or bring up another LHP option.