It's extremely difficult to do well against superior pitching--the best pitching money can buy. I know the errors on game 2 and tonight didn't help, but you have to look at what went well for the Reds.
The Pitching
The Reds pitched 25 innings and allowed only 21 hits and 7 earned runs in 3 games for an ERA of 2.52. Pretty good. Only the Volquez start was horrible.
The Phillies were held in check. The Reds allowed 13 runs in three games, and against them that's only 4.3 runs per game and that with a 2-0 game in there. The Reds averaged a little over one run and the Phillies ERA wa 1.00. They were that good
That's it. If you look at the total statistics, no one did much of anything. Votto and Rolen were pretty bad, but that happens. Trouble was that Rolen got all the grief because he's "old." Wonder what is Votto's excuse. Phillips nearly had half the hits on the team. Maybe we should just fire the whole team--the one that won 91 games and brought us so much joy over the season, because Philadephia is beatable. It's obviously Dusty's fault for not having them ready. Give me a break. You can be as ready as you want, but good pitching beats good hitting and it did. Yes, bad fielding played a part in Game 2, but one and three were lost from the first pitch.
So, we get to the playoffs after 15 years of not being there and 10 years of losing and the Reds are bums? Good grief.
www.ris-news.com
"You only have to bat a thousand in two things; flying and heart transplants. Everything else you can go 4-for-5."
-Beano Cook
"Don't trust any statistics you did not fake yourself."--Winston Churchill
The Reds got beat it wasn't from lack of effort. Sometimes the other guys win.
And maybe you are correct. I don't know, but when you throw like Halladay and Hamels, what in the world can you do. Errors didn't hurt in games one and three. Game two was a mess, with a ball missed in the lights (human error) and other such stuff. Just didn't happen except for our manager putting a rookie on the mound (two rookies to be exact) instead of...well, that's over.
Truth is and always will be that they were better than us in the pitching department. They shut us down in two games. Yes, the series might have gone to game 4, but then back comes Doc. And then what do you do? Cross your fingers and hope for the best?
No contest.
www.ris-news.com
"You only have to bat a thousand in two things; flying and heart transplants. Everything else you can go 4-for-5."
-Beano Cook
Yes, I'm sure all of that was because they just weren't trying hard enough. It couldn't have anything to do with just playing poorly.
The Reds got steamrolled by a better team. The Reds are good and the Phils are really good. The sun came up this morning and life goes on.
My friend, the Phillies were winning this series whether we came to play or not. They're THAT good.
Only one game did I think the Reds were unprepared, and that was Game 2. I don't even know that "unprepared" is the right word. I don't think they made the mistakes because of a lack of preparation.
The series sucked, there's no way around that. But the Phillies are an absolute juggernaut. They have Jayson Werth hitting in the 5-hole, we have Jonny Gomes. I dreamt of a magical upset and a ride to the World Series, but I knew the odds were long.
The better team won this series, and they wond it quite handily.
I think they just ran out of gas. Rolen looked obviously tired, Cabrera was banged up, Votto had to of been out of gas from carrying the offense for the better part of the last 3 months, ever since Rolen took a nosedive. The rigors of the season wore this team down, and by the end it was nothing like it had been at other points in the season. I thought that was true through all of September, not just this one series.
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
I'm just bumping this back so it's the game on the front page. I like opening Redszone everyday to see a Reds playoff game on the front page, even if it was a loss.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
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