The bullpen

[RedForLife]

Agree fully.

I don’t mind a temporary fresh arm or two like Art Warren for a few games.

But Reds have to decide if they are really in this and want to bring in some relievers with a track record of reasonable MLB success.

Agree 100%. Because right now our bullpen is Tejay Antone and nothing else.

[Griffey012]

Right now I would have Antone ready to throw 2-4 innings once every 4 games or so to close out a win. The other games leave to the rest of the pen. Hopefully one of those games we have a nice cushion and the other is probably an easy loss, so maybe the pen just has to manage to not blow 1 game of every 4.

Hard to manage but it’s a waste of Antone if he isn’t finishing games.

[Wonderful Monds]

Mentioned it in a different thread but what is it with reds relievers under DJ and company being awful early in the year? Early last year they were awful, and I believe it was the same case in 2019 before figuring it out in both cases. Lotta walks and home runs.

Last July they had a 7 era, 3+ HRs per 9.

Maybe this is a similar theory to that, but I was wondering with the potential MLB crackdown on pine tar and investigating Trevor Bauer’s balls out in LA, I’m wondering if all the walks are the result of the pitchers doing something different grip wise that would be related to that and all the Spincinnati stuff.

[Kc61]

Mentioned it in a different thread but what is it with reds relievers under DJ and company being awful early in the year? Early last year they were awful, and I believe it was the same case in 2019 before figuring it out in both cases. Lotta walks and home runs.

Last July they had a 7 era, 3+ HRs per 9.

Last year the Reds improved by adding talent and increasing the roles of new talented relievers as the season progressed. They got major contributions from guys in the system such as Sims and Antone.

Those pitchers were added to a veteran core group of Iglesias, Lorenzen, and Garrett. And then Reds also added Archie Bradley.

If Reds currently have the next Antone and Sims that would help. If they acquire the next Bradley soon that would help. If Lorenzen gets healthy, that would help. It’s a matter of adding MLB-level talent, nothing more or less.

[Tom Servo]

Hendrix and Warren are on the taxi squad for next series. Super easy to swap them out.

I’m intrigued by Hendrix’s arm but I worry he’s not going to help the BB/9 issue much. Art Warren and Phillip Diehl could help, find another guy who can throw the ball over the plate and maybe there could start to be some improvement.

[cincinnati chili]

I want to blame the reds for being cheap with Iglesias and Bradley. But so far, It doesn’t look like Bradley and Iglesias would have helped too much. But they need help for somebody and soon.

[Wonderful Monds]

One of the worst things about being a Reds fan is that they always keep finding new ways to make history for something bad.

To put this in another perspective, the Reds SP gave up 2 ER this series, the lineup scored 20 runs, and they ended up getting swept anyway.

[Tom Servo]

To put this in another perspective, the Reds SP gave up 2 ER this series, the lineup scored 19 runs, and they ended up getting swept anyway.

The pen in general was bad but those 10th innings were insane, that’s what took this from regular bad baseball into historically bad baseball.

[Wonderful Monds]

I want to blame the reds for being cheap with Iglesias and Bradley. But so far, It doesn’t look like Bradley and Iglesias would have helped too much. But they need help for somebody and soon.

Not to this point yet, and I don’t mind Iglesias getting traded either still. But at least if you keep Bradley, you know you have someone coming back soon at some point to shore up this absolute garbage fire pen. At this point we’ve got nothing on the horizon to help us.


Hell I would kill to have goddamn Noe Ramirez on the roster still at this point, at least he’d be an option to slop against the wall and see if he sticks.

[Wonderful Monds]

The pen in general was bad but those 10th innings were insane, that’s what took this from regular bad baseball into historically bad baseball.

Yeah and not to deflect blame away from the jokers in our bullpen, but that awful runner on second extras rule sure as hell isn’t helping matters.

[KeefeCato]

Yeah and not to deflect blame away from the jokers in our bullpen, but that awful runner on second extras rule sure as hell isn’t helping matters.

The runner on 2nd garbage hurts even worse with a bad pen.

[REDREAD]

Hell I would kill to have Noe Ramirez on the roster still at this point, at least he’d be an option to slop against the wall and see if he sticks.

Noe is off to a decent (not great) start. 4.52 FIP, which is better than some guys we have.
We should have kept him instead of Bedrosian.
That's a pretty big miss by the Reds.

[Wonderful Monds]

Noe is off to a decent (not great) start. 4.52 FIP, which is better than some guys we have.
We should have kept him instead of Bedrosian.
That's a pretty big miss by the Reds.

Those are his 2020 stats actually, he’s still at the Angels alternate site. But yeah career 4ish ERA guy, nothing special but could be more at least competent than probably half the pen at this point.

[Griffey012]

Last year the Reds improved by adding talent and increasing the roles of new talented relievers as the season progressed. They got major contributions from guys in the system such as Sims and Antone.

Those pitchers were added to a veteran core group of Iglesias, Lorenzen, and Garrett. And then Reds also added Archie Bradley.

Sims was in the pen from the start but pitched well all season. Their other main cogs from 2019, Lorenzen, Iglesias, and Stephenson were pretty terrible to start last year. Lorenzen and Iglesias snapped out of it. They also improved the talent by replacing Jones, Strop, and Raley. But even Raley went on to pitch well for Houston after starting out awful for the Reds.

Just seems like whatever they are doing to prepare for the start of the season isn’t working.

And agree it’s time to shuffle some chairs.

[757690]

Prediction:

Very little will be done. Bell will come out saying he believes in the guys in the pen and knows they will work things out.