Praying for a second chance…

Ryan Howard being on pace for just 18 home runs this season:

“That’s just unacceptable. Is he healthy? I would think Ryan Howard would hit 18 home runs if his eyes were closed.”

Ryan Howard’s approach at the plate:

“His job is not to go up there and work the coun. Hey in the eyes of a lot of people he earned his $20 million, that’s just the way baseball’s played today, but you got to have a guy that can make some contact sometimes when you got a ...

SO IS REDS MVP ZACK COZART. He drove in four last night.

SO IS REDS MVP BRANDON PHILLIPS. He drove in all six last night. To some of our loyal flock here, that means mostly that he was damned lucky all those people got on base in front of him. To others, it means that without BP (and, yes, those others) The Club loses, 2-0.

Guess which camp I’m in, win fabulous prizes chosen just for you.

RBI matter, K? They matter the same as runs scored, because each is equally dependent upon the other, ...

June 11th marks the 75th anniversary of the first no-hitter legendary Cincinnati Reds pitcher Johnny Vander Meer threw in 1938. His second no-hitter just four days later marked the only time that a major league pitcher has dealt back-to-back no-hitters in consecutive starts. The feat will likely never be matched and is virtually impossible to top, but as a can’t-miss prospect during his era, Vander Meer almost failed to realize his potential and make history.

Sports! Paul brings the case against his friend Jeremy. Paul loves to wear his favorite baseball team’s gear to games, even when that team isn’t playing the game.

At issue: is it okay to wear a Phillies hat, jersey, t-shirt, and (possibly) pair of crocs to a Dodgers-Reds tilt in Dodger Stadium?

Dusty Baker, not so much. (quickly heads over to chemicalland21.com for product updates)

It is some kind of oddity or irony or sabermetric injustice that they are providing this OBP assault in the first one-third of a lineup drawn up nightly by the man oft-associated with being anti-OBP. But Dusty Baker, who once famously made the observation that “clogging up the bases isn’t that great to me,” will tell you he’s not so much anti-OBP as he is anti-OBP obsession. OBP, he said, means nothing if ...

Arthur Koehler will testify that Daugherty indeed has a knot in his head.

I KIDNAPPED THE LINDBERGH BABY. Actually,  I wrote that a 3-hole hitter should drive in runs. Seems an obvious statement. Harmless, you know? Not to the metrics gurus.  I’m not getting into this, except to say it’s starting to get amusing. For suggesting RBIs are, you know, good, I am e-bombed by the SABR types… Apparently, I’m ignorant and lazy. I know nothing about baseball. Certainly not compared to them.

...

Bang the Swish symbol slowly…

In the ninth inning of yesterday’s Indians/Reds game, with his team holding a 4-2 lead, Reds closer Aroldis Chapman buzzed a 100-mph heater past Nick Swisher’s head, and Indians radio announcer Tom Hamilton lost it. You can see the pitches and hear Hamilton’s reaction at the video posted here, which includes his statement that, “what you’d love to see Swisher do here is knock it right off the temple of Chapman and see how much fun it is to have a ball ...

It’s not often that someone in another sport says “We ought to handle this issue like the NHL does.” Leave it to contrarian manager Dusty Baker of the Cincinnati Reds.

Baker, following a tiff between the Chicago Cubs and one of his pitchers, suggested that Major League Baseball use hockey’s time-honored tactics when it comes to settling disputes on the field: Let the players fight.

In this case, Matt Garza of the Cubs and Johnny Cueto of the Reds. From C. Trent Rosecrans of Cincinnati.com:

  ...

Don’t piss off Touchy Connors!

“Cueto should learn you don’t go after guys’ heads,” Garza said. “Don’t wake a sleeping dog and I think that’s kind of immature on his part and totally uncalled for. He’s lucky that retaliation isn’t in our vocabulary here.

“That’s kind of BS on his part. Just totally immature. If he has something to say about it, he knows where to find my locker and definitely I’ll find his.”

...“That’s totally uncalled for (when) you’re up ...

As Szymborski tweeted yesterday…“Does Cincinnati chili contain large amts of lead?”

“He’s supposed to talk to Pete,” Baker said of Votto and other Reds. “Just like they need to talk to Johnny Bench. I wish Tony Perez was around more to teach our guys how to clutch hit. This cat was the best. He taught me and I was on the other team – what to look for, what to do, how to approach this and that. I wasn’t even around him that much. Davey Concepcion, (Perez) taught him, too. When Davey ...

One, two big schools
All the worlds are
Colliding all around you

I was going to write something today for SI.com re Votto. Specifically, that Votto represented one of the clearest cases of Old-v-New schools of thought, re hitting production. The idea was discussed when The Technician was sitting on 4 HR/20 BI. Now, he’s up to 7 and 22. Both #s are subpar for him and, in fact, for a No. 3 hitter. The obvious question being, can a guy who ranks 11th among NL 1Bs in BI be seen as having a ...

Ow. Ow. Ow. Mouthbreathers/Mindbreathers now on full tilt boogie replay. (better now)

In some ways, we take Phillips for granted. Especially his glove. I’ve watched the Reds actively since I arrived here in ’88. Bret Boone was good. Pokey Reese could be spectacular, but not always steady. No one has been in BP’s universe. (Nor in the league. How he has only 3 Gold Gloves is a black hole mystery. Darwin Barney: Hahaha.)

But his offense is the MV reason he is his team’s best player now, ...

How many Votto triads of numbers have not yet been drawn?!

Several years ago, Votto was standing in the on-deck circle at Great American Ball Park while Pete Rose was watching from a box seat. The two men struck up a conversation, and the Hit King passed along a few pearls of wisdom that resonated. Among other things, he told Votto that it’s no sin to reach for the last cookie in the jar. Rose would never have amassed 4,256 hits if he didn’t have a touch of the greed-monger in him.

“Early in ...

Scroggy Durnbaugh...all a part of The Reds Way.

For his part, Reds manager Dusty Baker believes there’s a commonality to his group that makes them better collectively, and perhaps even easier to manage.

“I don’t know if it’s easier,” Baker said, pondering as he sat in his visiting manager’s office at Citi Field Tuesday afternoon, surrounded by a few reporters. “But consistency is a key over time [building a club]. I was on the Dodgers like that, I came in to a locker room that was like that. ...

Mentioned this is the Chris Sale thread, but by that time the healthy eaters had taken over, and this deserves its own thread, anyway:

Phillies broadcaster Rickie Ricardo told Sports Radio 94 WIP in Philadelphia on Monday morning that he delivered 100 Cuban pastries (two boxes of 50) to Chapman this weekend and when he saw the reliever in the clubhouse Sunday morning, Chapman had eaten about 18 of them. “He couldn’t breathe!” Ricardo said. “I looked at my partner, I said, ‘He’s ripe for the ...

Odds of being attacked by a shark marlin: 1 in 11.5 million.

Pierre’s clout came leading off the bottom of the first for the Miami Marlins against the Cincinnati Reds.

Pierre’s homer was his first since June 23. He whooped when the ball went over the fence down the right-field line.

“I don’t know how to react to those things, so it’s just a spur-of-the-moment deal,” Pierre told reporters of his homer reaction. “That’s about the only time you’ll see me smiling on the baseball field.”

...

Wow! If this continues…Daugherty will be writing for BPro by the year 2046!

Forget for a minute that the save statistic is a semi-bogus creation that serves only the player doing the saving, and the minion who represents him. Or that closers are the most overrated members of any baseball team, easily replaced and often interchangeable. I’ll see your Rafael Betancourt and raise you an Edward Mujica.

No, let’s fix on the notion that closers are one-inning, certain-situation ponies. Because ...

Yadier and the HOF?

You are widely considered the greatest catcher in major league history, which makes you more qualified than to weigh in on the subject: With his steady improvement at the plate, combined with his prowess behind it and the championships he’s helped the Cardinals win, do you feel that Yadier Molina is worthy of having a plaque next to you and Fisk and Yogi Berra at Cooperstown?

(Molina) is really one of the best defensive catchers that you’ll see, and he’s swung the ...

Daugherty v. Social Media Vanguard #notaprayer

I don’t know if Jay Bruce regrets the tweet he sent out after the game Tuesday night. Reds media relations director Rob Butcher declined to ask Bruce if he’d speak to me, from St. Louis early Wednesday. I’m guessing Bruce isn’t happy with himself. He’s not a confrontational guy. He’s very pleasant, almost all the time. It was out of character for him to tweet this:

I appreciate all the tweets, good and bad, actually. You guys are what ...

Lesley’s ex-wife, Chiho Svimonoff, told the website that the former athlete had been living in a nursing home, where he was receiving dialysis for kidney problems, for the past seven months. According to Svimonoff, the “Little Big League” star was rushed to hospital on Saturday night, and later died there from kidney failure.

Lesley made his Major League debut on July 31, 1982, pitching for the Cincinnati Reds, and was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in 1984 and let go from the team in 1985. ...Read More...

Mr. Choo? Did I stumble onto Spankwire.com by mistake or something?

DUSTY BAKER WAS the president of the Shin-Soo Choo Admiration Soceity even before the Korean-born outfielder put on a Cincinnati Reds uniform.

And now that he wears a Reds uniform Baker has added to that admiration. He calls him Mr. Choo.

“I knew Mr. Choo could play,” said Baker. “I coveted Mr. Choo when he played for Cleveland and he was killing us. He is a ballplayer and the environment here is conducive to most ...

VOTTO WAS THE least concerned about his homer drought — he had one until hitting one Saturday and another Sunday. Nor was manager Dusty Baker concerned.

“I can understand the concern about not hitting home runs, but I don’t feel obligated to hit home runs to quell everyone’s concern,” said Votto. “I’m not concerned about the home runs. The Reds pay me to be good. That’s all I try to do and if I go through a little bit of a homer drought I try to fill in with other things.”

...

The Reds’ honorary bat boy last night was Teddy Kremer, who has Down syndrome and a wealth of enthusiasm for the team. He asked Frazier to hit a home run for him before the third baseman stepped to the plate in the sixth, the Reds already up on the Marlins 9-1. So Frazier did. Simple, right?

Baker tracer alert!

The thing about Votto is that he still is on base more than half the time he goes to the plate, a .521 on-base average with 22 walks. It is difficult to hit when pitchers nibble at the plate, refusing to offer tantalizing pitches to hit.

“That’s what I used to do,” said manager Dusty Baker. “We’d get 18 hits and I’d get none, then we’d get six hits and I’d have four.”

ABOUT VOTTO’S batting average, Baker said, “I’m not really worried. It’s only ...

There will always be free agents. Maybe not as many 27 year-old free agents, but for teams wanting to make a splash, guys like Josh Hamilton will always be around.