Pitchers & Poets: The Reds’ Mane Attraction

Did you see the pitcher’s hair?

For things to work out right on a given night, Bronson Arroyo needs the ball to flutter, fade and drop when it’s supposed to. Never much of a power pitcher, time and toil have made Arroyo even more calculating. When the ball cooperates, the Reds right-hander can still get even the best hitters out with regularity. When it does not cooperate, as it did not almost all of last season, Arroyo is merely a 35-year-old right-hander with a ho-hum fastball pitching half his games in a bandbox stadium.

...It wasn’t clear Cincinnati was getting the better of the trade that originally brought Arroyo to the Queen City. At the time, the Dominican prospect he was traded for, Wily Mo Pena, looked like a Manny-in-the-making while Arroyo looked more or less like the guy the Reds got: a pitcher who strummed guitar in the offseason, would eat some innings and keep games relatively close. At the time he was 28 and a recent World Series champion with the Red Sox. That was seven years ago.

Pena is now long gone, another in a long string of mighty mashers who missed. But Arroyo is still throwing in red-and-white, accumulating innings – he surpassed 200 in each of his first five years in Cincinnati and missed that mark by just one inning last season – and still strumming Pearl Jam covers on that tinny, black acoustic guitar. Arroyo has endeared himself to the locals off the field. The smaller and less cosmopolitan Cincinnati has embraced the offbeat Arroyo, more than tolerating his dude-rock forays and growing to love the goofjock persona he shows off in endorsement ads for various JTM meat products. Fans sense that Arroyo is genuine and true to himself, and that has made him likeable even when his fastball is flying out of the park.