That doesn’t mean the Reds can’t still fix some, though.
The Cincinnati Reds had a hit on Wednesday. A hit - a Chumbawamba, a ? and the Mysterians, a Los Del Rio.
In turning around a Bryce Miller meatball for a solo homer, Elly De La Cruz made sure the one hit the team mustered at least got them a scratch on the scoreboard. Walks, misplays, and unfortunate bullpen performance, however, meant that they sunk to a third consecutive defeat at the hands of the Seattle Mariners, a sweep that sends the club back to .500 and licking its wounds.
The word that most likely describes the series: frustrating. Bad baserunning, untimely hitting, the inability to throw strikes, and a bullpen that - despite the cash infusion - is still searching for its identity. On top of that, the lineup looked punchless outside of Elly, something that a handful of injuries and suspensions can do to a club.
This lineup without TJ Friedl, Matt McLain, Noelvi Marte, and - for the last couple of days, at least - Jeimer Candelario is going to look iffy. Stuart Fairchild, for all his defensive prowess and functionality against LHP most times, hit third in the order yesterday, for instance. That’s not a flaw that the Reds intended to wear publicly when Nick Krall and Co. built the roster over the winter, but it’s a flaw nonetheless right now - and Seattle ran it into the ground. They sport a roster of arms that simply doesn’t walk people at all, and they instead threw enough strikes to challenge (and eventually overwhelm) what’s left of Cincinnati’s offense all weekend.
Their team BB/9 of 2.23 ranks as the second lowest in baseball, for the record, and their 1.58 BB/9 by their starters is first overall. Meanwhile, Cincinnati’s collective bullpen BB/9 sits at 4.97 after their dismal trip to the Emerald City, a mark that ranks 26th among all relief corps league-wide. Walks, as they are so wont to do, haunt, and they haunted the hell out of the Reds against the Mariners - not just in putting runners on who came around to score, but in running up pitch counts and forcing manager David Bell to dip deeper and deeper into an already gassed unit.
This is also an insanely inexperienced group, especially one that’s trying to form itself into a contender for the first time. Even the veterans in the bullpen who were brought in during free agency have yet to settle in to usual roles, with Nick Martinez already bouncing around barely two and a half weeks into the six month season. It is, without question, still very much a work in progress, especially when a guy like Candelario goes down and devoids them of the ‘stabilizer’ they signed him to be. Spencer Steer played 1B yesterday to get Fairchild on the field (and up in the order), highlighting just how much mixing and matching Bell is already being asked to do given what is not there that they hope to have later.
That’s the rub here, of course. None of these ‘flaws’ that Seattle poked fun at all series are ones that should likely sustain themselves all year. The fixes, while not around just yet, are all going to be in-house at some point down the road. Candelario will be back Friday, I assume, and Friedl in another few weeks. Marte is already baked in as a deadline addition, and the hope is that McLain is, too. The bullpen’s ability to find the plate is a concern (as was the concern with the ability of Frankie Montas and Hunter Greene, in all honesty), but that’s something you expect to get better going forward than worse. And somewhere along the way the club will find a more predictable groove, the arms filling more predictable roles on the regular and getting at least a picture or two hung in their cubicles that they can look at the same time everyday.
Those just weren’t there against Seattle, and they paid dearly for it.
