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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > May > 16
Friday, May 16, 2008
Good Johnny, Bad Johnny
Johnny Cueto has been very good and very bad in different games this season.
On Friday night in Great American Ball Park, he was great and he was awful in the same game.
For five innings he held the Cleveland Indians to no hits. He had a perfect game through eight hitters before he walked pitcher Jeremy Sowers
He had a 3-0 lead thanks to a two-run home run by Brandon Phillips and a solo shot by Adam Dunn.
Then came the sixth and Cueto became unglued quickly by the bottom of the Indians’ order. No. 8 hitter Corey Blake homered onto the grass behind the center field wall - ending the no-hitter and the shutout.
Travis Hafner, normally the DH (but they aren’t using the DH in Cincinnati), pinch-hit for Sowers and cracked a home run off the right field foul pole.
Cueto retired a hitter, then Jhonny Peralta unloaded the third homer of the inning, tying the game, 3-3.
The next inning, Cueto was gone - The Good Johnny and The Bad Johnny.
The bullpen saved it - no runs over the final three innings - and after Dunn walked with the bases loaded in the eighth for the Reds only run after the second inning - Francisco Cordero struck out the side in the ninth for the 4-3 victory.
Now a few words about Bad Homer Bailey and Good (Very Good) Jay Bruce.
And we’d all better shut up (me included) for now about bringing up Homer Bailey. He got beat up for the second straight time Friday night, walking six in five innings.
Our man who covers the Dayton Dragons, Marc Katz, visited Louisville recently and he asked Homer one question: “Have you learned anything down here.”
Homer’s answer was, “No,” and he walked away. End of interview. And that’s why Homer is still in Louisville and may remain there for a long time - or be traded.
Another story. I got this from two scouts and another impeccable source who saw it. On the day before a pitcher starts, he sits in the stands and charts the pitches of his team’s pitcher that night. It was Homer’s turn to chart that night, but he was reading a hunting magazine most of the time and paying little attention to what was going on on the field.
Another scout who has watched him said his fastball is down three to four miles an hour and he can’t throw it by anybody - in TRIPLE A! “I saw him two starts ago and he acted as if he didn’t care,” said the scout.
Homer, we hardly knew ye.
But I shall not shut up about Jay Bruce.
A rival scout’s assessment of Bruce after watching him several times in Louisville: “Why isn’t he in Cincinnati?
“I’ve seen very few balls jump off the bat they way they do on Bruce. I saw him pull an inside fastball from a left-handed pitcher over the right field fence. I saw him hit a slider into the left field seats. I saw him hit a change-up that was still on the rise when it cleared the center field fence.
“I had been told he couldn’t play center field. He can, better than anybody they have now. He can play all three outfield positions. He has everything but speed and his instincts are so good he gets great jumps on balls.
“I never saw a ball go over his head and stay in the park and I never saw one fall in front of him and he caught everything in the gaps,” he said. “He’d be playing center field for my team right now and we have a good center fielder.”
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TweetTales about the Ohio Cup
It is no longer the Battle of Ohio/Baseball. Once again it is the Ohio Cup.
It’s a rebirth and probably means the same to the players of the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds as it did in its genesis.
Nothing.
It started before interleague play. Somebody came up with the idea of The Ohio Cup for spring training. The Reds and Indians scheduled their last spring training game in Columbus, one game for the not-so-coveted Ohio Cup - winner takes the actual trophy home for a year.
One year a pitcher named Tim Birtsas was to start The Ohio Cup - he was called Big Bird by his teammates because he sort of looked like Big Bird, minus the yellow feathers.
Anyway, somebody asked him about being fired up about pitching The Ohio Cup and he said, “Ohio Cup? What’s The Ohio Cup, a boat race?”
The only person who cared about The Ohio Cup was Marge Schott. She was angry one year when the Reds lost, 1-0, on a cold, rainy day when all the players swung at the first pitch, just to get in out of the wet and chill. The game was 1:56.
One year the Indians won The Cup and asked for it. Nobody knew where it was. It disappeared. So did the annual game. Where was The Cup? When Schott died, they found it piled among trinkets in a room at her Indian Hill home.
There is another story floating around that the Indians had The Cup in their offices one year when two guys walked in and asked for it. A receptionist said, “It’s right there.” The two guys picked it up and walked out the door and nobody cared to stop them.
Maybe Marge hired them.
Now it’s back, sponsored by the Ohio Lottery. I won’t even ask Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez about the importance of the Ohio Cup. None of the Cleveland writers was aware of its rebirth.
The Indians pitched lefthander Jeremy Sowers Friday night, a name familiar to Reds fans.
General manager Jim Bowden had no money in the budget to pay for a No. 1 draft pick in 2001. Sowers told everybody who would listen that he was going to Vanderbilt University and wouldn’t sign, if drafted. Knowing that, Bowden seized on the opportunity to make a No. 1 draft pick he knew he couldn’t sign.
So he drafted Sowers. Sowers didn’t sign. Went to Vanderbilt, as promised. And the Cleveland Indians drafted him out of Vanderbilt. And he signed.
Now he gets to pitch in the all-unimportant Ohio Cup game.
There was no talk of The Ohio Cup in the Reds pre-game clubhouse. Ken Griffey Jr. sent a clubhouse boy out to purchase two grocery bags full of Wendy’s burgers for hungry teammates before batting practice.
He unwrapped a new glove and said, “Give me a break tonight on defense. I’m breaking in a new glove tonight - my third one in a week. None of ‘em feel good. I thought it was my hand, but I think it’s my gloves.”
Nobody believed he would wear a brand new glove in a game, so we’ll be checking.
If they need The Ohio Cup game timed, Kent Mercker was the man. He was walking around the clubhouse carrying the biggest watch in captivity - a grandfather clock with a strap. And probably the heaviest. It weighs a pound-and-a-half and Francisco Cordero (Yes, it was Cabrera in an earlier post. I have a mental block on his name and have called him Cabrera before. Cordero, Cordero, Cordero, Cor….) said, “You gonna wear that thing? You won’t be able to lift your wrist.”
Said Mercker, “I’m going to wear it when I run, like weights on your wrist. Hey, I was watching Buy-NBC one day at 1:40 in the morning and they advertised it. Only $2,500. It’s a cool watch.”
Everybody in the clubhouse seemed happy about Thursday’s postponement, a night off. Everybody but Javier Valentin. Even Mother Nature is against him. He was supposed to start at first base, his first start in a game since April 16 - one month ago.
“See ya next month,” he said.
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