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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 > 2009 > June > 02
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Bet on it: Maloney starts Saturday
Who will pitch Saturday for the Cincinnati Reds against the Chicago Cubs and Edinson Volquez’s stand-in? Lefthander Matt Maloney. Book it.
Homer Bailey pitched eight innings of shutout baseball Tuesday to beat Pawtucket, but he would have only three days of rest. No problem. Maloney pitched a complete-game shutout Monday, a three-hitter, to beat Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. His next turn would fall on, ta-dum, Saturday. Nice.
Maloney, 4-2 with a 2.00 ERA, will be the first lefthander to start for the Reds since Andy Pettyjohn started the last game of last season.
NOT MUCH TO say about Tuesday’s game, a 5-2 clunker defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati’s fourth loss in five games on this trip. Snippets about the game are sprinkled throughout the rest of this blog.
LOVED THE VENDOR walking in front of the press box just before game time Tuesday who was yelling: “Everybody else has cold beer. I have ice cold beer.” Now that’s a salesman.
Then Bronson Arroyo gave up a run in the first inning, the sixth straight game in which the Reds’ starting pitcher gave up runs in the first inning. That’s called getting off on both a bad foot and a wrong foot.
THE FOOD WAS so bad in the Busch Stadium media dining room before the game - but only $5 - that I took a couple of bites out of something called pecan chicken and vacated the premises. I went to a concession stand and bought a cheeseburger for $5.95. The pecan chicken was better.
AND HERE’S a little known tidbit - Reds catcher Ryan Hanigan has the highest batting average (.333) and highest on-base average (.420) of any rookie in the NL. Hanigan probably won’t play enough to qualify for Rookie of the Year.
Speaking of Rookie of the Year, pitcher Scott Williamson was the last Reds Rookie of the Year. One of my favorite stories about Williamson was the time the Reds played an interleague game in St. Petersburg against the Tampa Bay Rays.
We stayed at the Renaissance Vinoy, a hotel that supposedly is haunted. Williamson believes. He told teammates that during the night he saw somebody standing at the end of his bed and when he straightened up, they disappeared. Said a teammate - probably Kent Mercker - “That probably was Tampa Bay’s leadoff hitter and he couldn’t wait to get into the batter’s box against you at the ball park.”
Dodger pitcher Chad Billingsley swears he heard his toilet flush several times and he was the only person in the room. Wow, a ghost with bladder problems.
Other major leaguers and former major leaguers who have been spooked at the Vinoy include Jim Fregosi, Cito Gaston, Billy Koch, Gerald Perry, Jay Gibbons and Brian Roberts. Some Pittsburgh players were so frightened that they checked out of the hotel and stayed with a teammate’s family when the Pirates were in town six years ago.
For the Pirates, those were probably Ghosts of Losses Past.
ANOTHER TIDBIT: Kent “Dream” Weaver of FoxSports Ohio was passing around an interesting stat in the press box Tuesday: Entering Tuesday’s game, the Reds had 217 RBIs and 97 came with two outs.
Said Weaver, “Jim Day isn’t on the trip and he was sitting around the house in his underwear, feeling lonely, and looked it up.”
ONLY IN ST. LOUIS would this happen. Skip Schumaker struck out and got a standing ovation. In most parks he would have been booed, but the Busch fans acknowledged that he made Bronson Arroyo throw 14 pitches before he struck out.
YOU KNOW THINGS are going well for the Reds when plod-footed catcher Ramon Hernandez steals second base, his first theft since May 6, 2007, against the Indians when he played for the O’s. Of course, this time second baseman Schumaker had the ball waiting for Hernandez but failed to make the tag. Still, a stolen base.
AFTER THE REDS scored two runs in the fourth inning against the Cardinals Tuesday, the guy splitting hot dogs buns (hot dogs arrive in the fifth inning) said to me, “The Reds are a scrappy little team.” Thanks, man, now slap a wiener between a bun and hand it to me. Nah, I wasn’t mean. What I said was, “Pass the ketchup, please.”
ALBERT PUJOLS. El Hombre, is a great player and doesn’t need any help, but the official scorer gave him a gift RBI when his doubled tied Tuesday’s game, 2-2, in the fifth. Schumaker scored from first on the double, but wouldn’t have scored had left field Laynce Nix not kicked the ball around in the corner. Should have been double, run scores on the left fielder’s error, no RBI.
NIX LED THE sixth inning with a walk. Alex Gonzalez up. A bunt, right? An absolute sacrifice situation. No ifs, ands or buts - just bunt. Gonzalez did not attempt to bunt on the first two pitches and on 0-and-2 he grounded into a double play.
Then Arroyo gave up three runs in the bottom of the inning. Game over.
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TweetVolquez goes back on the DL
Edinson Volquez is back on the DL. His examination in Cincinnati today revealed that he has tendinitis in his right elbow and he won’t even touch a baseball for the next seven to 10 days.
The tingling he talked about was a reaction from the ulnar nerve to the inflammation.
So instead of reporting to Louisville (AAA) after his option Monday, relief pitcher Jared Burton remains on the roster - pending approval by major-league baseball, which is always granted. Rules say a player optioned out cannot return for 10 days, but exceptions are made when injuries occur.
That means, though, the the Reds need a starting pitcher for Saturday. Could we see another Saturday Night Live performance by Homer Bailey, this time against the Chicago Cubs?
Turned my hotel room lopsided this morning, looking for my leather cigar case, embossed with Thompson on it. Couldn’t find it.
So I grabbed a couple of cigars and my Vince Flynn novel (Protect and Defend) and headed outside to a steel park bench behind the hotel for us decadent smokers. I was puffing my Montecristo White Label Churchill when a gentleman in a suit and tie asked, “Were you out here smoking yesterday and did you leave something?”
Ah, ha. My cigar case. When I said yes, he said, “I found it and almost kept it because it had my name on it. My name is Wade Thompson. I’ll go get it for you.”
And he did. Turns out he is Wade Thompson, head of Sales & Marketing for the St. Louis Westin. I offered him a $9 cigar as a reward and even though he said, “I smoke one now and then,” he refused. Nice guy.
HAD LUNCH at Charlie Gitto’s for the second straight day - it’s habit-forming - this time with broadcaster George Grande. We argued over the check. I won. But he’s paying tomorrow, he said. Same time, same location. Nice.
AS I SIT high above Busch Stadium, looking down at the Gateway Arch and up so high I’m certain I can see the top floor of my house in Englewood, they’ve just put the tarp on the field at 3 p.m. St. Louis time. Then a storm, complete with thunder and lightning, ravaged the place.
SUPPOSED TO BE OK for the game, though. Manager Dusty Baker shifted around his batting order, putting slump-ridden Jay Bruce in the No. 2 spot. In the first four games of this trip Bruce is 1 for 16 with eight strikeouts. It’s the first time this year Bruce has batted second (29 times at No. 5, 11 times at No. 3 and four times at No. 4).
Jerry Hairston Jr., Baker’s No. 1 guy in the two-hole, was out of the lineup for the second straight day with flu-like symptoms.
After missing three starts with a sore right hamstring, CF and leadoff batter Willy Taveras is back in the lineup.
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER beat writer John Fay stays at the team hotel, which is a block away. With the heavy rain, he jumped in a cab and gave the driver $10 to keep him dry and drive him to the stadium.
Adam Dunn tried that last year. Didn’t work. When he jumped in a cab and said, “Ball Park,” the driver refused, telling him to walk the block-and-a-half. So Dunn refused to leave the cab - sat in the back and read a newspaper for half an hour. Finally, the cabbie relented and took Dunn on the $3 ride. Dunn handed the guy the three bucks and said, “You missed out on a nice tip, pal.”
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TweetHave no fear, Volquez probably OK
There was fear in the Cincinnati Reds dugout when Edinson Volquez walked off the mound after the first inning, but fear not.
It probably is not that bad.
After Volquez left his assignment to face the St. Louis Cardinals after only one inning, it was announced that he had numbness in the pinky and ring fingers of his pitching hand. Not good. Not good at all.
After the game, though, Volquez described it was a tingling than ran down his arm and into his fingers. And it was only on one pitch.
He is going back to Cincinnati tomorrow to have it checked, but the guess here is that it was much ado about nothing and he’ll take his next turn.
Meanwhile, without Volquez, without Joey Votto, without Willy Taveras, without Jerry Hairston Jr. and without Edwin Encarnacion, the Reds came from behind Monday to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in Game One of a four-gamer in Busch.
All the Reds need is a third baseman with a bandaged head playing the flute and the picture would be complete.
Volquez’s return from the wounded-in-action list lasted one inning Monday night in Busch Stadium and he quickly rejoined his incapacitated buddies.
Volquez missed his last start with back spasms but this time left after one inning against the St. Louis Cardinals with numbness in the pinky and ring fingers of his right hand, or as he described it later, “Tingling from my elbow down to my fingers.”
He joined Edwin Encarnacion (wrist), Joey Votto (stress), Willy Taveras (hamstring) and Jerry Hairston Jr. (flu) on the unable to perform couch.
If that sounds like a prescription for a sound drubbing, well, it wasn’t. After Volequez spotted the Cardinal a one-run lead in the first and Mike Lincoln gave them another in the third, the quilt-patch Reds came back to score a 5-3 victory, moving back to within 2 ½ games of first place.
And although Volquez vacated the mound and is going to Cincinnati this morning to be examined, it may not be serious. After the game Volquez said he didn’t feel it any more and that he felt it on only one pitch, a fastball to the second hitter he faced, Colby Rasmus.
To compensate, “I threw about 10 curveballs in a row and I usually don’t throw more than three curves the whole game,” he said.
And that got manager Dusty Baker’s attention, too.
“We figured something was wrong when he started throwing all those breaking balls,” said Baker. “I mean, he was throwing great in the bullpen — 94 or 95 miles an hour.”
Said Volquez, “I’ll have to check with somebody on what’s going on with me. I’d never been on the DL and then this and I’ve never had this happen to me, either. Never had pain in my arm.
“It disappeared then and I don’t feel it no more,” he said. “It’s crazy. The best part is that we won and stopped a losing streak.”
The win ended a six-game road losing streak and was the Reds’ first victory on this trip after losing three straight in Milwaukee over the weekend.
The Reds pulled this one out with a three-run fourth inning, highlighted by a two-run double by Laynce Nix.
Lincoln followed Volquez with three innings during which a home run to Rasmus was the only damage and Lincoln was rewarded with the win.
“Our guys were scraping and fighting,” said Baker. “They were determined against a good Cardinals team that plays well at home. That’s a big one to stop that losing streak and maybe we can start a winning streak.”
Of Lincoln’s stand-in performance, Baker said, “Lincoln has been struggling but he is throwing the ball better right now. He gave up a double (on his first pitch) and a home run, but he didn’t give up any more.”
Baker was asked before the game about how he has patched together makeshift and quickshift lineups since the injuries began piling up after nearly an injury-free April.
“I haven’t had my infield together for I don’t know how long,” said Baker. “All four have been gone at one time or another. We’ve held together because of our extra guys. Our extra guys have done an outstanding job. But how long can we expect our extra guys to perform like this? That’s the question.
“You want your regular guys back, for sure, but without our extra guys, boy, we wouldn’t be close to where we are. So many times this year we’ve played with 23 or 24 guys.”
And Monday was another time.
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