Rust Belt Baseball

When questioned, Mr Chapman admitted that, until now, he hadn't heard of Cincinnati nor of Tony Perez. Let's hope he never hears of Eric Milton.

Payroll inflexibility. That was the operative word in Cincinnati this offseason, as the club focused on tightening their payroll for 2010. To achieve that, Johnny Gomez was non-tendered because the Reds feared that he might get $3 million in arbitration. ...

"There's got to be a morning after, if we can hold on through the night..."

Like a rehash of the bad disaster movie trend from the '70s, the 2009 edition of the Reds have seemingly endured one misfortune after another this season. If it wasn't so real, it would be laughable. Starting with Edwin Encanacion suffering a small chip fracture back in April to Scott Rolen's beaning last ...

As previously mentioned in my first blog entry, one of the things I was looking forward to this baseball season was taking in the interleague series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Cincinnati Reds from June 23-25. The Blue Jays hosted the Reds last year and I initially thought that my chance to see the Reds play north of the border had passed. So you can imagine how excited I was when they were scheduled ...

I’m not a superstitious person by any means, but one thing I’ve learned is that baseball and felines do not mix (Andrés Galarraga notwithstanding). Case in point:

On April 21, the Reds dropped a 7-2 decision to the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. But in the 4th inning of that game, a quirky thing happened: with Joey Votto at the plate, a calico cat wandered onto the field and caused a game delay. The cagey feline continued to saunter around the field until a security guard managed ...

For the most part, Reds’ pitchers have been enjoying an impressive training camp this year. Yesterday for example, Micah Owings continued his stellar play by pitching four scoreless innings against the Twins, with two hits and four strikeouts. That gives him an ERA of 1.23 in four stars with eight hits, two walks and 16 K’s in 14-2/3 innings. Edinson Volquez followed Owings in the game and pitched three scoreless innings with one hit and two K’s. He retired the Twins on just 36 pitches. (The ...