ST. LOUIS – A season’s worth of struggles throwing strikes from the bullpen continued for Cincinnati on Friday night, and a game that started with scoring three runs before they took the field turned into a lopsided 10-3 loss in the series opener at Busch Stadium. It all unraveled without their skipper seeing it up close.
Reds manager Terry Francona was ejected in the bottom of the first inning with his team holding a 3-1 lead. The game was tied by the end of the third and out of control three innings later, as a parade of Reds relievers led 12 St. Louis hitters to the dish and allowed six to cross home plate in the bottom of the sixth.
Luis Mey perhaps took the worst of it, recording only one out in the inning while issuing three walks, two with the bases loaded, and also a hit-by-pitch which forced in a run. The Reds have now issued 19 walks with the bases loaded, tied with the 1969 club for their most in a season since at least 1961, per the Elias Sports Bureau, and the most in the Majors this year by more than double (the Athletics, Astros and White Sox are tied for second with nine apiece).
Zach Maxwell opened the sixth and got away with walking just one, but his tab was charged with three hits and four earned runs. Zach McCambley followed Mey into the game and struck out Lars Nootbaar to end the threat, but the game was far too upside down by then to be recovered.
Francona’s early ejection came on a curious play in the bottom of the first inning that might have seen the Reds finishing the frame with a 3-0 lead. First baseman Sal Stewart was ruled to be off the bag on an otherwise routine grounder that was set to end the inning, and Francona was quickly ejected after coming out of the dugout to protest the replay review that led the initial call to stand.
“The longer they waited [to make a call], I was getting madder and madder,” Francona said. “It’s not something I set out to do, especially with [Matt] Tracy in his first game [as acting pitching coach] and everything. Just was getting madder and madder as I was waiting.”
“I still think [Torres] was out,” he added. “I’ve got a picture that shows [Stewart] on the bag. I think the way Sal went after it gave the umpire a chance to call it, so it’s a little bit of both, maybe.”
Stewart’s error was the second of the inning for the Reds and the second of three on the night overall, with the somewhat porous defense not making things much easier on a pitching staff that has outpaced all opponents in their struggles to find the strike zone from the bullpen.
“We made errors, we didn’t throw strikes, and we paid a big price for it,” Francona acknowledged.
Cincinnati relievers entered the night with 148 walks, eight more than any other team in the Majors. That total ballooned on Friday to 154, and starter Brady Singer contributed three more of his own while completing only four innings.
Singer struck out six over those four innings and allowed just one earned run – a homer by Alec Burleson which tied the game in the third – despite scattering the three walks and four hits.
“Looked up and saw the walks and stuff like that and obviously didn’t like [it],” Singer admitted. “Just try to get more in the zone, get more competitive in there.”
Singer’s first inning would have been over after 25 pitches if not for the botched play at first base – a high total, but one that could have been manageable over the course of the game. Instead, with the inning extended past Torres, he had to face two more hitters and throw nine more pitches before getting off the mound.
“He just wasn’t locating,” Francona said of his starter. “I mean, none of our pitchers tonight, you know, they were balls. Steve-O [Tyler Stephenson] was like a goalie. That’s a hard way to be successful.”
The mounting pitch count played into Singer's early exit from the game, though he did not help his cause by walking the sole hitter he was sent to the mound to face in the fifth. With an early exit always comes additional pressure on the bullpen, and given the struggles in seizing command that have bedeviled them all year long, applying that extra pressure through free passes can become a challenging high-wire act.
“There’s a lot of ups and downs,” Singer acknowledged. “Getting kicked in the teeth right now, obviously, but just keep trying to figure out different ways to pitch our way out of it. It’s gonna get better at some point, but obviously it’s a rough patch. Not happy with it, but just keep working on stuff.”