Video: Fans play Opening Day trivia: Reds player or TV character?
While plenty of fans celebrated Opening Day for the Reds, others did so just for the vibes. And we had them play some trivia.
A combined perfect game for four innings Sunday at Great American Ball Park turned into anything but perfect for the Cincinnati Reds by the time the San Francisco Giants got done beating them 6-3 to win the opening series of the season.
“Despite not getting the series win, I like where our guys are at,” said starting pitcher Nick Martinez, who retired the first 13 he faced and 15 of the first 17 before a rough sixth.
However, despite a lot of season left to get things right, the series exposed at least two of the Reds’ concerns entering the season.
The first was a closer-less bullpen that blew a ninth-inning lead in Thursday’s opener with Ian Gibaut getting the unlikely save opportunity.
Gibaut came back Sunday to pitch a 1-2-3 seventh with the score 4-3. And the pen didn’t otherwise allow an earned run in the series, but they still don’t know who their closer is on a given day, beyond perhaps this nugget from manager Terry Francona before Sunday’s game:
“Right now (Tony) Santillan looks like a guy who if we need to put a fire out, he might be that guy.”
Santillan did not pitch Sunday after a scoreless inning in each of the first two games.
The second concern exposed in the series was a questionable fielding group, with the Giants tacking a pair of unearned runs onto a one-run lead in the eighth after Elly De La Cruz’s throwing error to start the inning, changing the complexion of the game. The Reds had played errorless – at times exceptional – ball in the series up to that point, so maybe the greater weakness at play here is the lack of margin for any error at all against good teams.
Pitcher Brent Suter added another throwing error in the ninth on a two-out bunt (without further damage).
Catcher Austin Wynns looked like he overcame the De La Cruz mistake – which Francona suggested first baseman Christian Encarnacion-Strand might have been able to do with a routine scoop – when he threw out Tyler Fitzgerald trying to steal third with one out.
Instead the play was overturned on a replay challenge.
“It’s just hard to imagine that’s clear and convincing (video to overturn the call),” Francona said.
Willy Adames followed with a sacrifice fly.
“Today we didn’t get the win, but all series we played some clean baseball and played some scrappy ball,” Martinez said.
The Reds scored more than three runs only once, and Thursday’s fourth run was helped by a runner advancing on an indifference play when they trailed by three after the Giants’ big rally against Gibaut. This Giants team is improved since last year but not among the five or six elite teams in the National League this year.
“We gave ourselves a chance. That’s what you want to do,” Francona said, defending a lineup that managed just three hits combined first time through the order in the three games and on Sunday managed just one hit outside of their four-hit, three-run sixth.
“I know there wasn’t a ton to show for it, but there were some pretty good at-bats,” he said.
The lineup is missing two of its more important right-handed, everyday bats: catcher Tyler Stephenson (oblique) and left fielder Austin Hays, whose calf is “better,” he said, but will need the next few days to have a better idea how quickly he might be able to return.
“Honestly, I think we took good at-bats the whole series,” said Gavin Lux, who singled and had two other hard-hit outs, adding he thought the Reds might have had two more home runs Sunday if not for the hard wind blowing in from right field much of the game.
“We’ll probably have a series upcoming where we get a bunch of bloop hits and dinkers that go our way. And it just didn’t this series,” he said. “And obviously when we get Stevo and Haysy back, and Spence (Steer) fully healthy, I think all those things are going to help.”
The Reds showed glimpses in the series of what they expect to be the strength of any success they have this year: A starting rotation that combined for 17 innings and eight earned runs in the series.
It was 16 innings and five earned runs until Nick Martinez gave up a two-out, run-scoring double, followed by a Matt Chapman two-run homer in his final inning Sunday.
He was dominant early, striking out three of the first five batters to jump start that 13-batter run to open the start as he and Giants starter Robbie Ray put together a combined perfect game for four full innings.
“I mixed well, attacked the zone, challenged guys,” Martinez said. “I felt good, pretty much all day. Good till I wasn’t.
“I made some good pitches even in that last inning. Didn’t execute my pitch to Chapman. Tried to execute a fastball in, and he punished it.”
Ray took his perfect game bid into the sixth before Lux led off with a single, and Wynns followed one out later with a two-run homer.
Ray seemed displeased by a pitch-timer violation immediately preceding the home run ball, and after Matt McLain followed with his second home run in as many days, fans began chanting the countdown of the pitch clock during an ensuing four-pitch walk to Santiago Espinal.
That was Ray’s last batter.
It was also as close as the Reds got on this day.
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