Jake Arrieta Is Really Good
Your humble correspondent saw his first in-person no-hitter this week. I would have preferred it be the Reds no-hitting the other team, but I had to settle for the Cubs' Jake Arrieta no-hitting the Reds while the Cubbies put sixteen runs on the board. You'd think as a Reds fan this would have been tremendously disappointing, but honestly I was happy to see history. If the Reds had gotten a useless hit in the 9th inning it would have spoiled the evening & made it just another unmemorable Reds loss. Sure, if the game was close I'd say go for it, but a sixteen-run deficit's pretty tough to come back from. No-hitters don't happen every day.
They happen a little more often for Arrieta than most. It was his second no-hitter in his last eleven starts. He's had twenty-four straight quality starts since last June. The record for straight quality starts? Twenty-six, set by the incomparable Bob Gibson in 1967-68. Gibson's 1968 stands as probably the greatest pitching year in the history of baseball. We've seen a lot of great pitchers come and go since 1968. Nolan Ryan. Steve Carlton. Tom Seaver. Greg Maddux. Randy Johnson. Just to name a few. None of them accomplished what Arrieta has in the past few months.
Sometimes I think we give way too much credit to things happening right now. Everybody is the greatest at everything ever, it seems like. I don't think that's true all the time, but I do think that Jake Arrieta deserves all the credit he can get for this stretch of pitching. Ever since getting traded to Chicago in 2013, the dude's been lights-out. He's two starts away from tying Gibson's record, so we'll probably jinx him into having a bad start next time.
As many great players as the Cubs have right now, I think I'd have to say he's the most valuable. But man, that's a tough call. The Cubs are loaded on offense, and they have the top ace in the league right now. If they weren't the Cubs, I'd say just give them the title already. They look that good.
Reds Update
The Reds could be one of the most pleasant surprises in baseball right now if not for two things:
1. Their bullpen
2. The Chicago Cubs
There wasn't a whole lot of money or thought put into the Reds bullpen this season because when you're rebuilding an organization it's one of your last priorities. What good is a lights-out closer when you never use him? That's why Aroldis Chapman probably should have been traded sooner than he was. There are a ton of young arms in the Reds' minor league system right now, and they're in the process of figuring out which ones would be good starters and which would be more useful in relief. Until they figure that out, Reds fans will be looking at the worst bullpen Cincinnati's had since...well, at least before the Nasty Boys of 1990. They were great, and the Reds at the very least had some serviceable guys since.
Not this year.
The Rockies series started off with a typical 8th inning meltdown from the bullpen. A 1-1 game turned into a 5-1 win for Colorado pretty quickly. The Reds won the next day 4-3, with two of the Rockies' runs coming in the 9th inning. Wednesday's game featured another 8th inning meltdown to tie the game at 5, only for Tucker Barnhart to win the game with a single off of Todd Bergman's cousin Christian. Two out of three against the Rockies is pretty good, but the fans still emerged with less hair than they had coming in.
We've already discussed Thursday night. Friday night was more of the same from the Cubs...sure, they only got half the runs they got on Thursday night, but it was more than enough. The Reds bats finally came alive on Saturday night, putting up 13 runs on Joey Votto Bobblehead Night in front of over 41,000 fans for their second-largest crowd of the season. Sure, most of them were Cubs fans, but it was fine because they got to go home with tears in their eyes. Even the Reds' bullpen couldn't blow an eight-run lead on that night.
Sunday was a trip back to reality as the Reds got blown out 9-0. The good news? They don't play the Cubs again until June 27.
This week they travel to New York & Pittsburgh to play the Mets & Pirates. Two teams that are expected to contend for the playoffs this season, they've gotten off to slow starts, but I don't expect either team to languish for too long. It'll be another tough road trip, hopefully the boys are more up for it than they were for the last one.
Sox Add By Subtracting. And Adding.
The Chicago White Sox never get respect. They're the second-most popular team in their own hometown, and they're the second-most popular team that has "Sox" as part of their name. Their eighty-seven year World Series drought was overshadowed by the Cubs' drought that started nine years early, and the ending wasn't nearly as appreciated as the ending of the Red Sox' eighty-five year drought the year prior.
The main thing the White Sox got attention for this off-season was the departure of Adam LaRoche, their .207 hitting first baseman that retired because White Sox management didn't want his kid in the locker room every single day of the season. There was a lot of hand-wringing over this from other Sox players, notably star pitcher Chris Sale & outfielder Adam Eaton. Dissention in the ranks combined with a lackluster performance last season had most of us not expecting much from the White Sox this season.
While the Sox bats have mostly been quiet, the pitching & defense has led the team to the top of the AL Central early in 2016. I attribute the rise of the White Sox to two former Reds. One's been great on the field, and I'd bet Jeremy Lambert's mansion that one's been great off the field.
Todd Frazier was my favorite Red of the 2010s. It was sad to see him leave town. He does have his weaknesses though, as he's an incredibly streaky hitter. He'll be great one half of the season and horrendous the other half. Its usually the first half where he shines, but not this year as he's hovering around the .200 mark. It seems like Fraizer's Home Run Derby kick the last two years has turned Frazier into a HR-only kind of guy, as he leads the Sox in home runs & RBI, but is a liability at the plate when he can't muscle the ball out of the park. Sox fans hope he'll return to form, but at least in the meantime they can trust that he's a good influence in the clubhouse and has likely been a huge effect in the Sox' rise behind the scenes.
Mat Latos has bounced around MLB and hasn't exactly made friends wherever he's gone. He keeps finding homes because of his potential, and if he keeps doing what he's doing right now, the South Side will gladly put up with him. Latos typically pitches poorly in April, but that hasn't been the case in 2016. He's won his first four starts, sports an ERA under 1 and has generally been untouchable. I wouldn't count on him keeping that up, but maybe he's finally found the right environment for him.
Frazier & Latos have won before, and they're winning again in Chicago. Sometimes all it takes is some established vetetans to get things going in the right direction. If the pitching holds up and the bats come around, Kansas City could have a tougher division race than they expected.
Barry Came Home
The Miami Marlins went to San Francisco last weekend. There isn't exactly a huge rivalry between the teams so I didn't really think much about it until the media reminded me that Barry Bonds is the Marlins hitting coach and got a huge ovation from the Giants fans upon his return to The city he broke all the home run records at.
Bonds is a divisive figure among baseball followers. Giants fans love him because he hit a ton of homeruns there. Fans of other teams didn't really care for him then, and still aren't in love with him. Baseball writers largely despise him because he's the biggest example of the steroid era that rendered the baseball record book irrelevant.
And because he was a jerk. Let's not sugarcoat it. Baseball writers love holding people out of the Hall of Fame because of how they treated them during their career. Bonds' numbers would have made it impossible for him not to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer...if not for the steroids.
Steroids are illegal now. They weren't banned from baseball when Bonds was playing. While I'm glad they're out of the game now and we're back on a somewhat even playing field, it seems silly to punish Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens & other suspected users now when they were responsible for getting baseball back in the good graces of fans after the strike of 1994 that cancelled a World Series and nearly killed the game.
Those names clog a Hall of Fame ballot that has way too many names on it and not enough people getting in because the writers are mad that they glorified steroid users in the late 90s. Whether the writers should be the only voters or not is a topic for another day (they shouldn't), but their boycott of Bonds and others has muddied the waters for other candidates that don't get discussed because everybody is wrapped up in Bonds. Tim Raines would probably have gotten his case pushed up & dissected, and he'd be in the HOF right now instead of hoping & praying he makes the cut in his final year, next year.
Bonds is at least back in the game, so maybe someday we'll get that issue behind us. If Barry can be nice to the Miami media, maybe they'll convince the rest of the writers it's ok. He''ll at least get my vote when I get one as a baseball writer.
Three Series To Watch This Week
1. White Sox at Orioles (Friday-Sunday): Two teams that snuck under the radar during the off-season and got off to hot starts face off in this weekend tilt. Expect a close, evenly-matched series here.
2. Nationals at Cardinals (Friday-Sunday): Dusty Baker returns to St. Louis with Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and the rest of the still red-hot Nationals. The Cardinals are milling about at .500 & have yet to get things rolling, but you know they will eventually.
3. Yankees at Red Sox (Friday-Sunday): The Yanks are off to a slow start & the Sawx aren't a whole lot better, but it's THE YANKS AND THE SAWX and it'll be all over ESPN & MLB Network so you'll have to watch it. I wouldn't hate it so much if the games didn't average five hours.
Well, that's all we have time for this week! Thanks for reading, and join us next week for more awesome baseball action!
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