07-08-2024, 12:58 PM
Every time it feels like we turned a corner, we go and lay an egg against a bad team.
This year's Reds team just isn't good enough. They have sky high potential (which is how they go about sweeping teams like the Yankees and Dodgers), but they are insanely inconsistent.
It's not surprising for a young team, but I've been really disappointed with how some second year (or "second and a half" year) players have performed this year. Particularly Marte and Benson.
It's a smaller sample size for Marte and he is hopefully just shaking the rust off, but he has been absolutely dreadful. Both on offense and defense. Last night, he should have ended the 8th inning, but his error on a routine grounder allowed the Tigers another chance, which resulted in a 2 run homerun to put the game out of reach (for this offense).
It makes me wonder if maybe the PEDs had more to do with his success than we realize.
And I don't even know what the hell happened to Benson. He already has more strikeouts than he did all last season and he is batting a pitiful .189/.275/.369/.644.
His line last year was .275/.365/.498/.863
I'm glad the Reds traded for an outfielder. He'll be an improvement over whoever he's replacing. But going into the season without signing a solid right handed hitting outfielder was this team's biggest mistake. And they're wasting an all star year (and a year of control) of Elly for no real reason.
We have suffered a lot of injuries too, which never helps. Friedl being out for most of the year, McLain being out, CES playing injured and then shutting it down early on, Marte being suspended and then not the same when back. And now, even the replacement of our replacements, Martini, is out.
Not many teams can sustain having 4 of their projected starters out from very early in the season. And it hurts us even more because of our lack of quality depth and penny pinching refusal to sign guys, even near the end of spring training when our needs were clear and there were players available.
It's been a frustrating season.
At least the draft is this coming weekend and we get to see if we get Travis Bazzana, Charlie Condon or if our front office made a mistake and drafted someone other than one of those two.
This year's Reds team just isn't good enough. They have sky high potential (which is how they go about sweeping teams like the Yankees and Dodgers), but they are insanely inconsistent.
It's not surprising for a young team, but I've been really disappointed with how some second year (or "second and a half" year) players have performed this year. Particularly Marte and Benson.
It's a smaller sample size for Marte and he is hopefully just shaking the rust off, but he has been absolutely dreadful. Both on offense and defense. Last night, he should have ended the 8th inning, but his error on a routine grounder allowed the Tigers another chance, which resulted in a 2 run homerun to put the game out of reach (for this offense).
It makes me wonder if maybe the PEDs had more to do with his success than we realize.
And I don't even know what the hell happened to Benson. He already has more strikeouts than he did all last season and he is batting a pitiful .189/.275/.369/.644.
His line last year was .275/.365/.498/.863
I'm glad the Reds traded for an outfielder. He'll be an improvement over whoever he's replacing. But going into the season without signing a solid right handed hitting outfielder was this team's biggest mistake. And they're wasting an all star year (and a year of control) of Elly for no real reason.
We have suffered a lot of injuries too, which never helps. Friedl being out for most of the year, McLain being out, CES playing injured and then shutting it down early on, Marte being suspended and then not the same when back. And now, even the replacement of our replacements, Martini, is out.
Not many teams can sustain having 4 of their projected starters out from very early in the season. And it hurts us even more because of our lack of quality depth and penny pinching refusal to sign guys, even near the end of spring training when our needs were clear and there were players available.
It's been a frustrating season.
At least the draft is this coming weekend and we get to see if we get Travis Bazzana, Charlie Condon or if our front office made a mistake and drafted someone other than one of those two.
![[Image: oN5QAdY.png]](https://i.imgur.com/oN5QAdY.png)
