Sorry for the late recap, I’m having some computer issues at the moment.
The long and short of this game is that it turned on a sequence of six pitches that flipped the first inning from a scoreless inning into a 4-0 Reds lead, and once that happened the game was pretty much done. The first pitch in the sequence was a two-out two-strike slider that Gerrit Cole buried out of the strike zone to Todd Frazier, but that Frazier somehow got his bat on and looped into right field. Gregory Polanco came up juuuust short and ended up booting a short-hop instead of making the catch. Instead of inning over, it was 1-0 Reds. Had Polanco made the catch, it would’ve been a pretty great play and I don’t know that I feel comfortable saying he should have made it. Still, it seems like this Five pitches later, Cole threw what looked to all the world like a two-strike belt-high fastball over the inside part of the plate to Jay Bruce. Well, to all the world except for Ted Barrett, who called the pitch ball three instead of strike three. Bruce fouled off a pitch, then doubled in Frazier. Marlon Byrd hit the first pitch he saw over the fence.
This is not to try and completely absolve Cole from any blame for the loss last night — he still had to throw the pitches that Bruce and Byrd hit, and he got into trouble again in the fifth. The appeal of a true ace pitcher is that he can power his way through bad fielding and bad umpires. Maybe on some other night against some other team (Cole is now 0-2 against the Reds with a 6.75 ERA in three starts), Cole would’ve been able to do that. Last night wasn’t the night, though. It’s just frustrating to know that while it wasn’t his best start, with a little bit of help from anywhere it wouldn’t have necessarily been one of his worst, either.
Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Image
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