Even accounting for the fact that they are in the middle of a sort of modified, plausibly deniable tank-out, it is safe to say that the Cincinnati Reds had hoped to win more than three of the 21 games they played in the month of April. It didn't work out that way, but baseball is like that. Some months you go 3-18. Some months your team's President and CEO goes on the radio before the team's home opener and tells fans to stop bothering him re: how cheap and cynical his front office's decisions are, and then the team loses 15 of its next 16 games, and its cornerstone Hall of Famer's batting average sinks into the lower .130s, and the whole thing spirals into one of those what awful hopeless real-world thing is all this awful baseball a metaphor for type crises.
Sometimes that is just how it goes! When it does, you just have to say "that's baseball" and keep it moving. Give it one of these:
...And then turn the page.
And while that very much Was Baseball for the Reds in April, Sunday was the first day of May. And in their first baseball game of May, which was also the last of a four-game series against the Rockies in Colorado, the Reds were down by six runs before they'd even recorded three outs. All of those runs were charged to starter Reiver Sanmartin, although if you want to be a stickler about it the sixth and final of those crossed the plate when reliever Buck Farmer hit Rockies shortstop José Iglesias with a pitch with the bases loaded. But that was just the first inning, and May is a long month, and baseball seasons are very long, and no team—including the Reds—is actually this bad. Once again, you just summon this guy:
...And move on to the next inning. In the second inning, Farmer got first baseman C.J. Cron to pop out, then got to work on catcher Elías Díaz. Here is what happened on the fifth, sixth, and seventh pitches of that at-bat.
What you see here is, in order, catcher Mark Kolozsvary trapping a foul pop against the screen behind home plate, third baseman Brandon Drury risking serious injury in the futile pursuit of a pop foul up to and nearly into the third base camera box, and then... I don't really know on the last one. The ball lands about two-thirds of the way out to the pitcher's mound, and takes kind of a long time to come down, and spluts to earth roughly 18 inches from Farmer, and Kolozsvary, and first baseman Mike Moustakas. Not sure what you call that to be honest, although it was scored a single. Díaz would come around to score later that inning on a baes-loaded double by Brendan Rodgers, and the Rockies would go on to win 10-1. The Reds have lost 16 of their last 17 games, but will have a chance to get back to .500 in May on Tuesday, when they face the Brewers in Milwaukee.
