Cubs 8, Reds 7

In Postgame by berselius22 Comments

OSS: Craig Kimbrel’s beard was not the source of his weakness.

Three up:

  1. The Cubs scored early and often, scoring six times in the first two innings to seemingly put this out of reach. In particular, Souza and Bote got a pair of RsBI each in their first starts of the season.
  2. Jon Lester exceeded the (probably too low) expectations and then some, no-hitting the Reds over the first five innings before exiting. He didn’t exactly blow anyone away, except Aristides Aquino who was his only strikeout.
  3. After Kimbrel crapped the bed in the ninth, Jeremy Jeffress inherited a bases-loaded, one out, down by one jam and managed to work his way out of it for the save.

Three down:

  1. Even by the standards of his struggles last year, Craig Kimbrel was awful in this game. Walk, wild pitch, groundout, walk, walk, RBI HBP, RBI walk is not exactly how you want to make your season debut. I guess he needs to grow the beard back.
  2. The rest of the pen was pretty leaky as well, but meh. Given the abbreviated spring training, there’s no better time to check out some of the back end of the bullpen guys in game situations than when you are up 7-0.
  3. War Bear went 0-5 with two strikeouts.

Next up: Alec Mills takes on Tyler Mahle at 5:40 PM CT.

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  1. BVS

    WaLi,

    A performance for the ages.

    I would have been asleep, but my mom kept texting me about it. Also she hates his cormorant windup.

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  2. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    1B Rizzo
    C Caratini
    SS Baez
    LF War Bear
    CF Happ
    RF Heyward
    3B Bote
    DH Kipnis
    2B Hoerner

    P Mills

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  3. uncle dave

    At some point, these guys are gonna start shooting themselves in the foot to get sent home from the front lines. Like, if I had the slightest twinge of an injury I’d be out in a heartbeat.

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  4. andcounting

    uncle dave,

    Or…remember when the White Sox tried to trigger mandatory steroid testing by deliberately failing their drug tests (not to be confused with their plan to deliberately lose the World Series)? I wonder if a team (or rogue player) would attempt to deliberately test positive or acquire and spread the disease on their team to undermine the entire MLB season, no wait that’s batshit.

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  5. BVS

    WaLi,

    Pretty good performance by Joe Kelly all around. Delivery, diction, body language, presence, ability to create drama.

    Why anyone was swinging at any of his pitches is beyond me.

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  6. uncle dave

    andcounting:
    uncle dave,

    Or…remember when the White Sox tried to trigger mandatory steroid testing by deliberately failing their drug tests (not to be confused with their plan to deliberately lose the World Series)? I wonder if a team (or rogue player) would attempt to deliberately test positive or acquire and spread the disease on their team to undermine the entire MLB season, no wait that’s batshit.

    Yeah, I think the trick is to get hurt so you don’t have to play but don’t have to opt out, either. My guess is that these guys will wind up just going out to get some titties in their faces and fuck everything up, like the Marlins apparently did…

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