Perfection is Transient, but I'll Take It
- Four pitches, three outs for Crochet in the first inning! That is an efficiency that tends to pay off at the back end of the game.
- The Sox have two infield hits and hit into two double plays in the first two innings. The team OBP was .750 at the end of the second, and they only got one runner to second, on the Duran steal in the first. Shades of the 25 guys 25 cabs station to station teams of the 80s! Man, they grounded into a lot of double plays.
Challenges: 1 for 1, Carlos Narvaez catcher challenge strikes out Suarez to end the 4th!
- third infield hit in the 5th! Cedanne may or may not have beaten out the throw, but the Reds are already out of challenges. My subjective impression is that the Red Sox have the best video review team and system in the majors. I need to go off and find a source of statistics for that. On the other end of the spectrum, I remember Dusty Baker missing the opportunity to get challenges a couple of years ago, by just being slow on the draw. The key to a successful challenge is clearly a team system, not just a guy at the video relay.
- fourth infield hit! A scorcher, not a dribbler, you don’t often see that with IF hits. It was 112 MPH off Roman’s bat, and literally took out the Reds’ rookie first baseman Sal Stewart. Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Fortunately he did not seem badly hurt (wrist ricochet, I think) and stays in the game.
- bottom of the fifth, still zero zero. Considering it was 81 degrees at game time, and we’re in The Great American Smallpark, that is really something. I wouldn’t be surprised at this in a March game in Cleveland or Boston, Cincy is only marginally warmer, usually, this time of year. But both Crochet and Abbot are throwing sinking bricks up there, with a ton of ground balls — there’s no way for a ball to get lifted up by warm air if it’s not on the fly.
- Caleb Durbin’s groundball error in the bottom of the fifth was a toughluck error — the ball was pulled by the batter, and 98 times out of 100 a ball pulled like that either goes straight or curves toward the foul line. In this instance, the first hop hit the grass funny and spun towards the middle of the infield — Durbin just stood there with surprise evident in his body language. When you’re an infielder, you are coiled up, because your reaction time to the ball depends a lot on anticipating the direction. Cal Ripken was outstanding at this — slew-footed though he was, he always seemed to have a half a step in the correct direction before the ball was even hit. I also saw Ripken react to bad hops better than anybody I have ever seen play.
- A walk, a fisted hit, and a first pitch swinging scooter to right field — the Reds thus loaded the bases in the bottom of the sixth with one out, running Crochet’s pitch count 70, bringing Eugenio Suarez to the plate. Such matchups are what the stuff of aces are made. And we have an ace. Crochet used the cutter to get Suarez swinging, steering away from the fastball the Reds were somehow managing to punch through for hits. Then we get to 3-2, bases loaded, and he whiffs Spencer Steer on a 90 MPH cutter. Credit — Narvaez? Who’s calling the game? End of the day for Garrett, and a fantastic outing it was. He got into trouble twice, and got out of it twice all by himself. That four pitch first inning kept him in there and chucking it hard.
- Marcelo PHs for IKF in the 7th, and punches the first XBH of the year. Expect to see more substitutions like this. Alex Cora Genius Count for the year is incremented from zero to one. AC then has Narvaez sacrifice, always a questionable decision in the sabrmetric era, but he executed and got Mayer to third, with Cedanne and Roman coming up. I suppose even in the 7th, getting that first run of the game is worth giving up an out? From a good hitter like Narvaez…? Cedanne singles, the Sox get the first run of the game and a lead, thus upping AC’s genius count to two for the year.
- Roman, after knocking out three singles in his first three at-bats, looks a little bad swinging at a breaking ball 0-2 pitch for the whiff. He hit 1.000 on the year, though for 6+ innings.
- Justin Slaten — whom, we shall remember, was a Rule 5 pickup some years back — gets the ball in the 7th in the “first set up guy” position. Despite a tetchy leadoff walk, he comes back to finish the inning with a solid whiff. I wonder when we’ll first see Ryan Watson, this year’s bargain basement Rule 5 pick up? That he should work out as well as Slaten…
- On that walk, Narvaez goes to 1 for 2 on challenges, somewhat improvidently burning a challenge in the bottom of the 7th, but let’s be honest, that ball sure looked like a strike. ABS said otherwise. I wonder how much the calibration of the system will come into question. The Reds then challenged — and won switching a strike to a ball — in the same at-bat. The ABS strikezone was supposedly measured on each and every player during spring training for a custom K zone. Did some of the players hunch a little during their measurement?
- Whitlock on in the 8th. He gives up a weird luck book-rule double to Stewart with two outs, and then faces his nemesis from the WBC, Eugenio Suarez. But you know what? this game really, truly actually counts — and Garrett whiffs him. I had been an off-season advocate for signing Suarez. He has tremendous power, is a little sketchy at times for contact but has been generally reliable in recent years, and plays acceptable third base. (He’s DHing for the Reds, I note.) The Sox needed (need) a right-handed big-bopper. But it may be father time will catch up with a big swinger like Suarez this year. I wouldn’t count on it, but he’s left three guys in scoring position today, so I’ll take it.
- Oh, the lovely top of the 9th! Marcelo, confirming the AC genius point, singles. Then with two outs, on a 3-2 pitch, Roman Anthony — not quite a rookie, but certainly not a veteran — is allowed to challenge a called strike three. He’s successful! Sox are 2 for 3 on challenges, and then Trevor Story confirms a third AC Genius point by batting in Marcelo from second. Duran proceeds to rip the first pitch he sees for another run, and all of a sudden we’re up 3-0 heading into the bottom of the 9th. That’s the kind of insurance I like.
- Chapman on for the save…my misgivings about Chapman’s durability for the whole season notwithstanding, I’m so glad we have him here. 1-2-3 on three balls in the air, and Chapman moves into a tie for 11th on the all-time saves list, with Papelbon at 368. Chapman can put a late-career push on for the Hal of Fame: he probably needs another three seasons at this level, though. Ahead of him and not in the hall are John Franco (who deserves to be in, IMHO, at 424 saves), F-Rod (437), and two active players with the same number of MLB seasons and the same age, Craig Kimbrel (440), and Kenley Jansen (476). Kenley (boy, imagine having kept him AND signing Chapman!) is only two saves behind my favorite closer, Lee Smith, and has a decent shot at being the third closer with 500 career saves. Chapman is the same seasonal age as Kimbrel and Jansen, and as a direct contemporary, will have a lot harder of a pull to get in unless both of them get in ahead of him.
Takeaways: you know, this is about as satisfying an opening day as you might want. Sure we had only one XBH and no big flies, but everybody performed as required, and that young hitting core of Anthony, Rafaela, and Mayer sure chipped in nicely. The ace was the ace, the 7th and 8th inning guys did their jobs, and the closer closed. The dingers can come in due course.
The ABS Challenge Era has started with the Sox 1-2 on defense and 1-1 on offense -- and that was close to as consequential a challenge as could be, as it extended the inning and resulted in two insurance runs.
Endnotes:
- This was the Reds ‘150th opener! MLB used to have the Reds, the original professional franchise, always open up the season. I kind of miss that tradition. I got to see the Opening Day parade once in Cincinnati, decades ago — and the game was rained out, sending us back on a six hour drive to get home without either a trip to King’s Island or a ball game to show for it.
- So — 81 degrees at first pitch, on opening day, in Cincinnati?
- First RedSoxCodeWord of the year: OpeningDay2026. Very creative. Eyeball.
- Roman starts the year with a 1.550 OPS. Yeah, the MVP talk may be a bit premature, but that kind of start...looking forward to another twenty years of this.
Around the (Sam) Horn:
- we all know about Kerry Wood’s 20 K game and the Rocket’s two 20 K games. Those are the records for most strikeouts by an opposing team in a nine inning game — now equaled by the ChiSox today. The opposing pitching threw a “combined” 20 K game against them today. Milwaukee has now invented that statistic. The Combined 20 Strikeout Game, you read it here first.
- Paul Skenes threw only 2/3 of an inning. He suffered from some truly bad defense behind him but the Mets got to him by fouling off a lot of pitches, and he got to 37 before being lifted after giving up five runs (only one of which really ought to have been earned, but them’s the breaks). I am told this is the shortest opening day outing by a reigning Cy Young award winner since the award was first presented in 1956.
- I caught Munetaka Murakami's first MLB AB, and it was a fizzle. But the guy looks like...a ballplayer. A ballplayer's ballplayer. I look forward to watching him more, wish him luck, and I hope he hits 60 homers -- all against the Yankees.
Meta: I don't expect all, or even many, of the posts here to be this long, but...it was opening day. I make no apologies, only excuses 😁
