Gordon WittenmyerCincinnati Enquirer
PHOENIX - In a quiet visitors clubhouse in Arizona after a sixth consecutive lost series, the information board on the wall listed “TBD” as the scheduled departure time for the Cincinnati Reds bus to airport.
Mechanical problems with the team charter, it said.
As if the road trip didn’t already seem like the longest of their big-league lives.
What else could go wrong for this team?
Don’t answer that.
Not that the Cincinnati Reds should be in any kind of a hurry to get to Los Angeles to face Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and the highest-scoring, top-hitting, best paid group of hitters in the sport — and, oh, by the way, the top pitching staff in the National League.
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“It's a good challenge,” Reds manager David Bell said.
That’s one way to put it.
Here’s another: Yikes!
After getting stuck at the ballpark in Arizona for a delay that took longer than it took to actually play a game the Reds lost 2-1 to the Diamondbacks earlier in the afternoon, the Reds hauled the bruised remnants of an injury-depleted roster to L.A. with just two wins to rub together for the month so far.
As if anybody wanted a reminder, the Dodgers are 10-2 in May and among the heavy favorites for a World Series date as the Reds open a 10-game stretch on their schedule that includes all seven games they’ll play against the Dodgers this season.
After pitching seven impressive innings in the loss to Arizona before the plane delay, Andrew Abbott was asked if he could remember the last time the Reds won a series.
“Yeah,” he said before sidestepping the question as though he didn’t actually remember.
“It’s a long season,” he said. “We have a lot of games left. It’s important not to focus or dwell on the negatives right now. Just turn the page and keep playing, and eventually it’ll turn around.”
Abbott can be forgiven if he also doesn’t remember how 2022 turned from historically bad in April and May into the Reds’ first 100-loss season in 40 years — only the second in the history of baseball’s oldest franchise. He was in the minors that year.
Nobody expects the Reds to lose 100 games this year.
But nothing’s getting any easier for this struggling team anytime soon, either.
“You have to be on top of your game to beat good teams in the big leagues, and sometimes you can be on the very top of your game and have it just not go your way also,” catcher Luke Maile said when asked about the Dodgers series. “Against a team like that, they’re talented. Arizona’s talented.
“We’re going to be OK,” he said. “But it’s going to be a process thing. We’re going to have to stick together.”
Maybe that plan will work out better for David Bell’s crew at Dodger Stadium than it did for David Crockett’s team at the Alamo, or for Custer’s boys in Montana.
Or even Bell’s team in Arizona. Or San Francisco before that. Or against the Orioles before that.
The answer to the question put to Abbott is April 19-21 against the Los Angeles Angels.
In fact, the Reds have won just four series this season, and half of those came against the Angels and awful White Sox.
And after another lost series in Arizona — during which they put two key players back on the injured list in TJ Friedl and Nick Lodolo — they lug a season-worst eight-game deficit in the NL Central standings into Los Angeles trying to right their season against the $tar-$tudded Dodger$.
“We’ve talked about that a lot,” Bell said of discussions with media. “It’s very important to us as a team that our team doesn’t talk about that.
“We expect to go out and win,” he said. “We know we’re good. We believe we’re good. And because of that we don’t spend a lot of time talking about who we’re going to play, other than the preparation for the team coming up.
“We’ve got to beat these teams.”
