Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips used the most explosive word to be heard in any locker room: Cincinnati, he said, "choked" in the Wild Card Game last night. The word choke makes for a headline and grabs attention, two things Phillips never shies away from. But it's simply dead wrong. The Reds didn't choke. They were a team that had been leaking oil for weeks, and that was in no shape to deal with a worst-case pitching matchup: lefty-killer Francisco Liriano dealing in his home ballpark in Pittsburgh.
Cincinnati gave the ball to a rusty Johnny Cueto, who had thrown just 12 innings since June 28, all against the Mets and the Astros, two of the worst offenses in baseball. Reds manager Dusty Baker had to start Cueto because Mat Latos was hurt. His bullpen didn't have Tony Cingrani, who was hurt, or an effective version of Sean Marshall, who was hurt for much of the year. Cincinnati's offense entered the game hitting .234 over its last 18 games. Drip, drip, drip.
The Reds rely on the left-handed bats of Shin-Shoo Choo, Joey Votto and Jay Bruce, but that trio had no chance against Liriano. The Pirates left-hander had faced 138 lefties this year and had allowed no home runs, just two extra-base hits and a .131 batting average.
It was a worst-case scenario for Cincinnati, which put itself in this position with an 8-10 finish, a slump that included getting swept at home by the Pirates on the final weekend of the season. Cueto looked like a pitcher fussing his way through a rehab start. The right-hander just wasn't game sharp. Since last season, when an oblique injury took him out of the Division Series after one batter -- and similar injuries kept him on the shelf for most of this year -- Cueto and the Reds have thought about ditching his whirling delivery. With the season on the line last night, Cueto was so lost he decided to give the idea a try. When he came to the mound in the third inning -- after having continually left balls up in the first two innings -- he pitched out of the stretch, ditching his Luis Tiant-like spin. Cueto lasted only four more outs. He faced just 19 batters in all, and nine of them reached base. He had no strikeouts.
Yes, anything can happen in a one-game playoff. But you definitely don't want your ace to improvise his way through a start.
Liriano was too good to let Cincinnati get away with Cueto's makeshift performance. Of Liriano's first seven pitches, the Reds swung at four of them and missed. When the fourth inning started Cincinnati still hadn't hit a ball out of the infield. It was 3-0 by then and the game was effectively over.
Liriano is the kind of scavenger hunt story that keeps general managers dreaming. The same guy who lost his stuff to Tommy John surgery and continually fought bouts of wildness was out there on the free-agent market while teams were dropping $146 million to stock their rotations with such pitchers as Edwin Jackson, Ryan Dempster, Jeremy Guthrie, Brandon McCarthy, Joe Blanton and Dan Haren.
Free agency gets attention because of dollars, but it works because of fits. And the Pirates and Liriano are a great fit. By coming to Pittsburgh, Liriano broke free from the American League to the easier National League lineups. He also fell into the Pirate Way of pitching. Pittsburgh bases its pitching philosophy on this premise: Figure out what pitch in what count in what location has the greatest chance of producing a groundball and throw it. Liriano bought all in, junking his four-seam fastball to become a sinker-slider-changeup pitcher.
This year the Pirates' staff was the only one in baseball that induced ground balls on more than half the balls put in play against it. Ground balls do not result in extra bases nearly as often as do fly balls and line drives. Last night Liriano obtained only two of his 21 outs in the air: one fly ball and one pop-up.
The Reds did not choke. They had no chance.
