They can’t hit. At all.
THEY HAVE not been able to manufacture runs. It is the ol’ All-Or-Nothing offense. It is hit ‘em out of the park or they don’t get ‘em in style. There isn’t enough situational hitting where runners are moved up into scoring position and not enough hitting to drive them in.
With a week remaining before Opening Day, it is a gaping question. For example, the Reds lost Sunday to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1. They have played 24 games and 11 times they have scored two or less runs.
There are far too many strikeouts and not enough walks. On Sunday, they struck out 11 times. They struck out seven times in six innings against LA starter Clayton Kershaw. OK, so he is a strikeout pitcher, but the Reds also struck out four more times in the last three innings, twice in one inning against former Reds No. 5 starter Ramon Ortiz, who is not a strikeout pitcher and hasn’t appeared in a major-league game since 2007.
THE REDS ARE 9-13-2 this spring and are hitting .242, second worst in the National League and the worst belongs to the Pittsburgh Pirates (.239), who are closer to a mediocre Triple-A team than a bad major-league team.
The Reds have struck out 155 times, which is about middle of the pack for the NL, but they have walked only 79 times and that’s near the bottom.
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