Thursday, August 21, 2008

Reds beat the Cubs; still can't hit

Arroyo pitched a gem last night and the Reds held on for a 2-1 win. Great effort from Bronson but pitching hasn't really been the problem recently. The problem for most of the second half and all of the 9 games since Adam Dunn was traded is offense. Since Adam Dunn was traded the Reds are averaging 3.1 runs per game. The Diamondbacks are averaging 6.6. But hey, the Reds haven't clogged the bases as much. Their OPS was .727 before the trade and .659 since the trade. So the Reds plan was, we are having trouble scoring runs, let get rid of the player who gets on base the most and drives in the most runs. Brilliant.

Now our two best OPS+ numbers belong to Encarncion, a 25-year old 3rd basemen who has yet to develop a solid hitting approach and plays sub-par defense, and Joey Votto, a 24-year old rookie who is still learning to be a big-league hitter and plays sub-par defense. Brandon Phillips has a great slugging percentage but refuses to take a walk, Keppinger and Bruce have come back to earth, Dickerson and Rosales have only been Reds for 20 minutes and don't get me started on Bako and Patterson. I don't know where the runs are coming from. Must be all that speed running our popflys. But I do feel better after receiving a letter from the owner and GM.

There is a new poll which should be interesting. Which fans are the most annoying: Cubs fans, Cardinal fans, or Red Sox fans? Let me give you a quick breakdown.

Cubs fans-these are people from all over the country who want to be cool. Most are "consultants" who are overeducated and underemployed. They claim to have always been a fan of the Cubs but few can name a manager before Dusty Baker and Sweet Lou came to town. They are loud, obnoxious, and generally piss everyone off who is not a Cubs fan. They are currently driving the second largest bandwagon in baseball and, if they fail to make the playoffs for a few years, will lose 50% of the fans. They wish they were as good as Boston or as historic as New York and have a real inferiority complex about being the "Second City." Most hated in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and any other Midwestern city

Cardinal fans-these fans are a fairly loyal bunch, having strong ties to Missouri, western KY, and southern IL. The real problem with them is they think they are the most knowledgeable fans in baseball even though there is no way to prove it. This leads to many of their fans saying asinine things that are totally wrong in order to show their baseball knowledge. When confronted with facts to back up the opposite point, they ignore it and scream louder. While Cubs fans wish they were on the east coast, Cardinal fans wish St. Louis was as good as Chicago. They have a Midwestern envy. Most hated in Chicago, KC, Cincinnati.

Red Sox fans-they are so touchy nowadays. As recently as 2003, they were the tortured losers with a devoted following whom everybody felt bad for and rooted for. Now they are the largest bandwagon of obnoxious and fair weather fans. They spend insane amounts of money to buy championship caliber teams and still wish they were the Yankees and had 26 titles. Always the 2nd most important team in baseball and they can't stand it. They get angry when someone questions their loyalty or passion(as evidenced by the comments from earlier posts) and fail to see the humor when called out about it. They have won 2 world series in the last 4 years and will be more then happy to tell anyone and everyone about it. Most hated everywhere but New England.

3 comments:

Drew said...

I'm going to resist retaliating from Boose hating the Cards. Really, Red's fans aren't worth getting worked up about.

But, the answer to your poll is pretty easy. No question it's Cubs fans. Really, I don't think they even qualify as fans. It's just a bunch of half hearted sports "fans" that were looking for a team to like so they started cheering for the Cubs because they are on TV everywhere. Or you have the yuppies who moved to Chicago and thought it was cool to go to Wrigley and like to say "Cubbies" so they hopped on the bandwagon. Sad part is, it can't even qualify as bandwagon jumping. The team actually has to win something for it to be qualified as hopping on the badwagon. So really the answer is simple. The worst fans in all of sports are Cubs fans. Case closed.

Grady said...

Drew, while I think you make a great point, cubs fans dont carry over to horrible bulls and bears fans. Same with St. Louis, no one is complaining about rams fans. But for the red Sox, I hate Pats and Celtics fans jsut as much as I hate Red Sox fans. So while Cub fans are horrible during baseball season, they take the offseason off while Boston fans NEVER stop.

Anonymous said...

Do you really think those Cub fans who take over your ballpark are latte drinking swells?

Those Cub fans that know nothing about baseball knew how to laugh when a divisional rival hired Dusty Baker. Amongst the reasons we loathed him were his batting of low obp clowns such as Patterson and Neifi Perez at the top of the order and his ridiculous pitch counts for young chuckers.

We'll continue to root for Dusty to finish out his contract and ruin the arms of Cueto and Volquez while turning Jay Bruce into the next Patterson