Friday, August 16, 2002
No fear, just strikeouts
Randy Johnson is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate and his left arm is 40 feet long. If you bat left-handed, it's longer than that. If you hit lefty, you can shake The Big Unit's hand on his follow-through.
Before the game Thursday, a few Reds considered this notion and declared themselves unimpressed.
“We're making a mountain out of a molehill,” outfielder Adam Dunn decided.
“You're absolutely right,” second baseman Todd Walker said. “This same conversation went on every time we faced Pedro (Martinez, Boston's equally impressive right-hander).”
Walker played three-plus years in Minnesota and saw a lot of Martinez. “You get in there and it's not that bad.”
“See the son of a (buck) and hit it,” Dunn said. “Or try.”
At this point, it's instructive to note the molehill struck out nine Reds through the first six innings while allowing one hit and one runner past first base. He went eight innings total, allowing just two hits. Only one of those left the infield. The Unit led 6-1 in the sixth, when the Reds sent up Juan Castro to pinch-hit against him, which seemed more like human sacrifice than baseball.
“Be real positive and real aggressive,” was Reds bench coach Ray Knight's pre-game tip for hitting the Unit. “Go up there swinging. Get three good hacks, don't let him put you in a hole.”
Or you could “be patient and selective,” manager Bob Boone said. “Don't chase the slider down and in.”
If neither of those suggestions work, you could always duck.
Johnson is one of those people who makes you ponder another line of work. He throws 90 mph sliders that break 5 feet and 98 mph fastballs that shave your chin better than a blade. He's still 6-foot-10, with the face of a prehistoric bird. The only reason he doesn't terrify hitters as much as he used to is he's not wild anymore.
Intimidation is a pitcher who throws 98. Fear is a pitcher who throws 98 and doesn't know where it's going.
The Reds needed this game. After losing the first two to the Diamondbacks, against the likes of Rick Helling and Brian Anderson, they needed to show they could beat a team not named Milwaukee or San Diego.
You were pretty sure they wouldn't make that leap by the fifth inning Thursday, when Steve Finley's long fly ball soared over the right-field wall. The three-run homer made it 5-1 Diamondbacks. Iowa will slide into the Atlantic Ocean the next time the Reds get six runs off Randy Johnson.
In a three-game showdown against the NL's second-best team, the Reds were never especially relevant. They lost the series by a combined score of 20-5.
The talent - and payroll - divide between teams contending for a championship and teams that would like to has never been more obvious. Unless in the next week there is a series against Pittsburgh or the Cubs we don't know about, the Reds are staring down a dark hallway.
Johnson came into the game having fanned 67 Reds in 43 innings. On Thursday, he worked an 0-2 count on nine of the first 13 hitters.
Brandon Larson was the only Red who made the Unit look hittable, smacking a solo homer off him. Before the game, Larson said the only time he'd faced Johnson “was on my PlayStation. I struck out three times.”
By the time Cincinnati touched Johnson for its second run - on an error, an infield hit and two hit batters - the Big Unit had rung up 10 strikeouts in a game for the fourth consecutive start, 12th time this season and 183rd time of his career.
Meanwhile, St. Louis won, Scott Sullivan went to the disabled list, Junior Griffey played only six innings and Houston comes in for four beginning tonight.
Someone asked Boone what the three mismatches said about his team. “This stretch (against contenders) is going to define what our team is,” he said. “We're not going to find out until the fat lady sings.”
Dunn said it better. “We better play better,” he said, “or we're not in the race no more.”
E-mail Paul Daugherty at pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty
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DAUGHERTY: No fear, just strikeouts
