Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy is in his 36th year of covering the Cincinnati Reds, the longest tenure for any active writer covering one team. Counting spring training and postseason games, McCoy has covered more than 7,000 major-league baseball games, written close to 18,000 baseball stories and eaten enough hot dogs to give Babe Ruth indigestion.Home > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2008 > May > 13
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Keppinger fractures knee
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad news.
Shortstop Jeff Keppinger fractured his left knee in the second inning Tuesday night. X-rays showed the fracture and he’ll undergo a more detailed MRI Wednesday morning.
Keppinger fouled a ball off the knee in the second inning and gamely remained in the game, but left after the third inning.
That leaves the Reds with two broken-kneed shortstops. Alex Gonzalez has missed all season with a broken left knee.
The loss is disastrous to the Reds because Keppinger was, by far, the most efficient, productive and enthusiastic participant - witness his playing an inning on the fractured knee.
Her was hitting .320 with three homers and 20 RBIs after going 8 for 12 in a three-games series in New York.
Jerry Hairston Jr. took over at shortstop and at the moment is the natural replacement for Keppinger.
But the Reds most likely will call up shortstop Paul Janish from Class AAA Louisville, where he is hitting .289, but has no major-league experience.
The Reds have made no announcement, but Janish was pulled from the Louisville lineup tonight after he batted twice and drove in two runs against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
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What’s a team to do?
Let’s forget Josh Hamilton, OK? Yes, he is good. Damn good. He is the hottest thing in Texas this side of a branding iron.
But he’s gone. He is no longer with the Cincinnati Reds.
Concentrate on what the Reds received in the trade - arguably the best pitcher in baseball right now. Edinson Volquez IS the branding iron.
The Reds traded Hamilton for him and received exactly what they hoped they’d get. Except they got more.
I get message after message: “Why didn’t the Reds trade Adam Dunn for him? Why didn’t the Reds trade Ken Griffey Jr. for him?”
Plain and simple. The Texas Rangers did not want Adam Dunn. They did not want Ken Griffey Jr. They wanted Josh Hamilton and Josh Hamilton only. To get Volquez, that’s what the Reds had to give up.
Everybody always proposes outlandish trades. If they are Reds fans, they want to dump the malingerers and malcontents and miscasts onto another team for that team’s best players.
Let’s trade Corey Patterson and Scott Hatteberg and Javier Valentin to Houston for Lance Berkman. Yeah, right. Houston is going to say, “OK, and we’ll throw the Alamo into the deal, too.”
That’s why Hamilton is gone and that’s why Volquez is here, dazzling the baseball world with 95 miles an hour fastballs and deceptive change-ups that wrap hitters into human pretzels, with or without mustard.
He was at it again Tuesday night against the first-place Florida Marlins, who tried to approach him as if their bats were sticks and they were trying to beat a snake.
He went six innings, slowed only by his pitch count of 110, giving up one run (as always) on seven hits. He has made eight starts this year and given up one or fewer runs in all eight - the first pitcher to do that since Oakland’s Mike Norris in 1980.
“That’s some big-time company there,” said manager Dusty Baker. “What I like about Volquez is his will to win. He wills himself to win.”
His changeup doesn’t hurt, either.
His only real problem was the fifth inning when the Marlins scored one and had the bases loaded with two outs, and were down only 3-1. Dan Uggla, arguably Florida’s best hitter right now, went down swinging.
“Probably my best pitch of the night,” said Volquez. “A changeup.”
Speaking of problems, the Reds are likely to be missing shorstop Jeff Keppinger for a long time - too long. He fractured his left knee in the second inning when he fouled a ball off it.
Tough customer that he is, he played for another two innings, without crutches, before he told Baker, “No more. I can’t go any longer.”
An X-ray revealed the fracture and an MRI Wednesday will show how serious it is.
“That’s a big loss, a big-time loss,” said Baker. “You have two choices. You can feel sorry for yourself or you can figure out a way to get the job done.”
A call was immediately placed to Louisville and shortstop Paul Janish, who had two hits in two at-bats and two RBIs, was immediately pulled from the game. He is hitting .293.
Tlhe Reds would admit that Janish is coming up, but Baker said, “He is a top candidate. He is a slick fielder, a real slick fielder. And he has some pop in his bat, especially on high fastballs.”
So what does a last-place team do when it loses its best players?
With one-fourth of the season gone and three-fourths dead ahead, we shall see, won’t we?
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Stories from the clubhouse
It wasn’t Ken Griffey Sr. being a Little League dad. He didn’t rush to Cincinnati from Orlando on Tuesday because he heard his kid wasn’t playing.
In fact, Senior didn’t know it when he walked through the clubhouse door and said, “I’m here to straighten out my kid. He has a lot on his head.”
Indeed he does. There is the death of his best friend, Frank King, dead from cancer at 38. There is the constant talk of a possible trade to Seattle. And there was the dropped fly ball Monday that let in two runs — and a nearly dropped deep drive on the next play that popped out of his glove. Griffey stabbed that one barehanded and said, “That catch was from my days as a Moeller High School wide receiver.
“If I had dropped that one I would have thrown my glove into the stands and played barehanded,” he added. “On the one I dropped, I was just trying to protect myself. I saw (second baseman) Brandon Phillips go down to the ground to get out of my way and I flinched. I thought I was going to have to jump over him.”
Griffey was not in Tuesday’s lineup, but manager Dusty Baker said it had nothing to do with the fly-ball difficulties. It was planned.
“He’s played almost every game,” said Baker. “He played the doubleheader Saturday in New York, then played the day game afterward on Sunday and played Monday night.”
Said Griffey, “I was supposed to have one of the doubleheader games off, but when we lost the first one I stayed in. Dusty told me I’d get tonight off.”
Of the drop and near-drop, Baker said, “He’s human. Plus he took his eye off it when he saw Phillips coming at him. That only happened because of Brandon’s range. Most second basemen wouldn’t ever have been out there. I’d rather have too many in the area than too few.”
Speaking of Phillips, he is completely bald. No hair. The Mohawk he sported in spring training and the first month-and-a-half of the season is gone.
“Got tired of getting haircuts,” he said. “Not used to that.”
And there was a cool reunion during batting practice between former Reds pitchers who pitched together on the 1994 team and hadn’t seen each other since.
Steve Foster is now bullpen coach for the Florida Marlins and he was walking on the field when a voice yelled, “Hey, Steve. It’s me. Kevin Jarvis.”
Jarvis, after 12 years in the majors with 10 different teams, is now a scout with the Diamondbacks.
“Steve got hurt in 1994, but I’ll never forget how he helped me by talking to me, and after he left the Reds he sent me e-mails and letters of encouragement telling me how proud he was of me.”
Of his career, Jarvis said, “Somebody told me only 10 players pitched for 10 or more different teams and I was one of them. That’s pretty neat. And I pitched a year in Japan. My last game was for the Red Sox against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium and it doesn’t get much better than that.”
Foster has a book out entitled “Lesson from Little League and Life” and he proudly presented me with a signed copy.
Foster was an up-and-coming pitcher until — true story — he hurt his arm throwing at milk bottles on the Johnny Carson TV show.
And Foster was involved in one of my all-time favorite baseball stories. He had never been out of the country when he went to Montreal with the Reds. At Canadian customs he was asked, “Do you have anything to declare?” Flustered with the question, Foster said with conviction, “Yes sire, I’m proud to be an American.” The agent was not pleased with that answer.
Foster’s father, who helped with the book, is a former newspaper editor and Foster himself lives by the principles of the word of God.
Good people.
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With apologies to all
Do I owe Corey Patterson an apology? Do we all owe Corey Patterson an apology? For one day? Yes.
The guy was a one-man sewing machine Monday night, piecing together four hits, including a bunt single to start a four-run rally in the seventh that won the game.
Biggest thing, thugh, was that he didn’t get picked off base or make a funky baserunning blunder. For that he gets the Safe Auto Award.
And for those who prefer Ryan Freel over Patterson, while Freel hustles every step on a baseball field and isn’t afraid to dirty his uniform front and leave lacerations on his chest, his several baserunning blunders and misguided attempts at diving catches are what makes the coaching staff leery of him.
Of course, Freel isn’t the Lone Ranger with his baserunning adventures. He has plenty of Tontos.
And everybody in the world owes Jeff Keppinger an apology. Keppinger was trapped in his own body, a small body, one that scouts like to call too small to be a regular in the majors.
The Pirates drafted him and included him in a trade that also sent pitcher Kris Benson to the New York Mets. Benson was the centerpiece and Keppinger was what they call a throw-in.
He played 33 games for the 2004 Mets and hit .284. Not good enough. They traded him to Kansas City for Ruben Gotay in July, 2006. Go-who?
Kansas City needs baseball players like a street person needs quarters, but they didn’t see anything in Keppinger, either, and traded him to the Reds in January, 2007. The price? A pitcher named Russ Haltiwanger.
As trades go, this drew about as much attention as a white Chevy in a parking lot. This was no BMW or Mercedes. Not at the time. There was not even a story in the Dayton Daily News. It was one line in ‘Transactions’ with the thought, “If it only took Haltiwanger to get this guy, he can’t be much.”
Give credit to fired GM Wayne Krivsky for this one, but even he didn’t know what he was getting.
He thought he was getting a back-up infielder who can hit a little bit.
Then Alex Gonzalez (Anybody remember him?) turned into a bad signing. He was in-and-out of last year’s lineup due to injuries and a life-threatening illness to his son. Keppinger stepped in and hit .332 in 241 at-bats.
A fluke? Too short of a sampling?
Well, Gonzalez, due to a wounded knee, hasn’t played all year and Keppinger has played every game but one at an All-Star pace. Oh, he won’t be an All-Star, but he is a star. In addition to hitting like Pete Rose, he is fielding his position with proficiency.
That’s the other thing they (it is always ‘they.’ Just who are ‘they?’) said. He can’t play shortstop? Yes, he can.
He had seven straight hits in New York, he hit a tie-breaking two-run homer Monday against the Marlins in the 8-7 victory.
As far as I’m concerned, they can bury Alex Gonzalez at Wounded Knee. He’s a good player, a good shortstop, but he is no Jeff Keppinger. And what scout wou,d ever say that?
