CINCINNATI – With his National League team trailing 1-0 late in the 2010 All-Star Game, Scott Rolen hit a leadoff single and then went from first to third on Matt Holliday’s single.
Rollin’s Reds teammate at the time, Brandon Phillips, was wearing a broadcast microphone and was heard saying, “That’s what we do in Cincinnati. We go first to third.”
Rolen, acquired at the trade deadline the previous year, is credited with powering that team’s aggressive base run. Rolen wasn’t the fastest player, but he was tough and smart.
Phillips, Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, and all the young Reds of the era have spoken, then and later, of how Roland was the missing piece to this team, the one who taught a talented young team how to be a winner.
Rollin, who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday, has influenced another talented young Reds team even more than a decade after his last game.
Reds manager David Bell watched Rolen’s press conference after his election in January and part of it was interrupted. While Rollin was talking about the way he plays, he said the Phillies stressed defense and the ball when he was in the minor leagues.
“They used to say baserunning is who you are, that’s who you are,” Rollin said. “That’s the nature of your character as a human being on the field, and I’m very proud of that.”
He hung it out with first-year head coach Colin Coghill, who oversees the team’s core performance.
“D.B. said it at our first spring training meeting, and I clearly loved it,” said Coghill. “I asked him where he heard that and he sent me a link.”
At the beginning of spring, each coach gave a presentation to the entire team. Pitching coach Derek Johnson explained the team’s philosophy, not just to the pitchers and catchers, but to the entire team.
Coghill showed the players a clip of Rollin’.
“The thing that gets forgotten is the simple running,” said quarterback TJ Friedel. “People forget how taking that extra 90 feet affects the game until you see it. Like a ball in the dirt in San Diego in one game, I had to get into the scoring position. Those are the little things this team has done well this year.”
Going into Sunday, the Reds are fifth in baseball in extra bases, at 47 percent. In 2010, the Reds led the league in field goal percentage at 46 percent and led the National League in runs scored per run (4.88).
Bruce said he remembers Rollin coming to him before every game and telling him softly, “Bruce, I need you at number three today.” This was something Bruce did a lot that year, as he finished second in baseball in extra bases with 66 percent.
“He’s right, it’s personal. It doesn’t take talent to run from first to third, and it doesn’t. It takes anticipation, it takes understanding the players on the field, understanding the score,” Bruce said. “When you do that, you have a better understanding of the game and where you stand at the moment and what you’re supposed to be doing. This creates a better baseball player because you are more in tune.”
Bell never played for Rollin, but followed him as the Phillies’ starting third baseman after Rollin went to St. Louis. Bell was a minor league manager for the Reds during Rollin’s tenure in Cincinnati and got to see the future Hall of Famer’s influence up close.
“If you’re focused and your only goal is to win a baseball game, you’ll find a way to be a good first baseman,” Bell said. “It’s a great way to play the game and I think he summed it up really well.”
Refresher days
With Cristian Encarnacion-Strand in the big leagues, the Reds have 10 center players in strikeouts a day and only nine center fielders.
During the first week of the Encarnacion Strand, what Bell did was alternate a day off for one of these players each day.
Spencer Steer had the day off on Monday, followed by Encarnacion Strand the next day. Wednesday was Jonathan India’s first day off of the season, followed by Tyler Stevenson on Thursday, TJ Friedel on Friday, Eli de la Cruz on Saturday, and Joy Voto on Sunday.
Several times during the week, a player who was not in the starting lineup came into the match as a substitute. Encarnacion Strand recorded his first career hit, a home run, as a batter on Tuesday. On Saturday, Elly De La Cruz entered the game as a pinch runner at third base and scored an insurance push on the boxer to first.
De la Cruz led Sunday’s game with a home run.
“The hard part is we have to give someone a day, someone good every day,” Bell said. “Our guys did a great job dealing with that, using the day to stay prepared, but to work on things, just the things you can’t do when you start a game.”
Bell said there is a mental difference between a team and a player’s rest day. Although spending a day out of the lineup is less work and can be less mentally exhausting than being in the lineup, there is still physical work to be done.
“A day off can really refresh you,” Bell said of de la Cruz. “This is how it looked today.”
He is not alone. All six players taken off this week got hit and scored in their next game. De La Cruz and Friedl rotated and grouped together to score 9-for-23 (. 391) in their first game after the day off.
Deadline for signing
The deadline for signing the draft is Tuesday. So far the Reds have signed their first 17 draft picks, with only three picks coming from junior college, and a high school pick remaining unsigned.
Surprise may not be the best word, but the biggest signing was right-handed coach Cole Schoenwetter, the team’s fourth-round pick. Schoenewetter signed a $1.9 million bonus. The value of the slot for selection was $640,300, which tells you what the Reds thought about Schoenwetter.
the athleteKeith Law was the 69th overall pick in the draft, stating, “The draft fastball and curveball will end up in overdrive, and a change isn’t too far away.”
Schoenwetter was a UC Santa Barbara commitment. In 2013, the Reds drafted Tyler Mahley in the seventh round and gave him a $250,000 bonus, roughly $100,000 on the slot, to get him out of his commitment to UCSB. That worked for the Gauchos, though Mahle’s absence created a walking void named Shane Bieber.
The Reds are already over their draft pool cap, but they can still spend some money and suffer just fines without losing draft picks.
perdomo gesture
Diamondbacks shortstop Geraldo Perdomo asked his manager before Friday’s series opener if he could bring out the lineup card for a pregame exchange so he could say something to Bell.
Perdomo, 23, signed with the Diamondbacks as a 16-year-old from the Dominican Republic in 2016 and was close to Bell’s brother, Mike Bell, who served as the Diamondbacks’ head of player development from 2011 to 2019. Mike Bell, who reached the big leagues as a player with the Reds in 2000, passed away in 2021.
The fact that Perdomo, who had formed a relationship with the rest of the Bell family, affected David Bell.
“He turned into a great player, but what a great guy he is,” Bell said of Perdomo. “He was great at keeping in touch with our family. Mike made such a huge difference to him in his life and career and he definitely didn’t forget him. He kept in touch and we built a really special relationship without seeing him much. He did that with our whole family.”
week that was
The Reds lost their first two games of the week, extending their losing streak to six games. The team finished the week with a five-game winning streak, splitting the series with the Giants and then sweeping the Diamondbacks. While the Reds are now half a game behind the Brewers in the National League Central standings, they lead the wild card standings, half a game ahead of the Diamondbacks and Giants.
next week
The Reds have a chance to restore the NL Central’s three-game lead in Milwaukee. The Brewers have already won the season series, taking eight of the first 10 games between the two clubs. Brewers pitchers held the Reds scoreless for 28 consecutive innings during the two series that earned the All-Star break. The two best teams in the division will not face each other again after this week. Tuesday’s game will be a game to watch with Reds lefty Andrew Abbott taking on Brewers champion Corbin Burns. The Reds then head to Los Angeles for three games after the day off on Thursday.
Injury updates
• RHP Tejay Antone (right elbow strain) will make a rehab appearance for the Arizona Complex League team on Tuesday.
• If Kevin Newman (gastritis) improves he qualifies for activation on Monday. He can also go on a triple A rehab assignment, or be drafted into Triple A.
Minor League Report
• Triple-A Louisville (51-43) – In his first 10 games after being demoted to Triple A, SS Jose Barrero was 5-for-42 (. 119) with 18 strikeouts. Barrero has had a hit every game since until he went 0-for-2 and reached base after being hit on Sunday, snapping a 16-game hitting streak. 407 through the streak. Of his 24 hits during the streak, 13 went for extra bases, including five home runs. On the season, he now hit .282/.372/.583 in 27 games at Louisville.
• Double A Chattanooga (40-49) – Rece Hinds had a slow start to the season, hitting .194/.231/.373 with four guards through his first 35 games of the season. He also struck out 61 times and walked only six times in 143 plate appearances during that span. In 35 games after that, including Saturday’s three-hit game, he hit .349/.423/.721 with 10 homers (and 26 extra base hits) with 45 strikeouts and 14 walks over 149 plate appearances.
• Hi A Dayton (45-45) – C Cade Hunter, a fifth-round draft pick from Virginia Tech last year, had a nice first appearance in his first week at High A. He started three games from behind the plate, one as a DH and then in left field on Sunday.
• Class A Daytona (40-47) – Carlos Jorge scored for the course on Friday, hitting a triple in the first inning, a homer in the third inning, a double in the fifth inning, and a single in the eighth inning. Friday night was his first start of the season in center field. He mostly played second base this season. The 19-year-old has been in a bit of a slump this month, hitting just . 171 in 11 games before Friday. He had more walks (eight) than strikeouts (seven) during this stretch. Jorge was still hitting .288/.390/.474 with eight homers and 29 stolen bases this season after Friday’s game.
(Top photo of Scott Rolen circling second base on Opening Day 2011: John Grieshop/MLB via Getty Images)
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