SAN FRANCISCO – Oracle Park is known as a pitcher-friendly ballpark with its spacious outfield, but it sure didn’t look that way for Cincinnati Reds lefty Mike Minor on Saturday.
Evan Longoria drilled a 414-foot homer that flew halfway up the bleachers in left field in the second inning. It was such a no-doubter that Reds left fielder Tommy Pham didn’t move from where he was standing on the outfield grass.
Two batters later, Thairo Estrada hit a slightly shorter 375-foot homer into the left-field seats. Things quickly spiraled for Minor and turned into a blowout 9-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants.
“Even in my worst years, I haven’t thrown this bad,” Minor said.
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Minor allowed three solo homers as his rough start to the season continued, raising his ERA to 7.71 through five starts. He’s given up 10 homers in 25 2/3 innings this season, the third-worst homer rate in the Majors among pitchers who have thrown at least 20 innings.
“I can look at film,” Minor said, “but I don’t want to because it looks so bad. It’s more about feel. Every time when I’m throwing the pitches, I can tell it’s not right. We’ve been changing it each week and it still doesn’t feel like it’s the right tempo or the right arm action. I’m trying everything when usually it just comes naturally. Baseball is kind of natural when you’re at this level. You kind of figure it out and right now I can’t.”
The Reds acquired Minor during spring training, their one trade that actually added to their payroll in a cost-cutting offseason because they knew they’d need a veteran to fill innings with several rookies competing for spots in the rotation. That calculation proved correct when Reiver Sanmartin and Vladimir Gutierrez struggled as starters, and Nick Lodolo went on the injured list.
The calculation that was incorrect, at least to this point, was Minor’s effectiveness as a starter. He’s made only five starts after he was sidelined for the first two months of the season with a shoulder strain, but he’s allowed at least four runs in four of them.
“He knows he’s good enough, and he knows he knows what he wants to do and what he needs to do,” Reds Manager David Bell said. “I think it’s very frustrating for him because he knows what he’s capable of doing.”
After pitching a scoreless first inning Saturday, benefitting from an inning-ending double play with runners on the corners, Minor surrendered at least one run in each inning for the remainder of his start. He was charged with six runs in five innings, surrendering eight hits and two walks.
There wasn’t a simple explanation for Minor’s issues Saturday in front of a sold-out crowd of 40,115. Two homers came off his fastball and another was on a curveball. Even left-handed batters had success against him, Joc Pederson homering to center in the fifth inning. Minor was the third Reds pitcher to allow three homers in a game at Oracle Park since the ballpark’s opening in 2000, joining Cory Lidle (Aug. 3, 2004) and Rob Bell (June 12, 2000).
When Minor was asked if his pitches were catching too much of the plate, he responded, “too much barrel.”
“The changeup is not very good at all, and that’s usually my best pitch,” Minor said. “It seems like every time I throw it, it’s in the middle of the plate and it’s not moving down and away like I want.”
Minor has been a little homer prone in his career, though that’s a sign of his durability, too. He gave up at least 25 homers in three of the last four seasons with the pandemic-shortened 2020 season as the exception.
This season, however, every time he feels like he’s making progress in one area, it’s a step backward in another.
“I felt pretty good before the game,” Minor said. “Then when I get out there, right away it’s guys on base and I’m trying to be quick and trying not to let the game speed up on me.”
The homers didn’t end with Minor. Wilmer Flores blasted a three-run homer off Reds reliever Jared Solomon in the sixth inning, which led to the Reds emptying their bench, and Reds infielder Brandon Drury hit a solo homer in the eighth. Drury is one homer shy of his career high.
The Reds produced only two hits in six innings against Giants ace Logan Webb, who struck out six.
“His sinker moves a lot,” Drury said of Webb. “It didn’t feel like the 92, 93 mph that the radar gun was saying. It felt harder. He was throwing a lot of changeups and sliders, so it was just hard to be on time for a sinker when he wasn’t throwing a lot of sinkers.”
The Reds scored an unearned run in the second inning when Nick Senzel dropped an RBI single into right field to score Mike Moustakas from second base. After the second inning, the Reds had only two runners reach second base.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism