Thryce Harper sinks Reds with dingers in Phillies win

One of them was worth four points. Four points!

Bryce Harper wanted to make sure that Graham Ashcraft didn’t feel too bad for the pair of homers the former swatted off the latter in Tuesday’s rainy game between the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies. So, he took it out on Brent Suter, swatting a grand slam off the Reds lefty to put the second game of the series effectively on ice for the home team.

Harper socked a trio of dingers and drove in 6 runs on the night, leading the Phils past the Reds in a chilly, wet game by the tune of 9-4. It was an ugly game, too - the Reds committed 4 errors on the night (including a pair of crucial ones by shortstop Elly De La Cruz that were seemingly unforced).

Hopefully, this was nothing more than a game that we’ll look directly past as the Reds march on this season. A growing experience, perhaps, but there’s also a chance it was just damn cold, damn wet, and nothing wen their way after back to back days of the Baseball Gods being firmly on their side.

For the Elly haters, though, this one might hang in the Louvre. It was merely a 2-1 game when his first costly error altered play. He threw wide of 1B Christian Encarnacion-Strand with 2-out on an otherwise routine grounder that would have gotten the Reds out of the 6th inning unscathed, and the wheels promptly fell off soon after. His second error - an ill-timed and ill-fated flip to 2B Jonathan India with his glove - was the kind of thing that you simply cannot have, either.

A loss. A bad loss, but a loss, something they’ll hopefully experience another 60 or so times this season.

Tony Graphanino

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[Link to FanGraphs WPA chart & box score]

Other Notes

• Graham Ashcraft was mostly awesome on the day aside from his matchups with Harper (and his own throwing error). He was pitch efficient and induced some weak contact, non-Harper edition. His final line: 6.0 IP, 4 H, 3 R (2 ER), BB, 5 K on 85 pitches.
• Spencer Steer had another 3-hit game while in the #7 spot. Move him the hell up in the order, Dave.
• The game between the Phillies and Reds tomorrow that was previously scheduled for 1:05 PM ET has been bumped to a 4:05 PM ET start time due to the tremendous amount of bad weather in the forecast.
• Frankie Montas and Zack Wheeler will do the pitching when these two clubs do get on the field tomorrow in a matchup of each team’s Opening Day starters on their second turns of the year.
• Tunes.