The Cincinnati Reds will take on the Atlanta Braves in game one of the NL Wild Card Series, stream all the action here.
The MLB Playoffs are here! In the NL Wild Card Series, we have the Cincinnati Reds taking on the Atlanta Braves on Tuesday afternoon.
The Reds will send out right-hander Trevor Bauer to the mound and the Braves will give Max Fried the nod on Tuesday.
Can Trevor Bauer and the Reds compete with the Braves offense in the NLWC? Tune in and find out, everything you need to know to follow the MLB action today and this week.
MLB odds courtesy of BetMGM Sportsbook. Odds last updated Wednesday at 8:20 a.m. ET.
Cincinnati Reds (+120) vs Atlanta Braves (-134)
Over/Under: 7.5 (-110)
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Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer has Cincinnati in the playoffs for the first time in seven years, but he’s not exactly pleased with the crowd setup for the Wild Card series against the Braves.
MLB will begin its expanded postseason this week. Though most of the playoffs will be played at bubble sites in Texas and California, the best-of-three Wild Card matchups will be played at the home stadiums of the better seed.
MLB reached an agreement with the players to allow family members at the bubble sites (after a seven-day quarantine that many have already started) in Arlington, Houston, San Diego and Los Angeles. However, in an effort to cut down on family travel, only family members of the home team will be at the Wild Card games before the postseason moves to bubbles for the Division Series and beyond.
Bauer had a problem with that.
Home team: family members can attend the games. Visiting team: family members cannot attend the games. @mlb: Yup! Checks out!
Guess we didn’t win enough games this year to earn the right for our family to watch us play. Sorry Mom and Dad!
The Reds ace took to Twitter and lashed out at the MLB policy, framing it as a rule that made no sense. But again, there was a reason behind it. To be part of MLB’s bubble, families need to quarantine — the added travel would complicate it.
For obvious financial reasons, the league is doing all it can to not let the coronavirus pandemic jeopardize the postseason. So, the risk involved of having family members travel from Cincinnati to Atlanta to the bubble site was not something MLB was willing to entertain.
And the simple response was right there in Bauer’s tweet: If the Reds wanted to play the first round in front of their families, they should have won more games. It’s that simple.
Plus, let’s not overlook the added motivation of being able to beat another team exclusively in front that opponent’s families. You’d have to take satisfaction in that.
The Red and Braves will open their series on Wednesday at noon Eastern.
Add one more thing to that list: on Monday, he struck out a Milwaukee Brewers hitter and mimed chugging a beer. He also drew “BUDS” into the mound dirt with his foot.
What’s up with that? Well, it all started with a Bauer tweet: earlier this month, Bauer saw his teammate Sonny Gray had set a Reds record by striking out 45 hitters through five appearances in 2020. He tweeted, “hold my beer,” indicating he would try to best that:
Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Trevor Bauer had a fun idea on Wednesday and since he plays in Major League Baseball, a league that is generally anti-fun, he wasn’t allowed to wear a pair of cleats that said “Free Joe Kelly” on them or he would face some strict punishments.
Apparently wearing those cleats is worse than cheating your way to a World Series, which the Astros did in 2017 but then didn’t have any of their players punished at all.
MLB is allowing players to put whatever they want on their cleats this season as long as its not offensive or political.
Bauer wanted to wear his cleats in tribute to Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly, who was suspended for throwing at the Astros earlier this year.
But apparently that was deemed to be very bad by MLB and not allowed. The league, according to Bauer and ESPN, threatened to eject him from the game if he wore them.
Bauer provided details after the game:
For everyone wondering why I didn’t wear the cleats tonight, @MLB threatened to eject me and suspend me and levy unprecedented fines against me if I did. I couldn’t put my teammates at risk like that. Earlier this year, MLB said players could put whatever they wanted on their
cheating your way to a World Series = no ejection/suspension/fine…y’all really know how to pick your battles…🙄 learned my lesson though. Fun is bad, cheating is good. Won’t make the same mistake twice, can promise you that 👊🏻👊🏻 pic.twitter.com/Tyh0JdjJZv
And the moment you've all been waiting for…..here's a look at my cleats for tonight's start. FREE JOE KELLY! If you want to be eligible for a chance to win these, see next tweet for details. pic.twitter.com/WR0LrNpgCC
Proceeds made from the cleats were going to go to Kelly’s favorite charity so hopefully MLB will just donate a bunch of money to make up for it’s lameness.
After Reds-Tigers already had their game time moved, the game was postponed after pitchers warmed up, and Bauer was furious.
The Cincinnati Reds were scheduled to take on the Detroit Tigers on Saturday evening, but with rain in the forecast, they moved the game to earlier in the afternoon to try and get it in. Then, just minutes before the first pitch, the game was delayed due to rain, and then later postponed.
Players weren’t happy, as they went through full warmups — with pitchers getting their arms loose — before the rain started at 1 p.m., and the tarp rolled out just ten minutes before the scheduled 1:10 first pitch. Rain came down violently for the next hour, and at 2:05 p.m. the game was postponed.
Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer was especially livid, and took to Twitter to express his anger, tagging MLB in the second tweet:
Postpone the game before starters start throwing or play through it. You can’t postpone a game 8 minutes before it’s supposed to start. Just because it’s a shortened season doesn’t mean you can change all the rules all of a sudden. Figure it the f*** out. First you move the damn
Game up 5 hours the day before. Then you let starters get hot for the game and then delay it 8 minutes before game time. Never in my ten year career have I seen something so amateur. Not in the minor leagues. Not in the big leagues. Never saw it even in college. @MLB
MLB has already dealt with a rash of postponements due to positive COVID-19 tests for teams, and with no fans in attendance, clearly doing all they can to try and get these games in — thus moving the first pitch of this game up five hours to try and beat the rain, then not rolling out the tarp until ten minutes before the rescheduled start of the game.
It’s understandable what they’re doing, but that doesn’t help the teams’ pitchers who now arguably have to rest their arms a few days of an already shortened season.
The latest ploy by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was called out as such in about three hours. The owners aren’t understanding the moment.
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Major League Baseball is currently locked in an ugly battle over the delayed start of the season, with players and owners disagreeing on just about everything. Length of season, salary, safety procedures … you name it, they disagree.
I won’t go into the whole history of all this, because I’d need about 5,000 words to do so, but the main gist is: The owners want a shortened season to help cut costs, and they want to pay the players as little as possible. The players, health concerns aside, want to play, and want to get paid to do so.
He said this just five days after saying he was “100 percent” certain they’d get the season in.
It was a stunning statement, one that called into question all the reporting from the last week. Maybe the two sides wouldn’t get a deal done. Maybe they weren’t that close.
Though, just as quickly as Manfred said what he did, players (including Trevor Bauer, notably) took to social media and explained pretty bluntly what was going on here — The owners were trying to run the clock.
See: The owners want to play as few games as possible to fulfill TV contracts and season obligations before getting to the money-making playoffs. But with the two sides closing in on a deal too early, Bauer explained, Manfred needed to buy time. So Manfred gave an ominous interview implying the sides were far apart.
Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
It took a couple hours, but anyone closely following the negotiations saw Manfred’s statement in a new light. Twenty years ago, this doesn’t happen, but right now? Of course it does.
If a factor in these negotiations is trying to win over the public, MLB team owners are running an outdated playbook, and they’re getting worked right now.
Owners can’t just use cheap negotiating tactics, then leak stuff to reporters and get their story out there. Well, they can, but now players have a direct line to the fans in a way they never did before.
Years ago, Manfred would say the season was at risk of being called off. The newspapers would run the story the next day. A day later, an agent would leak it to a reporter that Manfred was using this as a negotiating tactic. Maybe the paper would run it in a column, and a day later some other reporters follow up. Manfred then had to be given the chance to respond.
Now it would have been a full week, and the public would be either uninformed of the entire thing or confused, and the owners had successfully run a week off negotiating time.
Now? It doesn’t work like that. Manfred says what he says. Two hours later players are on social media spreading a new narrative. It’s aggregated and parsed. By the time people are in bed, the story is shifted and they’re right back to where they were. No time bought at all, or at most, a few hours.
MLB owners have the money, so they have the power. Always. But young MLB players have a deeper understanding of this moment, and they’re using it to their advantage in these negotiations. They might not win, but they’re dominating in public opinion.
Tuesday’s Big Winners: Oklahoma State football players
Rob Ferguson-USA TODAY Sports
Hours after a photo of head coach Mike Gundy appeared showing him wearing an OAN t-shirt — a far-right “news” website favored by the president — OSU players threatened a mass boycott, speaking up quickly and forcefully against the coach. It might spell the end of his tenure there, and shows that players, when binding together, can enact real change.
Quick hits: Ezekiel Elliott, Vanessa Bryant, Star Wars
When the global coronavirus pandemic led to a shutdown of all U.S. professional sports, it appeared that MLB would be in a position to be one of the first sports to return.
Fast forward three months, and baseball might not return at all in 2020.
In a Monday interview with ESPN, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that he was “not confident” there would be a 2020 season — this came five days after Manfred said he was “100 percent” certain there would be baseball.
Over the course of those five days, the owners and MLBPA have exchanged proposal rejections and pointed statements. But it ultimately had the players telling the owners to tell them when and where to report for the season. In doing so, the MLBPA put Manfred and MLB in a position to either move forward with a season or basically be exposed in their efforts to play the lowest number of games (a money-saving move).
Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer — one of the more outspoken players amid these negotiations — broke down exactly what the owners were doing with Manfred’s latest remarks. He called out the stalling tactic in a Twitter thread.
isn’t it Rob? Because then you’d have to explain why you’re only going to impose 50 games when we could easily play 70+ right now. The tactic is to bluff with “no season” again and delay another 2-3 weeks until you clear the risk of “not negotiating in good faith by trying to
obvious to everyone what you were trying to do. And no one would think that was a “representative season” so you’d risk not getting your precious playoff money. Nope, can’t have that. So gotta make it more than that. But not too many…you’ve gone as high as about 55 games full
Be at least 4 off days in there…so that’s 64 days. Plus about 20 for spring training…84 days. Sept 27-84 days is July 5. Plus about a week to get players to spring training. So tack on another 7, that takes us to June 28. As I have it figured, that’s your deadline. But today
You’re holding a losing hand. Unfortunately, it’s a losing hand for everyone involved, not just you. There’s some saying out there about not killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Check it out on the ole google machine. It’s worth knowing.
“The Houston Astros: your home for illegitimate titles.”
There may not be any baseball right now, but that hasn’t stopped big leaguers from mocking the Houston Astros.
The global coronavirus pandemic has put nearly every U.S. professional sport on hold for the unforeseen future, and in MLB’s case, the sports stoppage came within the final weeks of spring training. This has forced players to find ways to remain in shape while a potential start to an abbreviated season gets negotiated with MLB owners.
Cincinnati Reds teammates Trevor Bauer and Derek Dietrich, though, have teamed up to remain sharp.
In a video for Momentum, Bauer and Dietrich went to an empty park in Arizona and held some Astros-inspired live batting practice. Basically, Bauer let Dietrich know of every pitch that was coming ahead of time — something Bauer actually did in a spring training game.
From the very beginning of the at-bat session, Bauer took a shot at the Astros. He said:
“Today’s live AB’s is brought to you by the Houston Astros. Every hitter is entitled to know exactly what pitch is coming, and I am allowed to lie and cheat my way to a championship. The Houston Astros: your home for illegitimate titles.”
And, of course, right before they made a trash-can joke, Dietrich finally took Bauer deep.
It is easier to hit when you know what’s coming, after all.
It’s easy to slip into negativity and frustration amid the coronavirus pandemic. But Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer managed to spin a negative into a positive on Saturday.
When Bauer realized ESPN accidentally leaked his phone number to the public, he decided to have fun with what he called a “massive screw up.” He announced on Twitter he was going to hold a giveaway, and he put the rules for the contest in his voicemail. Fans could call him and find out what they had to do to land his signed cleats and an autographed baseball during the 48 hours which followed his announcement on Twitter on Saturday.
Here’s a look at what he said.
So @espn has just leaked my number to truly the entire world lol in honor of this…shall we call it…massive screw up…I’m doing a giveaway! I’ll be giving away a pair of signed cleats and an autographed baseball over the next 48 hours. Rules are in my voicemail! Good luck! pic.twitter.com/luEqvwGtxW
We called the phone number on Sunday, but got a message from the wireless provider that the number was not available. If Bauer did indeed hold the actual giveaway, this is such a great turn of events, except for Bauer, who must have been forced to change his phone number (something pro athletes often do regularly anyway).
The sports landscape is awfully barren at the moment given the global coronavirus pandemic. March Madness is done. The NBA is on a hiatus. MLB called off spring training and delayed the start of its season.
With this unprecedented void in the sports world, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer decided to put together a sandlot-style pickup game for MLB players in Arizona. And the idea generated plenty of interest around the Cactus League.
On Saturday, Bauer got his fellow MLB players together for the pickup game — which appeared to be played with plastic bats and no fans (remember: social distancing!). But amid this tough time for sports fans, the baseball players still found time to roast the Houston Astros. And for that, we are grateful.
Trevor Bauer held a sandlot game with other MLB guys last night on @Watch_Momentum
The Astros Shame Tour Twitter account put together a supercut of all the Astros-mocking shenanigans from the game. It mostly consisted of making jokes about a trash can or using a trash can to relay pitches. But it was fun nonetheless.
This was a solid reminder that when the MLB season ultimately resumes, it’s not going to be pleasant for the Astros.
