Let’s get this out of the way immediately here - this was an ugly, ugly game from the Cincinnati Reds today. Bad defense, baserunning gaffes, an injury, a rare poor Luis Castillo start, and the St. Louis Cardinals made them pay. For the most part, this will hopefully just go down as one lone loss on the season-long ledger, but man, it sure won’t go down as one they’ll want to watch a lot of again.
That said, the bats did finally come alive, a welcome change from how the 2020 season fizzled. Chief among them was Nick Castellanos, who socked an early homer and later added a double and a single, too, picking up on the white-hot start he had to last season.