I opened my New York Times Sports Sunday section yesterday to find an informational graphic on the bottom of page 3 called “Close-Up: Strikeout Kings.” (I was going to link to it, but The Times isn’t providing a version of it online — thus the crappy photo at right, which gets bigger if you click on it.)

The graphic featured a photo of Reds centerfielder Drew Stubbs sitting on the ground, a grimace overtaking his face after apparently being thrown out while trying to steal second base; a table of stats that included the offensive numbers of strikeout-prone hitters Stubbs, former Red Adam Dunn, Mark Reynolds, Ryan Howard and Jack Cust; and a paragraph across the bottom of the graphic entitled “One of These Players Is Not Like the Others.”

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I've never been to a Dayton Dragons game. In fact, I've never been to a minor-league baseball game anywhere — a surprising fact for a lifelong connoisseur of the sport, someone who religiously collected baseball cards and played his fair share of Strat-o-Matic as a kid, someone who currently manages two fantasy baseball teams quite deftly (eight top two West Side Baseball finishes in nine years!).

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Jay Bruce hit .234 with two home runs in his first 77 at-bats through April 25. At the time I asked, “Will the Real Jay Bruce Please Stand Up?” Six weeks later the Reds’ right fielder is hitting .292 with an NL-leading 17 home runs and 46 RBI.

I guess he answered my question. Or has he?

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After a hot start, the Reds have lost eight of 11 and each of the last three series. It's not a good time to be falling flat — the surging Milwaukee Brewers host the Reds tonight, opening what could be a key, pysche-altering three-game series.

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The Reds opened the 2011 season with a three-game spanking of the Milwaukee Brewers, a flawed team that was being pimped as much more than that by people who should know better. The Reds’ other so-called Central Division contenders, the St. Louis Cardinals, didn’t look much better than the Brewers, losing two of three to the revamped (as in lone power source Adrian Gonzalez is gone) San Diego Padres. (The snake-bitten Cards also lost outfielder/key offensive cog Matt Holliday for an undetermined period with an emergency appendectomy.)

One weekend does not make a season, but it’s beginning to look like 2010 all over again.

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What's up with the presumed opening-day starters for the three NL Central Division favorites? First the Cardinals Adam Wainwright goes down with a bum elbow that required season-ending Tommy John surgery. Then the Reds Edinson Volquez, whom manager Dusty Baker oddly anointed as the opening-day starter before spring training even opened, was thrown off course with visa issues relating to his positive drug test from last year. And now the Brewers newly acquired ace, Zack Greinke, breaks a rib while playing in a pick-up basketball game.

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MLB network has been doing its top 10 right now at each position. “Right now” means right now, as in 2011. Track records no doubt come into play, but the lists are based on whom the network’s “editors” — let’s hope that doesn’t include Harold Reynolds who, though a nice guy, isn’t known for employing incisive analysis — deem to be the best players going into this season.

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Get up-to-the-minute info on today's Opening Day festivities from our media partners at WCPO.com, including the latest weather forecast, traffic conditions, season preview and a poll asking what makes Opening Day so great.

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Like many Cincinnatians, I put patriotism in the reds. If you don’t love the Redlegs, according to the mantra of the city, you will be placed in the Dante’s layer of hell, which entails being eternally stuck in the mud and stung by wasps. But due to this phenomenon, attending a game at Great American Ball Park can feel like a revival, or an Obama speech.

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Sometimes as nicely as you'd like to put things it is hard to maintain a professional, calm and reserved style when communicating about it. When Reds announcers and many others described Shea stadium as "a dump" when it was limping in the direction of euthanasia, I knew what they meant but didn't agree that it was that terrible.

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