Well the Reds opening weekend was about all we could realistically hope for, right?

Tyler Stephenson, Noelvi Marte and Ke’Bryan Hayes combined for zero hits, but Cincinnati won two out of three against what should be a good Boston Red Sox club.

Ely De La Cruz got on base but four times and struck out seven times, but he did hit a home run.

Spencer Steer was 1 for 11 with a pair of walks, and T.J. Friedl was 2 for 14 with six strikeouts.

But they won two out of three? Did I mention that?

Terry Francon’s club even won two (2) one-run games, a major bugaboo in recent seasons.

How did they do it?

Even with two of their top horses down, the starting rotation produced two good starts (and a bit of a clunker by Brady Singer that they won anyway).

Eugenio Suarez only had two hits, but he made the second one count by blasting a 3-run homer to left to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 victory Sunday.

Oh yeah, and Sal Stewart had seven hits in 10 at-bats, walked twice and hit his first homer of the season. He’s hitting .700 with an OPS of 2.069. He’s also on pace for 162 doubles, which would be a record for a single season.

He’s also 1-0 against line drives off the forearm so far (hopefully that remains his record the rest of the way).

Is there anything the rookie first baseman can’t do????

I don’t think he’s going to hit .700 all season, but he shouldn’t have to presuming some of those other guys get it going.

I also wouldn’t rule it out? He’s got a great approach and seems to bring that Pete Rose Love of Baseball to the ballpark every day.

I was bullish on this team already, and getting those close games is like found money early in the season the way they’ve hit the last few years.

This offense should be decent, and that will be more than enough with the pitching they have had (as long as no more starters go down).

Oh yeah, and I didn’t even mention Matt McLain was 4 for 10 with a double. He also walked four times so he was on base eight times in 14 plate appearances. I assumed all along he would have a bounce-back year, but now comes the matter of actually doing it.

So far, so good!

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“All we could realistically hope for” seems to be a theme of the discourse regarding both Ohio State basketball teams over the past week or so.

What is realistic?

Well, that is a discussion that deserves more than a bullet point in a newsletter (or maybe not if you’ve seen the clicks basketball stories get most places), but I think the answer is.. complicated.

On one hand, watching the NCAA Tournament confirmed the men’s team is not close to having the type of roster the Final Four teams do… but they did beat Purdue and Iowa. They gave Michigan, a bad matchup even at the admittance of Wolverines coach Dusty May, a pair of good games so perhaps talent is in the eye of the beholder.

Iowa in particular was the type of overachieving success story that Ohio State might need to be to get to the Elite Eight because striving to recreate the uber-talented early Thad Matta teams hasn’t worked for over a decade.

Or is that loser talk? I guess that’s a discussion worth having, but again realism gives me some pause.

I know for sure they can be better than they have been the last five or six years, but how much better? How consistently?

The women’s team has more talent but was just young. And yet they still were not in the league of UCLA, who will soon prove not to be in the league of UConn presumably.

But that’s why they play the games.

As mediocre as the men’s team has been over the past decade, the women’s team has seemed to be just a step away from elite many times in the past 20 years.

Can they ever get there? Maybe this is as good a chance if they keep together the roster they had last season and add a couple more, but I also have no idea how realistic doing that actually is.

How do you feel with a little more time to think about it?

The men’s team is already displaying the difficulty of keeping a team together as Devin Royal plans to enter the transfer portal according to multiple reports.

The wildest thing about that is it doesn’t really come as a surprise. Not only has he been recruited over, today’s economic realities mean becoming a sixth man as a senior (behind incoming McDonald’s All-American Anthony Thompson) is not only a shot to the ego but the wallet.

Maybe some teams can afford to pay starter’s money to more than five players, but Ohio State has not shown it is one.

You can’t begrudge a guy like Royal doing what is in his best interest, but it’s also another reminder this day and age kinda sucks. (Not that players have more options but that the best options are sometimes this.)

Of course it’s really bad for fans (unless the team becomes better overall when all is said and done…) but it’s not necessarily great for players either when sometimes situations that should work out just don’t.

Hopefully it works out the best for all parties.

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Jeremiah Smith met with the media Saturday, pretty much said Miami tried to get him to transfer there and nobody really blinked an eye at the time.

Apparently Smith also did not blink an eye when the offer came in, though I suppose if ever he were going to leave OSU it would be after losing to the Hurricanes on the field and losing coach Brian Hartline to South Florida.

In the recruiting process, Smith chose Ohio State to be developed by Hartline and build his future wealth for 40 years rather than four. That says a lot about his maturity three years ago and his loyalty then and now.

Of course, I’m sure he’s well-compensated by Ohio State, too, and he is set up to benefit both from being a Buckeye and being from South Florida no matter what NFL team drafts him next spring.

Smith also had good things to say about new receivers coach Cortez Hankton, saying he’s brought juice to the room.

Hankton and Smith both agreed the Buckeyes need to do more after the catch this fall, so it will be interesting to see how that develops.

Is that a nature vs. nurture situation?

Off and on this has been a topic of conversation at Ohio State for years: Even back to the Tressel and Meyer, there were more hitches and fades than slants and other stuff designed to get guys the ball with their feet moving.

I think some of that is related to the style of offense: If you are really a run-first team, that is where you’re trying to get the 4 to 7-yard gains on early downs to set up third-and-short. Or you’re using the fact the defense is trying to stop that to drop back and try to throw it over their heads.

(2018 was a notable exception when Day dialed up all kinds of crossing patterns and short stuff to let Dwayne Haskins Jr. get the ball out to his receivers on the run.)

Designing this Ohio State offense for the fall kind of feels like editing a photo: There are lots of options to add light here or improve definition there, but every slider you pull in one direction pulls others in a different one.

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