CINCINNATI — If Opening Day was the high point of Terry Francona’s playing career with the Cincinnati Reds, perhaps Opening Day will be the low point of his managerial career with the team.
Francona, in his first year as Reds manager, watched reliever Ian Gibaut blow a lead in the ninth inning and his team lose 6-4 to the San Francisco Giants on Thursday in front of 43,876 at Great American Ball Park.
In 1987, the Reds signed Francona at the urging of manager Pete Rose, who had played with Francona in Montreal. Against those same Expos, who had taken him in the first round of the 1980 draft and released him a year before, Francona hit a game-tying home run in an 11-5 Reds Opening Day victory. He’d hit two more home runs the rest of the season, finishing the season with a disappointing .227 average. He’d find himself a free agent again after the 1987 season and his playing career ended in 1990 in Louisville.
Entering his 24th Opening Day as a big-league manager, Francona said he is always excited for Opening Day but feels there may be a bit too much emphasis on the first game of the season.
“If we win, everyone’s going to have us going to the World Series,” Francona said Wednesday. “If we lose, we stink.”
So, by that measure, the Reds stink.
WILMER FLORES GOT YOU! https://t.co/gDfCyCd0BV pic.twitter.com/1PZMii4aY1
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) March 27, 2025
The Reds hired Francona last October to get a young, talented team over the hump. It’s something he’s done before, winning the World Series in his first year with the Boston Red Sox and then leading Cleveland to a 24-win turnaround in his first year there.
All of that, of course, is still on the table. The Reds are 0-1. A year ago, the team won on Opening Day. The 2024 Cincinnati Reds, it should be noted, did not go to the World Series.
If the 2025 team does, it’ll need to rely on a bullpen that has been a question mark throughout spring training. The Reds’ veteran relievers collectively struggled in the spring and what was already a bit of a question mark became an interrobang when the team decided to start closer Alexis Díaz on the injured list before its last day in Arizona.
Wednesday, Francona was asked about what would happen if the Reds held a lead in the ninth inning in Thursday’s opener.
“I honestly don’t know that,” Francona said. “And the reason I say that is because it could depend on how we get there. The one thing I never want to do is to sacrifice a chance to win because you’re trying to hold out to the end.”
For as much focus as there is sure to be on the decision to send Gibaut out for the ninth inning, it was Heliot Ramos’ 11-pitch at-bat against starter Hunter Greene that may have been the biggest reason Gibaut was in the game.
Greene, making his second Opening Day start, was masterful despite the fact he said he had none of his secondary pitches. The fastball, for the most part, was good enough. Of the 84 pitches Greene threw, 59 were his four-seam fastball. Greene averaged 99.2 mph on his fastball and threw 10 at 100 mph or better.
It’s beautiful. pic.twitter.com/OE1BpIP5XI
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) March 27, 2025
Greene was cruising until he saw Ramos for the second time. With two outs and a runner on, Ramos worked an 11-pitch at-bat with Greene throwing seven straight fastballs including the final one at 98.7 mph on the outside third of the plate that Ramos hit the other way and into the second row of seats adjacent to the visitors bullpen in right field for a two-run home run.
The Reds held onto a 3-2 lead until the ninth, but Greene had thrown 57 pitches before facing Ramos with two outs in the fourth and finished the inning with 74. Greene got through the fifth in 10 pitches, but on a chilly day and in the first game of the season, Greene wasn’t going to go much further than that.
“I didn’t want to send him out if I didn’t think he could finish the inning,” Francona said.
San Francisco’s Opening Day lineup featured just three left-handed hitters and a switch hitter, while the Reds’ bullpen features three lefties. That left five right-handers in the bullpen. Scott Barlow was first in the sixth inning, followed by Emilio Pagán and finally Tony Santillan. Each of the first three pitchers out of the Reds’ bullpen retired the Giants in order, setting up the ninth inning against the heart of the Giants’ lineup — right-hander Willy Adames, lefty Jung Hoo Lee and right-handed hitting Matt Chapman.
The left-handers, Sam Moll, Taylor Rogers and Brent Suter, had ERAs of 11.74, 6.43 and 9.45, respectively, this spring.
The two right-handed options remaining in Francona’s bullpen were Gibaut and Graham Ashcraft, who was told at the end of camp that he would be moved to the bullpen. All of Ashcraft’s 106 professional appearances — 60 in the majors and 46 in the minors — have been as a starter. The last time he came out of a bullpen in a game that counted was in 2019 when he was with the University of Alabama-Birmingham. In his 13 relief appearances in college between UAB and Mississippi State, Ashcraft had never closed out a game.
Francona, instead, went with Gibaut, who has four career big-league saves, another save in the World Baseball Classic and had the second-best spring training ERA of any of the eight relievers on the Reds’ Opening Day roster.
For a couple of minutes, it looked as if it might work out for a great story of the one reliever who came into camp as a non-roster invitee, fought his way onto the team and then picked up the save on Opening Day.
Gibaut came out of the bullpen and seemingly cleared the highest hurdle first, striking out Adames, a long-time Reds tormentor who was given a $182 million contract by the Giants this offseason.
Gibaut then walked Lee before giving up a single to Chapman, which advanced Lee to third.
With the tying run 90 feet away, Gibaut struck out Ramos to get to two outs before going 3-0 to switch hitting catcher Patrick Bailey, who appeared to bail Gibaut out, fouling off a 3-0 pitch. But he then served Gibaut’s next offering into right field, just past second baseman Matt McLain. The next batter, Wilmer Flores, got behind 1-2 but slammed a sweeper into the stands in left for a 6-3 lead.
Francona ambled to the mound to take out Gibaut, who left to a chorus of boos. Sam Moll finished the inning with a strikeout, the Giants’ 17th of the game.
The Reds added a run in the ninth, but McLain’s attempt at a game-tying home run with two outs fell just short of the wall in left, sealing the team’s fate.
The Opening Day win, Greene’s first of the season and Francona’s first as the Reds manager, were all gone in an instant.
“It’s a big sting; it hurts; everybody is frustrated and we thought the outcome would be a lot different, especially going into that last inning,” Greene said. “Ian’s a dawg. That’s what I told him. People might not want to hear that, but people need to believe that because he is. The last couple of years he’s been with us, he’s been in very tight situations and he’s made it look easy getting out of it.”
The Reds will be off Friday, which is part of the reason losing Opening Day is harder. It’s a day where the record stays winless, a day before the best part of baseball, which is immediate redemption, another day to win and put a loss behind you. There are 161 more games, after all.
“That’s baseball,” McLain said. “You can’t win 162.”
At least nobody’s done it yet. And if a team does do it this year, it won’t be the Reds. That, after one game, is all that is certain.
(Photo of Ian Gibaut: Sam Greene / The Enquirer / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)