Three Up, Three Down: The MLB hot/cold report

Sean Manaea delivers 2018's first no-hitter

As the Red Sox went into their weekend series with the Oakland A's, the public's focus was clearly on what Boston could do at the plate after getting off to a scary-good start when it came to extra-base hits. The Red Sox were on fire, and it seemed like they were a steamrolling machine with the likes of Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and Hanley Ramirez leading the way.

By the time Saturday night was over, however, the focus was solely on Sean Manaea after he put all of that talk to rest by no-hitting the Red Sox. While Manaea had been doing good work on the mound in relative obscurity, it's safe to say nobody really saw this coming. There was no reason to expect to see a team that was 17-2 going into the game and leading the league in almost every important power hitting statistic to all of a sudden fall victim to Manaea, but it happened.

That's why with all of the wonderful advancements in statistics and analysis, this is still a sport where the human element plays a major role. If this was a game played on paper, the A's shouldn't have had a chance, and the Red Sox would have continued to mercilessly beat down on their opposition. Instead, Manaea etched his name into the history books, and the A's ended up bringing Boston back down to Earth for a little bit.

Brewers off to a sneaky-hot start

I cannot in good conscience give the award of "baseball's hottest team" to a club that recently got no-hit, so instead I'd like to direct you to what's been going on in Wisconsin for over a week now. When I last talked to you all about cool stuff going on around baseball, the Brewers were preparing to beat the Marlins for what would be their third consecutive win. Just last night, they finished beating the Royals 6-2 in order to win their eighth straight game.

So, what's the secret behind the Brewers' early streak of success so far? While people who are far more intelligent than I am would look toward hitters like Travis Shaw and Lorenzo Cain leading the way at the plate while Josh Hader emerges as one of the better relievers in the game right now, I'd like to say that the Brewers are just very, very loose right now.

As usual when it comes to April success, this all comes with the caveat that baseball is a marathon and not a sprint. There's always a chance that the Cubs could wake up and go on an extended tear, but at the same time, the Brewers have 16 wins in the bank already and you can't take those from them. For all we know, those wins could come in handy once October rolls around.

Didi Gregorius is bringing the good news

Start spreading the news! The starting shortstop for the New York Yankees is on some kind of roll at the moment. Indeed, Didi Gregorius has wasted no time getting rolling at the plate. While everybody expected guys like Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez to do most of the mashing for the pinstriped powerhouse, it's been Gregorius leading the way when it comes to power hitting so far.

While Didi hit 25 homers last season, he wasn't really known for being a big bopper at the plate. It appears that he's trying his best to change that, as he currently has nine home runs through 100 plate appearances. Additionally, he's walking at a 17 percent rate, which would obliterate his career high of 9.2 percent back when he was with the Diamondbacks. He's walking, he's hitting — he's doing it all for the Yankees right now, and he could be on track to have a monster season New York this season.

In fact, Gregorius is having such a solid season that USA Today's Bob Nightengale went so far as to claim that the Yankees' trade with the Diamondbacks to get Gregorius should be in the same conversation as the trade that started off the Curse of the Bambino. While it's absolutely nuts to compare Didi Gregorius to Babe freakin' Ruth at the moment, it's still safe to say that the Yankees are extremely pleased with the results of that deal.

Three Down

Memories made in the longest at-bat

To be fair, you can't really say that either man in this lengthy duel was a winner or a loser. Instead, they were both survivors. It's tough to imagine that either Brandon Belt or Jaime Barria knew what they were in for when they showed up at the ballpark for work on Sunday afternoon. There's always a chance that you're going to see something unique when you tune in for a baseball game, but I don't think that you have a 21-pitch at-bat in mind.

Still, that's exactly what happened when Belt dug in against Barria for the first time on Sunday. Once San Francisco's first baseman finally put a ball in play instead of fouling it off for the umpteenth time, it ended up flying harmlessly into Kole Calhoun's hands for the first out of the day. Still, Belt received a hero's welcome once he got back to the dugout for forcing the starting pitcher to waste 21 pitches on just one at-bat.

Barria's hard work took its toll, and he only lasted two innings before exiting. Additionally, he ended up going back to Triple-A after the game. Meanwhile, Belt hit a home run later in that game and is safely entrenched as a starter for the Giants. Barria may have won the battle, but Belt clearly won the war.

The Reds are off to an awful start

There's coming out of the opening gates slowly, and then there's what the Reds managed to do over the first month of the new season. After Sunday's action was over, the Reds were 3-18, which was good enough for the worst record in all of baseball, the worst start in the long and proud history of the franchise, and also bad enough to make Bryan Price the first manager to get fired this season.

What makes the situation so bad for the Reds is that it's not like this is going to make things better for them. This is still one of baseball's solidly tanking teams, so firing the manager probably won't change much in the short term. In fact, you could make the argument that Price shouldn't have been the manager going into this season and that the Reds should have spent this past offseason looking for a new manager.

Instead, they will use Jim Riggleman as their interim manager, and now they know for a fact that they're probably in for another long season in Cincy. It's just a matter of how bad it will get for the Reds. Will this be the year where they hit rock bottom in what's already been three consecutive seasons of 90+ losses? All you Reds fans, and fans of Joey Votto in general, hang in there. Things can only go up from here.

Clayton Kershaw must be allergic to fish

There's no question about how good Clayton Kershaw is. He's been one of the game's top pitchers (if not the best overall) for nearly a full decade now, and he's done everything there is to do for a pitcher other than actually winning the World Series. There aren't too many teams who look forward to seeing L.A.'s ace, but there may be one exception to this rule. Of course, it's the madcap Miami Marlins.

The Marlins are one of only three National League teams that currently hold a winning record against Kershaw, and the three-time Cy Young winner had in fact dropped three straight games against Miami. With that being said, you had to figure that this would be the year Kershaw would exorcise those demons and finally enjoy a fish fry for himself.

It wasn't meant to be. On Wednesday night, Miguel Rojas hit a three-run dinger that put the Marlins up 3-0, and Rojas also ended up being the penultimate hitter that Kershaw saw as he was limited to his shortest start of the season. Even the best of the best have their own boogeymen — apparently Kershaw's boogeymen reside in South Beach.