SAN DIEGO – Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona had nowhere else to go, no inclination to sleep and nothing on his mind but trying to fix the growing number of Reds problems.

So he went to the ballpark more than eight hours before the first pitch of the Reds’ series against the San Diego Padres.

“Why was I here at 10:30 in the morning? I can’t (expletive) do anything,” Francona said. “I was miserable sitting in my room.”

It wasn’t long before misery got some company when general manager Brad Meador joined Francona to talk how to solve such problems as their injury-addled roster and most walk-prone bullpen in the majors.

The morning start to the game that night came less than 24 hours after Francona gathered the team for a rare meeting after a dispiriting sweep at the hands of the Cardinals over the weekend – a series that included blown leads all three games and that dropped the Reds record under .500 for the first time since March.

“I think they feel a lot like I do. They desperately want to win,” Francona said. “We’re kind of vastly different than we were even a couple weeks ago. And that’s not an excuse. We’re trying to figure things out as we go. And it’s been challenging. No getting around that.”

No Elly De La Cruz (hamstring). No Hunter Greene (elbow). And no relief in sight – with closer Emilio Pagán and setup men Graham Ashcraft and Pierce Johnson all on the injured list as well.

And then the Reds put the right guy on the mound in the right place at the right time – only to see another late lead go away in another loss in Monday night’s series opener.

Hot-pitching starter Andrew Abbott, who had a sub-1.00 career ERA against the Padres entering the game, took a 2-1 lead into the seventh before issuing back-to-back doubles and exiting.

What followed was the anything-that-can-go-wrong-will stuff of struggling teams.

Three consecutive bunts by the bottom of the Padres’ MLB-worst lineup led to three consecutive misplays by the Reds and two more runs in the Reds’ 6-2 loss at Petco Park.

It was the Reds fifth straight loss, fourth straight day they’ve held a lead only to lose the game, and dropped them to a season low-water mark of three games under .500.

One day after losing in St. Louis on back-to-back errors in the eighth inning, this is how the Reds lost when the Padres tried to bunt into outs in the seventh:

• Jase Bowen’s bunt with a runner at second died on the grass just to the left of the mound, where reliever Tejay Antone prepared to pick it up, just as first baseman Sal Stewart charged in to win the tussle for the ball – before throwing late to second baseman Edwin Arroyo covering first.
• Then with runners at the corners Samad Taylor bunted 20 feet toward first. Stewart charged and whiffed on the scoop attempt to get the runner at the plate as the go-ahead run scored.
• Then with runners at first and second and still nobody out, Freddy Fermin bunted toward the mound, and Antone lost the handle trying to pick up the ball. Bases loaded, nobody out.

“They say when it rains it pours,” Stewart said.

Antone eventually escaped without further damage on a shallow pop to right, chopper to third and sharp play at short by Matt McLain.

But the damage was done. And by the time the Padres scored three two-out runs of Zach McCambley in the seventh, the Reds had their ninth loss in 11 games – against a team that ranked last in the majors in scoring, hitting, slugging and on-base percentage.

In fact, the Padres were on their own 2-11 skid coming into the series.

No telling how early Francona arrives at the park for the next game.

“It’s hard. It’s a little challenging at times — (expletive), there’s no getting around that,” the manager said, praising the dedication of his coaches and the desire of his players. “We care about what we do.

“This is way more than a job. It’s your whole life.”

It’s starting to flash before their eyes, at least when it comes to where this season of high expectations might be headed.

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Reds’ Sal Stewart on fateful 7th-inning bunt plays in loss to Padres

The Padres bunted 3 straight times; the Reds failed to get an out on any of them as San Diego took the lead, eventually handing Reds 5th loss in row.

“When a guy pitches bad or not up to their standards, or they’re not hitting, that doesn’t mean they don’t care,” said Francona, who preached a similar message during tough stretches late last season before the Reds squeezed into the playoffs on the final day. 

“I think we’re in a society now where it’s too easy to just say people suck,” he added. “And it’s not just baseball. It’s society. I think it’s people have gotten way too comfortable saying stuff like that. We have a good group. I know that.”

Where do they go from here? With 98 games and a fork in the road staring them in the face.

“Frustration’s a big part of our game,” Francona said. “So how you handle that kind of can define your season. And you’ve just got to fight through it. Not fight each other. But you’ve got to fight through it.”

Asked about the message and intent behind his rare unscheduled meetings, Francona recalled the one he had late in September last year after the Reds got manhandled in a sweep by the Athletics in West Sacramento.

“I’m not big on looking backwards,” he said. “But when we left (Sacramento), we were (expletive) struggling. I remember telling them, ‘Hey, man, when it’s hard to believe, that’s when you gotta believe.’

“I said, ‘If we play the game the way we can, we’re gonna pop some champagne.’ And we did.”

This moment seems to carry more gravity than an early June stretch of adversity, given the strength of the league and the depth of the Reds’ injuries.

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Andrew Abbott on his start vs. Padres in 6-2 loss, state of Reds

Reds starter Andrew Abbott retired 12 of 13 to take a 2-1 lead to the 7th until back-to-back doubles leading off the inning ended his night.

“It feels like we’re treading in quicksand a little bit,” Stewart said. “We’re right there in games, but they’re not going our way. We just have to stay the course.”

Said Abbott: “We’re not panicking. Maybe we’re not playing our best baseball right now. But we know that it’s a long season. We were in the same spot or worse, or maybe a little bit better, last year. And then we turned it on. So it’s not unfamiliar territory.

“To know that we have 98 of them left, I think more often than not we’re going to come out and we’re goign to play really good, sound, fundamental baseball. And we’re going to come out on the right end of this.”

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.

David Boyer is stuck in a waiting game. For more than 18 months, silence from the National Institutes of Health on a crucial grant decision has thrown his research developing treatments for Alzheimer’s disease into uncertain territory.

His application received a favorable impact score, the main metric used for NIH funding decisions, so the postdoctoral scholar at UCLA figured he would hear good news by spring of 2025. Instead, he has heard nothing.

Without the funding, he has less to spend on his experiments, which require thousands of dollars worth of materials, including advanced microscopes. In a worst-case scenario, it’s possible he could lose his job if the grant doesn’t come through. 

“It’s really up in the air whether I would be able to continue getting funded,” said Boyer, who is part of UCLA’s Eisenberg Lab. 

Boyer is not alone. Federal funding for scientific research, from agencies such as NIH and the National Science Foundation, has been upended under the Trump administration, with fewer grants being awarded and some existing grants being canceled altogether. Even researchers with stable funding worry that their grants could get suspended or will not be renewed. 

But now, Boyer and other researchers at California universities have some hope that they could get a reprieve — from California voters. 

The University of California is pushing to get a $12 billion state bond on the November ballot that would fund scientific research projects at California universities, research institutes and private companies. In addition to UC and California State University campuses, private universities such as Stanford and the University of Southern California would also be eligible for the bond money.

For the bond to appear on the ballot, the state Legislature first needs to approve Senate Bill 895. The bill’s sponsors include UC and UAW 4811, the union representing 48,000 academic workers at UC, including thousands of researchers.

The bill was approved last week by the Senate and now heads to the Assembly. It must be passed and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom by June 25 to make the ballot.

“As the federal government cuts and destroys scientific funding, as it creates long-term instability and uncertainty, as science has now become a political football in this country, let’s make sure that California retains and expands our leadership in scientific research,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said on the Senate floor last week just before the vote. Wiener is one of the authors of the bill. 

If passed and approved by voters, the measure would create the California Foundation for Science and Health Research, which would award the grants using “an open, competitive, scientific peer review process,” according to the bill.

The bond would not be a cure-all for research funding if federal spending continues to dwindle. UC alone gets nearly $6 billion annually in federal support for research. 

“There is nobody else who can substitute for research funding on the scale the federal government supplies,” said Simon Atkinson, vice chancellor for research at UC Davis.

Still, Atkinson and other proponents of the bond agree that it would benefit researchers in California not to rely so much on the federal government, especially under the Trump administration, which proposed a $5 billion cut to NIH for 2027. Last week, The New York Times reported that NSF had slowed funding to Harvard and other institutions targeted by the White House, though the impact on California campuses is unclear.

Having another potential funding source would be welcome news to Ximena Anleu Gil, a plant biologist at UC Davis who researches how to breed more plants in environmentally friendly ways.

There is one year remaining on the grant that funds Gil’s position in UC Davis’ Meyers Lab. The prospect of not having the funding renewed is stressful for Gil, who is the main provider for her family, which includes her partner and 7-month-old daughter. 

“I’m very scared of what could happen. If I’m laid off, we’re screwed,” Gil said. “But having another source of potential funding, that would already feel like a big relief.”

If voters approve the bond, the legislation requires that priority be given to replacing funding slashed by the federal government. 

In California, 782 grants have been terminated by the federal government since January 2025, according to the website Grant Witness, a project tracking terminations under the Trump administration. 

Most of those grants have been restored under court orders, but dozens remain canceled, including one at UC San Francisco’s Center for AIDS Research that paid for training for undergraduate students. 

Under that grant, students from nearby Hispanic-Serving Institutions, including San Francisco State University, would spend the summer at UCSF doing HIV research. At the end of the summer, the center would hold a symposium where undergraduates present their findings.

The idea was to expose those students to the field and get them interested in HIV research, said Monica Gandhi, director of the center. 

“There are fewer and fewer people going into infectious disease research at a time when infectious diseases are all over,” Gandhi said. “It really just got them excited, and we thought it would help grow our biomedical research workforce in a really important topic.”

If California’s bond goes through, Gandhi said she expects the center would immediately apply for a grant to restart that program. 

Federal funding remains intact for the rest of the AIDS research center, which organizes all HIV research across UCSF. But it’s not clear how long that will be the case. Gandhi said the center is waiting for a formal notice from NIH to apply for a grant renewal, which she said normally would have come by now. 

“There are all these little ways they are making it harder to get funding,” she said. “Having a California-based initiative that isn’t political and will have the grants be judged on their scientific merit would be amazing. And I think it will go a long way.”

EdSource is California’s largest independent newsroom focused on education.

“Alternate budget plan in works after public outcry” (May 28): The article notes the City Council is supporting adding $200,000 to the proposed budget to restore a position devoted to promoting San Diego as a setting for movies and TV (as well as commercials, industrial videos, etc). I completely agree that these efforts bring significant revenues into the city (and county) economies, “One Battle After Another” being the most recent example. From 1976 until 2012, we had the San Diego Film Commission operating autonomously and as a nonprofit, bringing in such high-profile projects as “Top Gun,” “Simon and Simon” and “Anchorman,” to name a few. In 2012, the commission was incorporated into the Tourism Authority and disbanded during severe budget cuts.

Why can’t industries that benefit the most from TV and movie production — like unions, casting agents, production companies, studio facilities, equipment rentals, the Screen Actors Guild or the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences — collectively fund the $200,000 and resurrect the commission?

— Chuck Dunning, La Jolla