Before the Reds came to town, the Rockies had the worst record in baseball.
And they still swept the Reds. Can it get any worse?
And will John Allen “rattling the cage” make any difference?
Before the Reds came to town, the Rockies had the worst record in baseball.
And they still swept the Reds. Can it get any worse?
And will John Allen “rattling the cage” make any difference?
Yes – it can.
I’m looking to see who does get the nod when/if DanO or Miley or Gullett gets the boot.
I’m thinking Vern Ruhle is going to get a major league job again.
A high strikeout, high ERA team is going to lose more than they are going to win.
Would losing 100 games really get someone’s attention? Is it going to really find a buyer for the 51% stock that is “supposively” for sale?
Will someone see the talent that is Adam Dunn & Austin Kearns?
Where is Gary Burbank when you REALLY need him…
While I am frustrated that our 1B has the power of a great defensive utility player, I still don’t think he is the problem on this team. Believe it or not he is actually #81 in OPS in the majors this year. That’s not great, but it’s certainly worth a spot in this lineup. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have a guy like Derek Lee at 1B, but I can’t honestly say that Sean Casey is hurting this team with his performance. I’m not about to vote for him in the All-Star Game, but there are about 19 other roster players that I’d rather see go before Casey…
I will echo the Austin Kearns comment. Adam Dunn is worth whatever we can keep him for, but Kearns, though injured a lot, has not come close to his expectations. If he were performing as expected then I would like to see Kearns, Pena, Griffey and Dunn at 1B over Casey, but I don’t think we’ll ever see all of them healthy and Casey has consistently performed as well as the others with the expeption of Dunn.
IMHO – Kearns is a talent who seems to be sure watching pitches go by. I would think if he’d swing the bat more often than not to make contact, he might be a pretty good player. Of course, we could have one of the following play into the psyche of Kearns.
1 – He didn’t like the 3b “transition”
2 – He is still spooked from the Ray King incident.
Let’s don’t give up on Kearns just yet. I’m hoping that in the next week or two Uncle Carl will clean house with Miley and the entire coaching staff, including Gullett this time, gone. Maybe we should keep Hume around for giggles. Seriously, its going to take a huge shakeup in leadership to turn this club around. Almost every player on the roster has had success in the bigs at some point. However, as a team they suck. I don’t have the answers but somewhere along the line, the Reds have to come up with someone who can get the best out of these players. We used to have a guy like that. His name was Jack McKeon, but Bowden screwed him over so bad, he went off and won a world series.
Trade Dunn, Casey, Randa, and Griffey to get some pitching. I’m tired of Dunn’s attitude. In fact, the fun-first, win-second attitude of most of this team has ran its course.
This isn’t Miley’s fault though he has made some questionable decisions. The players aren’t performing and the worst thing that you could do is give them the impression that they can play poorly and exhibit bad attitudes to get their manager fired. O’Brien really screwed up this offseason, particularly with Milton, but the good news is, they didn’t have to trade any of their good prospects away to get the players, so they didn’t lose any of their future.
Trade ’em away, get pitching, and bring up the kids. I think they would be better immediately.
That’s because winning is supposed to make it fun. If those guys were traded, I’d bring up Kelly for CF, bring up Encarnacion and move him to 1B (so he wouldn’t commit 40 errors/season,) bring up Bergolla for 2B, play Freel at 3B and Pena in LF.
The offense would be fine. They’d still have pretty good power, probably hit for better average, and have much better speed, though they would strike out at a comparable rate. And we’d have pitching! Plus that defense could be great.
The offence wouldn’t be fine. Kenny Kelly couldn’t replace Griffey’s offence. Trading Dunn would be the stupidest move in the history of the franchise. Bergolla proved he couldn’t hit big league pitching. He will be a valubale bench player in the future. But will probably never be more than an adeqate 2B. And he won’t be close to that this year. In case you missed his big league performance .125/.263/.188. OPS .461. He’s not a big leaguer yet.
Pitching is the big problem with this team. Pitching and leadership, both from the manager and management. Both need big changes.
No, Kelly certainly wouldn’t bring Junior-like power to the bigs, but like Ryan Freel and Scott Podsednik, speedsters who suddenly showed major league potential at age 26, he could hit for a good average, probably better than Grif, and have more speed, (and more useable speed, as they wouldn’t be afraid of letting him steal bases.
But for replacing the power of Dunn and Griffey, I think Pena + Encarnacion would at least come close. I also think you have tremendously underestimated Bergolla. He’s hitting the ball well, with BA over .300 last time I checked, and that defense is something to behold.
I used to be in the keep Dunn camp, but that was because I thought he would develop to hit for a decent average and cut down on strikeouts. He hasn’t made any adjustments to that swing, and I think he’ll be a career .250 hitter with a ton of home runs, and a career RBI total that is not reflective of someone with his HR numbers.
A problem with most of the scenarios people lay out for bringing in pitching is the large number of pitchers who could be in the rotation: harang, claussen, ortiz, wilson, milton, hudson, hancock, ramirez, kelly, belisle. If you bring in pitching, where do you put them? Its unlikely that Milton’s contract will be swallowed, and they may relegate Wilson to the bullpen, but I don’t think they could stomach his contract. Ortiz is less of a problem looking forward, because he only has a one year deal. Its a mess in the rotation, and if you were thinking of some of the pitchers who don’t make the cut for the rotation could pitch in the bullpen, there is an equally large logjam there.
You guys all seem to want to trade away this team. I know I’m in the minority here but I still think the Reds have a good nucleus of position players. The problem is pitching and managment. I scrap Miley, his coaching staff, and all but about three of his pitchers. Throwing away our outfielders, Randa and Casey doesn’t make any sense to me. By the way, I was only half kidding when I questioned whether or not Sparky was still available to manage. We need a manager and coaching staff that gets the most out of their players, someone along the lines of Gardenhire, Leyland or our old friend Trader Jack.
Blue, I read my post and it sounded hositile, and that’s not the way I wanted it to come out.
That said, Dunn is still young, and still has things to learn about hitting. I’m not saying he won’t be a career .250 hitter with 100 RBI’s a year, but lets not give up on him yet(we could also do worse). If he’s still hitting this way two years from now, then we can talk trade.
I love WMP, but I don’t think at this point he’s much different from Dunn. Lots of power, lots of strikeouts. I don’t think you’ll be as happy with him as you think if you expect him to be all that much different from Dunn.
Great point, Greg. With Freel and Lopez getting on base more than anyone else, why not bat him 3rd, put Griffey behind him so pitchers will think twice about pitching around him. It would be nice to start seeing some 3-run bombs…
I haven’t checked the splits the past two weeks, but last time I checked Dunn was batting to lead off an inning more than twice as much as Casey (because he is batting 5th vs 3rd.) Then everyone complains about the lack of RBIs. Bat him 3rd and the RBIs would be there.
That’s a common occurance with a team that decides to move the runner over at all cost (Dave Miley) the first runner gets on (or 2nd) the next 3 make outs and number 5 leads off the inning, according to a Bill James piece I read once he claims that the number 5 hitter leads off more innings than any other batter on average that isn’t slotted number 1.
If Dunn batted 3rd he’d have more rbis and more runs scored.