Ya think?

Ken Rosenthal demonstrates an astute command of the obvious in this piece for Fox, entitled “Reds need to pull trigger on trade.” Ya think?

Joking aside, it’s actually a fairly interesting piece:

“We have to keep being aggressive and try to improve,” Reds GM Walt Jocketty said Wednesday. “What we thought we had to do for 2012 was really address our pitching. That’s what we’ve been busy trying to do, but without success so far.”

It’s only mid-December. Opening Day is 3 1/2 months away. A number of quality starting pitchers — Gio Gonzalez, Wade Davis and John Danks in the AL; Matt Garza, Jair Jurrjens and Wandy Rodriguez in the NL — remain available in trade.

The Reds can dangle two especially attractive prospects, first baseman Yonder Alonso and catcher Yasmani Grandal, and they’ve got other chips as well. Jocketty, while acknowledging that other teams like his players, added, “They just want too many of ’em.”

I’m not sure any of the names mentioned above (as targets for the Reds) would entice me to trade the farm. At least Jocketty and the Reds are making the effort, right?

Then there’s this:

“There’s an opportunity,” Jocketty said. “But we feel that if we did nothing, we’d still have a club capable of contending and competing in our division all year. We felt that way last year. We just had some things that didn’t go well for us.”

Is this a joke? No way this club can contend without improving. I know why Jocketty has to say that, but he can’t really believe it. Can he?

Sigh…