“Not close on anything.”

John Fay reported a few minutes ago that the Reds are saying a trade isn’t imminent.

“We’re not really close on anything,” Reds general manager Walt Jocketty said.

Jocketty said something similar on December 14, 2011:

“But we’re still not close on anything. It’s very frustrating.”

Then two days later, this happened. Within a week, so did this. So yeah, don’t play poker with Jocketty.

Further, Fay’s impression is that the recent hot hitting streaks of Ryan Ludwick and Super Todd Frazier have caused the Reds to move away from looking for a clean-up hitter. We speculated ten days ago that might be one effect of the emergence of Ryan Ludwick’s bat. Jocketty now emphasizes the need to find someone to get on base ahead of the middle of the lineup. Fay mentions the usual suspects (Denard Span, Shane Victorino and Juan Pierre). Or how about a year-plus of Hunter Pence anyone? 

Another report has emerged linking Victorino with Logan Ondrusek, but it’s hard to tell if that’s just a repeat of the news we reported and discussed here a few days ago. And it’s from Jim Bowden, so there’s that. If that report can be trusted, several teams are interested in the Phillies CF, including the Pirates.

Whatever else you may think about Walt Jocketty’s regime as GM, it’s undeniable they are successful at keeping their work secret for the most part and they often come up with trades that were not even blips on the radar screen.