Reds have traded Kearns and Lopez to Washington

I think Bowden just fleeced the Reds. I feel dirty.

Kiss my ass, Krivsky.

Salary dump in preparation to resigning Harrang and Phillips?

I really don't see this trade making sense on a talent level.

Kearns departure makes room for Denorfia, but that is not an even swap by any measure.  We'll have to clear out two spots in the bullpen for the new additions, thus in the trade we will also loose two of the following (Standridge, Weathers, Mercker, May or Yan).  No options in this group to the best of my knowledge.  And then throw in Wagner?  I would not be at all surprised to see Wagner get his act back together in the next year or two.

I just do not see this trade panning out to additional wins.  I don't think it helps us this year, and I don't think it helps us next year, and I don't think it helps team chemistry (Kearns had a lot of friends on the team and Lopez was universally seen as a good team oriented man.)  I really think it may have been motivated by looming financial concerns.  Kearns and Lopez would have cost the Reds about $8 million next year, about what they will have to pay Harrang to keep him.

No, I really dislike the trade.  I really hate it.  I want to pretend it didn't happen.  Damn I hate that this happened!  It is a damn dumb destructive stupid O'Brienesqe deal.

Let's face it.  We were going to trade Kearns or Dunn this summer.  The question is what could we get back.  My guess is that we couldn't find anyone to take Dunn for a big prize, so we dealt Kearns for an area of serious need.  Maybe if we were a big more patient.....

C:  Ross
1B:  Hatteberg/Aurilia
2B:  BP/Freel
3B:  EdE/Freel
SS:  Clayton/S.F. Castro (ugh--Narron would never be creative enough to use BP here and start Freel at 2nd)
LF:  Dunn
CF:  Junior/Denorfia/Freel
RF:  Denorfia/Freel

Compared to what we had before, we're effectively trading Lopez and Kearns for a mix of Freel and Denorfia, plus Clayton.  Overall, this depends to a certain extent on Denorfia and Freel stepping up and giving the Reds at least a .750-.800 OPS to make up for the offensive zero that is Royce Clayton (think Q-Crapp, and you are getting close).  Maybe the errors decrease, and you wind up with a slight net loss overall at SS.

The b***pen might actually have a chance of giving up fewer than five and a half runs every nine innings, although Bill Bray and his 1.43 WHIP in a pitcher's park (.692/.857 home/away OPS against) does not seem to offer much help immediately, compared to what was already there.  When he's on the road, he basically turns everyone into Ken Griffey Jr.  Seems like he's there for the potential, more than anything else, since mlb.com says he is the Nationals' top pitching prospect.

Majewski could help, but he seems to walk too many people.  Nevertheless, over the last three years, he seems to pitch better and walk fewer batters away than home, so the home/road splits are not worrisome for him.

I don't think I like this trade, unless the prospects that we got are really stellar, because the major leaguers are leaving me more than a bit underwhelmed.  Krivsky has traded two starters (and above-average ones, at that) for an OK reliever, a not-so-good reliever with potential, a weak hitting shortstop and two players I haven't heard of.

I have much more to say about this on the only Reds/Nats blog on the planet.

I hate to lose Kearns, but I think we should all wait and see before getting ourselves worked up about it.  And should you forget, I will remind you that our bullpen has single handedly put us at one game over .500 instead of 8 or 9 over where we should be, maybe more.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/5782006

I'm like gnarley, here, the more I think about it, the more I think we'll really be liking this trade come Aug/Sep.

LaRue and Brendan Harris and 2 Mil for a starter?  Definate possibility.

I'm also suprised Kriv didnt get one of our catchers, the Nats only have one listed on their 40-Man.

big trade in the division today -- the reds sent felipe lopez, austin kearns, and ryan wagner to washington for a bunch of relief pitchers. one of them, bill bray, is lighting things up at triple a; another is pitching in short-season a ball; and the 3d is gary majewski, who's your basic middle-innings guy.

oh yeah, the reds also got an uninspiring everyday player at short, ie royce clayton, and a backup infielder.

trade seems to make no sense on its face; reds fans are skeptical, to say the least. but check out chris dial's position-by-position defensive rankings, posted just today. felipe lopez ranks dead last among nl shortstops; the reds must have had internal data showing much the same thing re felipe's glovework. now check out his batting splits  -- he can't hit left-handers, and he's not such a great hitter away from GAB. so he's not nearly as great a loss as it might appear on the face of things. kearns is a genuinely good hitter, but the reds can replace him with chris denorfia, who is batting .350 at triple a and has already been recalled. . . . .

let's add it all up: the reds traded from their surplus (offense / home run power) to improve their two major weaknesses, defense and relief pitching. they also got rid of two guys who are heading into their arb-eligible years and likely to tie up more payroll than they are worth. that's a sensible rationale for a deal. it might not work out, and for obvious reasons i hope it doesn't. but if the reds weren't in the cardinals' division, i'd be rooting hard for krivsky to come out ahead on this trade.
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Well if you think about it, maybe it does make some sense.

The reason why this trade is upsetting is that you'd think Krivsky could capitalize on the perceived value of Kearns and Lopez. When my brother told me about the trade, I asked him "So...did they get Cordero?" Not because I thought that would be the fair deal, but because I figured that Krivsky would sell Bowden on the perceived value of Lopez and Kearns. Guess JimBow has wised up a bit.

I'm a bit disillusioned that this is all we could get for two of our regular starters, but we have to assume that Krivsky tried his best. Our bullpen  is improved, we didn't lose anything in the field, and we're saving some money, perhaps for another deal. Let's take a deep breath and hope Denorfia is as good as we think he is.

Terrible, terrible trade.  Kearns isn't "replaceable" - he's a 30/30 guy who's a Gold Glove-caliber defender.

The numbers show that Clayton is as bad defensively as Lopez.  At least he hits worse.  And is 10 years older.

Middle relievers are this expensive only when you're out of your mind.  I could see a couple of B+ prospects for Majewski or Bray - but 2 major league starters???

...below only - Your starting shortstop...Royce Clayton!

I'll start off by saying that I like Bray and Majewski.  I live in Washington and go to Nats games fairly often, so I've seen both of these guys pitch several times.  Neither of them will wow you, but they're both bulldogs.  They know how to pitch, and just get people out, even if the K/BB ratio doesn't look the greatest.  Even better they're both young, cheap, and far from free agency.

However, this deal makes no sense for one simple reason.  The Nationals got the 2 best players in the deal currently, and the 2 players with the highest upside for the future.  Period.

Instead it's freaking Majewski who's got about as much potential as my grandmother.  Clayton, who's prime was about 8 years ago . . and it wasn't even that good then.  Daryl Thompson who is apparently the opposite of everything we thought Krivsky liked in a pitcher.  And Brendan Harris who is just plain mediocre.  What is supposed to be the key to this deal?

How does Krivsky manage to spin some of our highest trade commodities into 4 bags of crap?

Sometimes people can play the ol' "don't bash Krivsky until you see the results" card.  This is not one of those times.  This is an absolute abominable trade.  

How did Bud Selig let this deal go through so fast?

If you haven't read the comments to the diary on Sickels' page, here it is:

http://www.minorleagueball.com/story/2006/7/13/155437/683

It's a mix of people laughing at Krivsky and people feeling sorry for Reds fans.  

Time will tell and I hope this works out. I really hope it works out. This could easily turn into Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas or Tony Perez for Woody Fryman.

That said, I hate Deno in the leadoff spot. It just doesn't work for me. He's not much of a basestealing threat (he strikes me as a good baserunner, but not particularly fast), and I'm not hopeful that he'll hit .300 this year. I think .280/.345/.420 is probably a realistic projection for this year, with a few sprinkled in steals and homers. He ought to be hitting 2nd or 7th.

Dumbest line:  "look, this is the price you have to pay for pitching."

So, its nice to be back among the thinking fans.

We gave up one legit top flight player in Kearns.
We gave up a guy in Lopez who is only average this year, but has the potential to be very good.

You got one relief pitcher who appears to be a little above average.

You got another relief pitching who is too young to tell (But WLW says Wayne says "lots of teams wanted him" so you can take that to the bank).

And you got a very average SS.  And a couple minor leaguers who will likely never be anything.

I think our offense is now growing old and thin and I think the bullpen was helped only a little.

Finally, they kept adding these guys to the Guardado acqusition.  Where was it decided he was going to be our answer at closer.

We needed help this year.  But I think we have given away too much of next year.

It doesn't look good right now what with the spectre of Clayton looming over our heads, but all of this Chicken Little BS is making us sound like friggin Cubs fans.

Where did this Kearns fetish come from anyway?