• Does Krivsky keep his job? (Evidently, yes.)
• Does they keep Mackinin for '08? (It seems unlikely but he is 18-13 with a team that was not really expected to win more than 85 games.)
• Do they sign Dunn for '08?
• Do they sign Dunn to a long term contract?
• Do they trade Griffey?  (It seems unlikey, especially if he does not hit his 600th homer this September. That may seem sort of silly but I do think that is a significant contributing factor in this decision. It's not as if teams are beating down Wayne's door to try to acquire Junior.  He's owed a lot of money.)
• Can Hamilton play 140 games next season?  If Dunn and/or Griffey is/are not going to be here at some point in the future, Hamilton is going to have be a consistent producer.
• Will Edwin improve?  When?
• Do they keep Stanton?
• Does the bullpen get completely overhauled?
• Assuming that '06 was something of a pleasant anomaly from Arroyo and that he will settle in as a .500-ish pitcher at #3 or #4 in the rotation, do the Reds try to sign or acquire a "legitimate" #2?
• Will Homer be ready to be the Reds' #2 in '08?
• The NL Central should be soft again in '08 so the Reds may not need five quality starters but who will be the #4 if they stand pat with Harang, Arroyo and Bailey?
• Who's on first?

And since the Reds are a small market team, they are stuck with everyone else's reclamation projects.  True, some of them will work out, Arroyo last year, Harang, especially, over the past few, but for every one of them there has been several Jimmy Haynes's and Paul Wilsons.  This is what sets us back.  We can bring up a Dunn or Kearns, but if you cannot develop adequate pitching, and you are compelled to acquire it from the outside as a small market team, it is a recipe for disaster.

Another factor, one I have been complaining about since it opened, is the GABP.  It is too much of a hitters park.  There is a reason the Cubs have not won a WS since '08, the Red Sox from 1918 until 2004, and the Rockies since their inception in MLB.  To put it another way.  The two teams with the most World Series championships, the Yankees and Cardinals, have played their home games mostly in pitching-oriented or neutral ballparks.  Teams with extreme offensive ballparks skew the numbers so much that it damages the pitching staffs, and I am certain in between there the psyche of quite a few pitchers.  I have personally witnessed, just from the games I have watched in person, at least a half dozen off-the-outfield-wall singles by players at the Great American.  I doubt I saw that many in all my years of watching games at the old Riverfront.  They need to move those fences back, especially down the lines.