to go one way or the other on this one. While I don’t think he has done the greatest job yet, I want to see his ‘plan’ and I don’t think we have seen enough of it yet for me to make a judgment on him yet.

Ladies and gentleman, a round of applause please.

Because TWSS, and because of his reputation coming in indicates we’ll have a roster full of Jeff Suppans, Jason Marquises, Ronnie Belliards, and John Mabrys.

I really liked his style, although that could be just because I never got the chance to see him flame out terribly.

Walt hasn’t done anything creative yet, which is probably exactly what this team needs. But he’ll keep the Reds within 75-85 wins for a few years. Mediocrity is the new shitty!

this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read today:
Sean O’Sheagh, a writer for IrishCentral, a magazine of all things Irish (ethnicity-wise) in America, is reporting that Kelly will be the new coach at Notre Dame.
That is the most stereotypical sentence I have read that didn’t involve beer or leprechauns. And that’s not the best part. The best part is that Ron Pawlus is ND’s quarterbacks coach

Positives:

- Dunn and Griffey trades: I didn’t like the idea of shipping Dunn out, but I think a lot of us underestimated how much his terrible defense cuts into his value. Getting what proved to be a closer-caliber arm and 5th starter/right handed power-hitting PHer (both under control and pre-arb) is a good return, especially when you consider both players were in the last year of their deals.

- Arthur Rhodes: Exceeded expectations as the Collosus transcended LOOGy status

- Johnny Gomes singing: The type of low-risk/medium reward move that Jocketty seems to be good at pulling off.

- David Weathers: Fangraphs says he had negative value last year, but I think that may be attributable to his performance with the Brewers. He was servicable in Red (3.32 ERA) and the fact Jocketty was able to eek out a little return on the trade makes it a positive

- Alex Gonzalez trade: Credit’s due that he was able to find a taker at all

- Wladimir Balentien trade

Neutral:

- Ramon Hernandez: If my math is right the Reds added about $2MM to accomodate Hernandez last year and are commiting $3MM in total this year.

Negatives:

- Taveras, Lincoln, Hairston signings: The second year at $4MM to twice non-tendered Taveras was probably the worst move Jocketty has made, but all three signings were unnecessary and ill-advised. And in all three players, Jocketty appears to have ignored overwhelming evidence of career numbers and hoodwinked by brief flashes competency.

- Scott Rolen deal: Well chronicled here, but this one was a complete puzzler. I’m not even sure you can argue it makes the team better in the short term, with Rolen’s health and production questionable and the $6MM added to the payroll this year precluding any meaningful transactions – though maybe the financial woes are a blessing in disguise.

The Rolen deal and Taveras signing were the biggest blunders, probably outweighing all the positives, but I think Jocketty gets the benefit of the doubt for at least one more offseason. If he’s still around in 2011, what he does with the budget flexibility should be his final exam.

That tilted me from “neutral” to “somewhat dissatisfied”.

Still merits another year or two to see how things pan out.

Here’s the problem, I think: Any reasonable person would see that this team needs alot of work to be competative. Unfortunately, the guy who signs the paychecks hasn’t shown himself to be overly reasonable. This puts Jockety in a tough spot.

Case in point: Scott Rolen. EdE was disappointing to those of us who saw glimmers of talent, and a lightning rod for the Martys of the world; for his sake, he clearly needed to go. So what was Walt to do? There was no one in-house who was a decent replacement, which meant looking elsewhere. Bob was screaming “Win now!!!” the next office over.

Given the circumstances, I think trading for Rolen did two things for the team: 1. It showed the talk radio guys that “The Reds mean it!” and 2. It gave guys like Frasier and El Nino time to develop.

I also don’t think the payroll is really that “hamstrung”. Again, I don’t think it was reasonable when the trade was made to think the Reds would compete in ‘10, and Rolen’s contract will be off the books in ‘11. Is it a waste of Bob’s money? Yep. Does it hurt the team? I don’t think so.

The next 12 months is the time, I think, when we’ll really know what Walt’s plan is and how he’s going to execute it.

The second year to Taveras, though, was dumb.

He’s still a very good player on both sides of the ball. I don’t think his acquisition is is either that bad or at all ill timed.
But the what do I know…I like Layne Nix and Adam Dunn.

re: The Rolen deal:

Josh Roenicke has a career MLB ERA of 5.56, and will be 27 this year, and didn’t even taste AAA until 2008. I think his ceiling is as a right-handed setup guy, which is an easily replaceable cog.

EdE sucked last year, even after the trade, and has shown little or no improvement since 2006. And he is now coming off wrist surgery.

Zach Stewart looks like a gem, but that’s not certain yet, many project him as a reliever instead of a starter (though not me), and he looks to be the only real thing we gave up. Plus we got cash back, improved for 2010, and have a tradeable veteran commodity at the deadline if we’re off to a weak start.

Add in the clubhouse influence (which clearly made a difference, if only in BP’s performance), and I am unconvinced that this trade was a dud.

I thought long and hard before I voted, no I’m not going to tell you what I voted.

 I would have kept Roenicknolte and eManuel Lewis, EE could have tried LF in the minors or used him as incentive for a SS or Catcher via a trade. albeit not a very good trading chip at all. It was a risk to take t-virus for that price, and he should have known that he was broken via talking to other managers and owners

BUT, He did do wonders by selling washups like Dunn and Griffey. Yea they got asses in the seats, but we true reds fans know better than to judge him for such a trade. Sorry Slyde, Rolen. Also he did save money keeping said players off teh DL. Did he blow our chances for that week’s worth of games, Yes. I honestly believe that he does a good job at managing Cincinnati’s baseball salary, with all things considered.

Let the flaming ensue.

This just in, Thom is the official Play-by-play voice of teh Cincinnati Reds.

Woot.

ever since you’ve changed your avatar, mi senorita Katie has been a little…friskay.

meh

i have gone 38 hours without sleep, should i go to sleep or see how long i can keep going?

Mainly because of the Taveras signing. The Rolen trade looks great if we were a team that needed only one piece to get over the hump, and I like what Rolen brings to the table as far as experience, talent and leadership. But since we’re a few peces shy of contending, the Rolen trade only looks average.

I am somewhat dissatisfied with Walt. I don’t know how much is Walt and how much is Dusty, but it seems like this organization is not only incapable of finding creative solutions to the holes in the roster, but isn’t particularly interested in trying to find them. Find a mediocre veteran, call it good. That’s not going to work here, because we didn’t happen upon the best hitter in baseball with a 13th round draft pick, and turn a 29 year old pitcher with a career 4.83ERA in to a Cy Young winner.

The Taveras contract was awful, and anybody with a brain saw it at the time. It was, in fact, the perfect confluence of GM stupidity and Manger stupidity; Taveras is exactly the kind of player that Dusty has shown a complete inability to properly evaluate in the past.

The Rolen deal was, at best, an upgrade from slightly-below-average to above-average-but-often-injured. That’s a terrible trade when you’re a team with several roster holes, financial problems, you had to pay significantly more salary to make the deal, and you gave up the only cheap cost-controlled guys that changed hands. It showed a complete lack of understanding of where this team is at, and what it should be trying to accomplish.

The Hernandez deal was terrible, too. The Reds spend the 3rd highest percentage of payroll on the catcher position, and got the 21st highest OPS out of their catcher position. Reds’ pitchers had a better ERA when Hanigan pitched, and Hanigan threw out a significantly higher percentage of basestealers than Hernandez (and, for the record, I think Catchers’ ERA is mostly crap, except when used to dispel the erroneous notion that Hernandez “handles the pitching staff” better than Hanigan). Shitty, shitty trade, and I said that at the time.

That’s three BIG negatives in my book, and the only real positives were guys like Rhodes and Gomes; cheap, limited players who can be valuable if properly utilized. Unfortunately, we have Dusty, so players are pretty much guaranteed to be improperly utilized.

So, no creativity. The expensive creative moves are terrible. The few cheap creative moves that do work out are unable to be translated into value on the field because of your Manager.

Let’s just say I don’t see the rest of Jocketty’s tenure going well. When Krivsky was hired, I wanted Logan White. When Jocketty was hired, I wanted Logan White. I still want Logan White. Let’s see what happens if a team ever hires him. It certainly won’t be the Reds, as they’re clearly happy with veteran retreads both on the field and in the front office at this point.

It seems we are pretty down the middle with Walt, not being overly enamored or overly dissatisfied with him.

Pretty much what i expected it to be.