Lefty Matt Maloney will start on Saturday
to the surprise of no one. Hal says His specialty is a wide-sweeping curveball that buckles the knees on left-handed hitters, and Baker said, "He not only has good breaking stuff, he has deception and late movement on his fastball. He has control and he is not afraid to throw the ball inside on right-handers, which is one of the toughest things to teach a left-handed pitcher. A lot of them don't like to try that because the ball tends to creep back over the heart of the plate."

Brandon Phillips is a man
Since breaking his thumb on May 23, he is 8-22 with 3 HRs. "If the ball is over the plate, it feels great," Phillips said. "If they get it in there, I feel it a little bit. I'm a man. I'm going to play."

Dusty had some words of encouragement after last night's tough loss
They ended up 2-5 for the road trip, so all you jerks who voted correctly last week can go climb a tree. "We’ve got to forget about the three in Milwaukee," Baker said. "And looked at it as we split with them in a place they’re tough. They’re tough here. Now, we've got a big series with the Cubs."

Doug at RML wonders if the Reds should trade for Matt Holliday
MixFMKyle brought this up the other day too, and I personally think it's not such a good idea. I dont think Walt does either. I feel like he really is dedicated to the long term success of this team and the development of our farm talent. I doubt we will see any big time trades at the deadline this year.

Jim Misudek at the Reds Internal Affairs blog
has some updated photos of the Reds new spring training complex in Goodyear, AZ. I dont know who's idea it was to start building baseball stadia in the middle of the desert, but it just looks like a really bad idea to me.

The doesnt like the pitching match ups this weekend against the Cubs
and projects a 50-50 split between Cubs and Reds fans at the stadium. I would encourage all who are geographically and financially able to get out to the park this weekend and shout obscenities to our unwelcome guests.

Chris Sabo's Goggles has been doing their "most hated" lists for a while now
and next up is the Cubs. Consider their particularly infamous reputation 'round these parts, I'd like to open the floor for this discussion. CSG lists Sammy Sosa, Carlos Zambrano, Moises Alou, and Tuffy Rhodes. Which Cub do you hate the most?

This happened a few days ago
and I dont know how I missed it, but Doug's website MinorLeagueNotebook has pulled up stakes and moved over to Firstinning.com. They have done great work on minor league coverage, so their combined forces should be real quality stuff.

Ted Keith at SI has his weekly power rankings
and the Reds have slipped one spot down to 11. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think we were really lucky to go 2-5 on this road trip. Votto and Volquez both went on the DL, Bruce had only 1 hit, Taveras hasnt played...This team is held together by spit and dirt right now and they arent a total embarrassment. I'll take that.