Dusty Baker aint no frontrunner
So you can just forget the idea that Willy Taveras and Chris Dickerson will be platooned in CF. After Taveras started against two lefties, Dickerson was in CF and leading off against righty Rodrigo Lopez. "Dickerson hadn't played in a couple of days," Reds manager Dusty Baker said Wednesday. " ... Willy will be back in there (today)." As the Fay points out, Dickerson's OBP is .375 while Taveras is getting on at an embarrassing .287 clip.

The Reds' top two draft picks last month, Mike Leake and Brad Boxberger are close to signing
"It's going very well with both of those guys," Reds scouting director Chris Buckley said by phone Wednesday. "We haven't been in a super duper rush, because both guys pitched a lot and were tired. Hopefully, we're pretty close."

Dusty blames a key miscue for the loss last night
citing Laynce Nix running into the 2nd baseman to start the double play in the 3rd inning. But you know, Jay Bruce was the one who hit the weak grounder right at Utley. There is plenty of blame to go around for every single stupid hitter on this team not pulling his weight, and I think it's a jerk move of Baker to single out one guy like that.

Ramon Hernandez is happy in Cincinnati
after a tense break-up with the Orioles. He's performing just about as we expected him to, which is to say fairly well. I like what he's done so far, but I really dont want to see him come back next year. Ryan Hanigan has been the clearly superior catcher thus far and really deserves the full time gig. Hernandez's option for next year is for $8.5 mil.

Doug Gray continues to look at Reds rookie pitcher with Pitch F/X
Today he looks at Carlos Fisher. He can bring the fastball pretty strong, and he throws 4 different kinds of fastballs.

These stories always make me laugh
Ichiro was asked by MLB to participate in the home run derby, because as we all know he could hit 40 home runs a year if he wanted to. But he just doesnt want to. How noble and pure of him, right? He turned them down, apparently because he doesnt want to be used as a marketing ploy like that. Shysterball recounts the (probably apocryphal) story of Ty Cobb proving he could hit homers all day if he wanted to, but he didnt because hitting homers is brutish and impure. Hooray rationalizing!!

It looks like the league has figured out Alfonso Soriano
Throw him the slow stuff. Sori is having a tremendously sucktacular year for the Cubbies so far and, as RJ and FanGraphs argues, much of that can be attributed to the league's reluctance to throw him fastballs. This kind of thing always make me feel a bit relieved that our Reds only have one ugly contract right now, and at least he's performing at an all-star level.