Red Reposter - Let's Hope it's Possible to Be a Leader While Sitting on the Bench

It has been a very long time since the Reds were in 1st place in August.  I figured you would all appreciate this.  Breathe it in.

• The big news of the night last night was Orlando Cabrera's injury
  "It doesn’t look good," manager Dusty Baker said. "It’s a side. Those are bad. It’s his left side, which is his lead side. That makes it worse." Cabrera will almost certainly go on the DL, as he's in Cincinnati this morning to be checked out. It seems like Paul Janish will take over at SS in his stead, with one of the Reds young infielders in AAA stepping in to the reserve role.
  
  Drew Sutton has been up for a cuppa already this season, and has played SS in a pinch, but his bat is cold and he really shouldn't be playing SS. Chris Valaika was a SS until last season, but he's been playing 2B in L'ville. Zack Cozart is the starting SS in L'ville and is likely the best overall option out of the bunch, but the Reds may not want to bring him up to sit the bench behind Janish and he is not on the 40-man. I think the Reds may wait until getting word on Cabrera, because if it's not major and he's only out for a few weeks I would think they go with Valaika. If Lando's gonna be out well into September or later though they may want to bring up the hot prospect Cozart and have him start.
  
  I think the most distressing thing is that this oblique strain is the exact same injury that has sequestered Mike Lincoln in the bowels of oblivion for such a long time.  Lincoln certainly isn't as important to the team as Lando is (and some will argue Lando isn't much important either) but now is not the time to lose anyone to injury.

• Chris Heisey has started the past 2 days in CF
  and it looks like he might get an even longer look-see than that. "He’s been playing," Baker Baker said. "That’s two days in a row. He can run them down — not quite like Stubbs, which is a big part of our defense. But we’re in a performance game. We’ve been spotting him against certain kind of pitchers that I thought he was most conducive to having success against. He’s learning." The way Stubbs has been playing it looks more and more like he might be sent to Louisville in favor of Dickerson. Did anyone else notice that Heisey has gotten only 89 ABs since being called up at the end of April??

• Hold on to your butts
  As you probably know, Joey Votto took the night off last night because of a sore wrist. "It's been bothering him for about three days now and if you don't take care of it, it's only going to get worse, especially after every time you check swing," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "It's a sprain and hopefully right now he's day-to-day. ... The doctor looked at him yesterday said it's a sprain of the wrist. Sometimes, you know, that wrist is something that you take for granted until you sprain it. Your wrist and your fingers, you don't even think about it as far as a hitter's concerned. That's a very, very important part of their hitting. As a guy who's hurt both of them, I know they're important."
  
  It sounds like the Reds are just being cautious with him, but that's kinda the same thing they said when Votto was out for a week with the neck and Rolen was out for 10 days with the hamstring. Hopefully this is just a few days at most, but the history with these things has me worried. Luckily, the Reds have the Pirates and Cubs for the next 5, but they head to St. Louis after that. Votto's gotta be ready for that.