The July 31st non-waiver trade deadline is fast approaching, and the Reds are feverishly assembling a plan of action. Hanging on to first place in the NL Central and sporting one of the best records in all of baseball, this is a team primed for a pennant chase. But just like the teams they are battling, there are a few areas in which they can improve in order to boost their chances of finishing the season on top. Here is a list of completely unreasonable suggestions for the Reds as the deadline approaches:
Trade Bronson Arroyo, Miguel Cairo, Kyle Lotzkar, and Didi Gregorius to the Mets for David Wright and Bobby Parnell
Check out this sitch: the Reds get the only guy who can hope to replace Votto's production in the lineup and they don't even really have to give up that much. Parnell can slot into the bullpen so that Aroldis Chapman can replace Arroyo in the rotation. Wright can take over 3B so Scott Rolen can take over for Cairo as the backup bench veteran team leader. Lotzkar and Didi go to the Mets to sweeten the deal for them. They are a .500 team that had a good start to the season, but they clearly don't have the talent to chase down the Nationals and Braves. So they will obviously be ready in a week to give up Wright. And that one guy with that one Mets blog has always wanted Arroyo, who seems a good fit for New York in general and Citi Field in particular.
Trade a ton of minor leaguers that we like because we follow the team closely and especially value them for a ton of good major leaguers that fit our team's needs perfectly
Hows 'bout Donald Lutz, Tony Cingrani, Theo Bowe, and Denis Phipps for Ryan Braun and Zack Greinke? Braun could finally fill the hole in LF that has been there since the departure of Adam Dunn (not to mention the cleanup spot) and the Brewers need to get rid of Greinke anyway because he'll be a free agent at the end of the year. I mean, the Reds would practically be doing them a favor by unloading all of that payroll.
Sign Sean Casey
When Joey Votto was decommissioned after Operation Meniscus, there were some rumblings from the alternative media and the Twitterati that the former Mayor could mount a surprise re-election campaign. Casey is a career .302 hitter over 12 seasons in the majors, including eight with the Redlegs. He's younger than Miguel Cairo. But he last played baseball back in 2008 as a bench bat for the Red Sox. If the Reds are looking to coax a lefty bat out of retirement to fill in for a month, they are probably better off calling Barry Bonds.
Sign Barry Bonds
Bondso last slammed the drums for Led Zep back in '07 as a 42 year old. Now 47, the best hitter I will ever see is still probably capable of hitting better than league-average for a month or so. I suppose the Reds could try to convince him that this is his very last chance at winning a ring, which is usually the kind of thing people say when they are speculating as wildly as I am here. Joey Votto has proclaimed his admiration of Ted Williams numerous times, and Bonds was better than him. So by the theory of deductive syllogisms, this cannot fail.
Sign 2011 Tour de France champion Cadel Evans to ride his bike around the stadium like a mascot or something, I don't know, as like a promotion to sell more tickets so the team has more money
I'm watching the Tour right now and this just seems like an awwwwwwwwesome idea.
Trade Zack Cozart to the Diamondbacks for Justin Upton; bring up Billy Hamilton to play SS
This is just too perfect to ever really be real. Upton needs a change of scenery, and he would monster mash at GABP. He'd probably hit like a hundred home runs playing here. And the Reds need to do something with Cozart to make way for Billy Quicks. This move fills all of the Reds' most glaring holes (LF, cleanup, leadoff) and they don't even really have to give up all that much to do it. It also gives the DBacks a SS of the future, which they need because Stephen Drew will be a free agent.
Invent Calvin's duplicator machine for real and boink out a half-dozen or so new Joey Vottos
Just make sure you set the machine to "healthy knees" so as to avoid the need to put them all on the DL right away. Also, you'd have to do some sly work with the Commissioner's Office because I'm not sure how clones are treated in terms of free agency and stuff. Like, are they considered already signed by the Reds because the original Joey Votto is already signed by the Reds? Do they all share Joey #1's contract, or is Joey #1's contract duplicated with each duplicate? Are they international free agents because Joey is from Canada, or are they Americans because they were created here? There is a lot of red tape to cut through in order to make cloning a reasonable trade deadline strategy, but the payoff could be enormous.