but I wanted to point out that I'm awake for the JD overnight posts. Thank you and goodnight.

for JD Arney "Up All Night." I was preparing a diary post on McBeth from googling him. But reading this, I now know that there is nothing to redeem the wasted stench of cigarette smoke and spilled vodka tonics that cling to my clothes like a C-list celeb on an HBO casting director.

God is in his heaven. And that heaven is Hotlanta, home of So So Def records.

I don't think we sold low.  

It seemed weird at first, because Deno's on the DL for the rest of the season, but if it started in spring training, before the injury, it makes sense.

McBeth is a better player than I expected to get, all things considered.  And we're getting another "almost major league ready" player and cash.  I can't see getting more than that for Denorfia.  Krivsky said he didn't want to trade Deno, but the A's made him an offer he couldn't refuse.  It looks like he wasn't kidding.

Oakland can afford this, because they have so much pitching they don't know what to do with it.
 

I like Deno but I'll be surprised if he is ever anything more than a bench player in the majors.

I didn't think I would because I had become such a big Deno supporter, but I like relief pitchers with high k-rates who are still young.  I thought Deno would be a good 4th outfielder, but with the emergence of Hamilton, he's superfluous.  We're in year three of a desperate need for bullpen help, so getting some for a low cost is not a bad thing.  Plus, if we have 2 converted hitters in the bullpen, maybe that will make up for losing Trevor Hoffman long ago.

While I'm not pessimistic about McBeth (though perhaps I'm not as optimistic as some), I'm apparently higher on Denorfia than others here, and that's where my problems with this deal lie.  I consider Denorfia more of a 3rd outfielder than 4th as long as his defense is good enough for center field (I do agree that he wont hit enough to start in a corner outfield slot), and think he could make a very passable, league-average CF.

It's true that the Reds do have three-four starting outfielders right now, but Griffey is not particularly reliable at this point in his career (plus, the end of his contract is actually in sight), and I like Freel more in a backup/supersub role if we can afford to do that with him.  Plus, we're still in small sample size land with Hamilton--the league is still learning about how to get him out (though I agree that I think he'll be fine).

I just don't think an above-replacement level center fielder  is worth a 26-going-on-27 year old relief pitching prospect, just as a starting outfielder and shortstop weren't worth two relief pitchers last July.  Yes, McBeth's arm is "young," but so is his skill set, and the rest of his body will probably start to hit the decline phase of his career sometime in the next ~three years.  I also don't agree that he's "major league ready."  He has thrown only 17 1/3 innings at AAA, and hasn't yet proven that he can get guys out there yet (FIP is over 5 both this year and last).  He'll likely need at least a half-season at AAA before he can be considered for a bullpen role, and my guess is that he'll be best served by staying there all year.

Again, though, it's not that I don't think McBeth can help the Reds in the future.  It's just that I don't see his value as being equivalent to Denorfia's.  But we'll see who else the Reds get. -j

In the abstract, I agree with J, but I'm a bit more enthusiastic about the trade simply because I don't think Deno was ever going to get a fair shot at playing time on this team, especially with Hamilton's spring. Even if Deno hadn't gotten hurt, he'd still only be on the team in the same capacity as Hopper is now. In other words, if you hit .349/.409/.484 and STILL can't crack the lineup, I don't know when you ever will do enough to impress the "braintrust." The Baseball Prospectus Annual mentions Brady Clark in their little blurb, and I think that's spot on. I wouldn't be surprised if Deno starts in CF for the A's next year, and has a Clark-like career. It's too bad it couldn't be for the Reds, but with the OF prospects in the pipeline, Deno wouldn't have been with us for that long anyway.

for no other reason than we might get some production out of McBeth this year and there was no possibility of getting that from Deno.

I like(d) Deno, but it never seemed like he was going to get his shot here, so fare thee well in Oakland, Chris.

Here's her take on it from the Reds perspective, prefaced by her assessment of re-signing Coffey and dumping Cormier for Salmon:

In the wake of the Kearns-Lopez disaster and all of its after-effects and non-additive additions, I've been a bit given to bashing on Wayne Krivsky for his bullpen obsessions, because he seems too ready to dive into a terminal case of Wade's tremens, the compulsive need to add relievers. However, going all the way back to the start of his service with the Reds, the man does keep doing other things that I actually like. Take his decision to anticipate some offseason business, and take care of Coffey's contract right now. Coffey might have been arbitration-eligible as a super-two player after this season, but why worry about that? Keep the player happy, eliminate even the threat of going through that sort of offseason unpleasantness, and perhaps also send the message that the cheapskate sensibility of the Age of Lindner is just a memory.

Dumping Cormier's a reminder that this new willingness to spend money extends to eating contracts when it involves discarding a veteran who seems to be beyond useless. What's interesting about ditching Cormier is that this is the first seven-figure disposal that wasn't a matter of discarding another one of Dan O'Brien's mistakes (like Tony Womack or David Williams)--Cormier was a mistake of his own made during the desperate stretch of last summer, and a player whose deal he had to extend to get past Cormier's ten-and-five rights. That Krivsky was willing to sink this particular cost was perhaps characteristically bold, but Reds fans should also hope that it wound up being educational. In his place, getting down to only two lefties and bringing up Salmon now that he's about as ready as he's every going to be provides the pen with better talent as well as better balance. As I noted in this year's book, Salmon throws hard, but it looks like he's being a lot more consistent with his slider this year, and if he can keep that up, he's an improvement on the Saarloos and Santos types, instead giving them a power righthander beyond Coffey.

The decision to deal Denorfia might seem strange, because he's out for the year after elbow surgery, but they're committed to Josh Hamilton for the time being, and by the time Denorfia would be useful to them, Drew Stubbs might be ready for Double-A. So Krivsky instead decided to ditch someone no longer really in his ballclub's outfield picture for another reliever, and while that might seem like more of the same, McBeth's as interesting as a minor league reliever can get, bordering on meriting a 'prospect' label you don't often tag their kind with. A former centerfielder with mid-90s heat, he might have been able to punch his own ticket at some point with velocity alone. However, a nasty changeup and a promising slider give him an unusually broad assortment for a conversion project, and there's a decent chance he'll be able to stick in The Show before this season's out. Add in the cash and the possibility of some other goody, and it already looks like a pretty solid move.