- The Enquirer says that Womack will be sharing the utility role with Ryan Freel. If Rich Aurilia signs then Aurilia will get the bulk of the play at second. If he doesn't then Freel and Womack will split time at second. Since Ryan Freel is a thousand times better than Tony Womack, this left me scratching my head. And if I was Ryan Freel this would really piss me off:
"He adds a very important ingredient that's missing from our ball club: Speed," O'Brien said. "We have the power component. We needed to add speed."
Ryan Freel has stolen 73 bases over the past two season. And his OBP has been consistently in the .370s over that span as well. So we can pretty much consider the Tony Womack trade a big FU from Dan O'Brien to Ryan Freel.
- Dave Williams is happy to be a Red:
"We always said whenever we played Cincinnati that if they could get some quality arms there, they could do some things," Williams said, in a phone interview from his home in Georgia. "All of those guys are going to hit their home runs. It's nice to be part of something like that."
I also love this:
Williams knew about the Reds' pitching problems, and went on the Internet to get more information about their staff after he was traded.
I would love to know what he thought after looking up some of those stats.
- More Tony Womack hilarity:
"We feel he's the prototypical National League player," O'Brien said.I couldn't make this crap up if I tried.
- Junior is now going to be number 3.
I guess the Reds will sell a few new jerseys this year.
- Even more Tony Womack fun:
"I see (Womack) playing a great deal," Reds manager Jerry Narron.
Just .... wow.
- My thoughts, which will be much briefer than they were with the Casey deal:
This is exactly how I felt in 2002 with the Bengals. I wanted to hit bottom, because I felt it was the only way things would ever change. The Reds need to hit bottom now. For those of you who'll say that I shouldn't ever root against my favorite team, all I can say is that Dan O'Brien has the capability to destroy this team for years to come. Any GM who'd give up two warm bodies for Tony Womack will certainly make a mess of something as important as trading an Austin Kearns or a Wily Mo Pena or God forbid an Adam Dunn. Some of you will almost certainly think I'm overreacting to a trade for a potential bench warmer, but it's just the most glaring thing that has gone wrong in the Dan O'Brien era. There are plenty of other things that have gone horribly wrong in the past two years, but this is probably the stupidest.
I liked the Casey trade, but I didn't really think DanO deserved a lot of credit for it. He proved that yesterday with Tony Womack.
I'm now praying to God that the Reds sign Rich Aurilia. Which goes to show that if nothing else, I've hit bottom as a Reds fan.