Blog Red Machine gives Drew Stubbs a C- grade on the season
citing his increased strikeout rate, his inability to bunt, and his decreased power. Those are all fair criticisms (though the bunt thing is becoming one of my least favorite canards written about this team), but this seems just one more example of Stubbs getting the Adam Dunn Treatment. His strengths are presented with buts and his weaknesses with ands.
At the end of the day, Stubbs still rates as an above average baseball player (2.6 fWAR, 2.9 bWAR this season) and he will earn around the league minimum next season. Of course, like anyone else I would love to see Stubbarooski turn into Eric Davis. But he most likely won't, and that's still okay. The Good should never be considered the enemy of The Perfect.
Redleg Nation has a terrific arbitration primer
If you need a refresher on how the arb process works, click on through. The Reds have a few mildly interesting arb cases this winter, with Homer Bailey, Edinson Volquez, and Nick Masset headlining the list. If the Reds were to forego re-signing Francisco Cordero, would you rather Homer or Volquez be given a trial as the closer? Is neither a good idea?
NotGraphs has cobbled together some highlights from TBS' analysis of the NLCS
and presented them all together in a cute little video. The takeaway: "Obviously, being obvious is the most obvious way to express just how obvious the obvious is."
MLB is hiring a former Secret Service agent as their new security chief
Consider this little bit of seemingly unrelated and totally harmless Facebookery and all you have to do is connect the dots. We're through the looking glass here, people.
So yeah, as you can see it's pretty quiet on the Reds' news front. The rest of the division is making national headlines though, so here's a bit of what our SBN brothers (and black sheep cousins) are talking about:
Brew Crew Ball is crying into their collective breakfast beers this morning
and all because of Ron Roenicke and Mark Kotsay. Although Kotsay did hit a home run last night, he also missed two key balls in center field that both Nyjer Morgan and Carlos Gomez , both significantly better glove men, most likely would have had. Those hits led to the Cardinals four runs.
It seems Roenicke is the only man in the universe who still thinks Kotsay can play CF, and also the only man in the universe who can do anything about it. It's like some great Greek tragedy or something. Still, the Brewers are only down two games to one with Game Four coming up tonight.
While the Brewers may be playing out like a Greek tragedy
Viva El Birdos sees the Cardinals as a modern day tale of self-discovery and realization where the guy figures out in the end after chasing the shallow popular girl all year that the girl next door with the glasses and the pony tail who he had a faint friendsy crush on is actually a hot babe once you take off her glasses and unbutton her blouse a bit.
DanUpBaby had read the narrative of this season as the rise of the Young Birds, with Jon Jay and Jaime Garcia and Daniel Descalso and Allen Craig and David Freese and a bunch of other jerks. But it turns out this is the same old Cardinals team it ever was, led by grizzled veteran jerks like Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, and Yadier Molina. It definitely has been a strange year for the Cards, but it seems they are hitting their stride at just the right time. Again, NLCS Game Four is tonight at 8:05.
Bleed Cubbie Blue is getting their sugars all up about Theo Epstein
Personally, I'm not as impressed with his body of work as others seem to be, but quite frankly just about anyone would be worth getting excited about after nearly 10 years of Jim Hendry. Also, the newz on tha streetz is that Ryne Sandberg is most likely going to take over as manager after Theo shitcans Mike Quade. Still, it will be a few years before the Cubs are cabable of fielding a team that can compete for the division. Epstein has a monumental task in front of him trying to fix that dysfunctional roster.