Red Reposter - Of injuries, trades, intrigue, magic, cabbages, and kings

Take a deep breath and stiff drink
Relax, everyone. Mat Latos is okay. He strained his calf yesterday landing awkwardly after a pitch, but he should be fine. The Reds list him as day-to-day. I'm pretty confident that he should be good to pitch 10 days from now.

Despite New Guy's best efforts to jinx him earlier this morning
Scott Rolen is looking to make up for his injury-plagued 2011 season. "I want to be available and accountable 162 times," Rolen said. "Even if you're off that day, I can enter the game and be accountable for whatever in that situation. Will I play every day, 162 games? I don't know. I think that would be a surprise to a lot of people. Can I be available for all 162? Yeah. That's a different animal."

JP Morosi says the Indians are looking for a right-handed bat that can play LF or CF
I don't know why I'm even linking this. Chris Heisey seems a perfect fit for them, as he can play both positions and balances out their lefty-heavy outfield. A Heisey/Michael Brantley swap might be interesting, as they seem like similar players from different sides of the plate. Brantley has had some issues with injuries though, so I dunno. These kinds of trades rarely ever happen anymore though, as "just for the hell of it" deals went out of style a long time ago.

Bill Bray pitched a scoreless inning Monday night
which was his first official action of the spring. He's hoping to be ready to roll for Opening Day, which is only a week away now. That seems like a stretch, but relievers take far less time to get ready than do starters or position players. I'm pretty confident he'll be on the Opening Day roster as long as he doesn't have a set back.

Steve (Inspector) Mancuso has an interesting and provocative take on the closer sitch
I encourage you to read the whole thing, as there are a lot of ins, a lot of outs, and a lot of what-have-yous that I'm not going to detail too much here. But the big take away is that Walt Jocketty and Dusty Baker appear, once again, to not be on the same page. Jocketty signed Sean Marshall to close, but Dusty seems reluctant, or at least hesitant, to use him that way. Intrigue!

andromache does some good leg work and figures out, statistically, what exactly makes a good Xth starter
I'm really impressed by the graph, but I'm a sucker for that kinda stuff anyway. The long and short of it is that Homer Bailey's ERA+ of 88 last year was right about average for a 4th starter. Good stuff, andro.

The sale of the Trolley-Dodgers of Los Angeles, California USA Earth Solar System has reportedly been finalized
I have a feeling this is gonna be Magic. The price tag is north of $2 billion dollars, which is, like, woah jeez. I am simply gob-smacked at how well that butt salad Frank McCourt has come out of this. Just...wow.

NotGraphs lists people who are younger than Jamie Moyer
Norm Charlton is a shocking member of the club, and also dead people like Ken Caminiti, Whitney Houston, Lars Ulrich, and Terri Schiavo. Ron Karkovice has not seen this list, because he thinks the internet "is for dipshits".

It's season preview season
Big Lead Sports has their take on the NL Central race this year, predicting the Reds to win 89 games and the division.

John Shea at the SFChronicle also provides us with a positive preview
predicting the Reds to take the division.

Stadium Journey ranks the 30 AAA ballparks
Huntington Park in Columbus ranks #9, Louisville Slugger Field is #11, and Victory Field in Indy ranks #14. I can only speak of my experiences at Huntington, which is a terrific place to watch a baseball game. If you have never attended a minor league game, there are like a million such ballparks in the area. So check one or five out this summer.

Beyond the Boxscore has an interesting look at the correlation between steals and triples
Both require speed to be successful, but how to explain the players that excel at one and not the other? Rickey Henderson and Eric Davis are two of the best base stealers in history, but rank merely averageish in terms of their ability to leg out triples. Conversely, Stephen Drew is a noted tripler who is only average at stealing. Of course, there are guys like Johnny Estrada who never stole a single base or hit a single triple, and Neon Primetime who was awesomejunglegyms at both. So yeah, it's neat.