Red Reposter: Trade targets and benchwarmers

Looks like we're just entering "let's speculate about the trade deadline" season, as C. Trent leads us off today. He goes through a few of the names that the Reds could look at to fill the LF void, but none of the solutions look particularly realistic. I'm inclined to agree with him.

For me, it's about leveraging what kind of improvement we'd see with a guy like Soriano or Stanton compared to what we're already getting from XPaul/D-Rob. Stanton would be a huge improvement, but I'm not sure the huge package you'd have to give up would be worth it. CTR mentions both Billy Hamilton and Tony Cingrani likely to be in any major deal, and those are guys who are already penciled into next year's team as major role players with the likely departures of Choo and Arroyo. I'm not sure it's worth the risk.

He also mentions grabbing a reliever, and I think that's worth looking into. It wouldn't cost nearly that much, and this bullpen could use another solid arm or two.

FanGraphs has an article from a few days ago about Devin Mesoraco's lack of playing time, and I'm inclined to agree with Paul Swydan here. Sure, Devin's not putting up the numbers to make you forcibly put him in the starting role, but he's really not getting a chance to put those numbers up, either. There's a few factors missing here, like how much better Ryan Hanigan is with the pitchers, but Hanny really isn't hitting this year. I'd be all about getting Devin a few more ABs.

Rob Neyer has an interesting piece at Baseball Nation today about some new pitching analysis from Bill James. Former Red Chris Hammond gets a mention in this one as a "Recognizable Name", which surprises me if anyone outside of Cincinnati remembers him.

Did you listen to this week's Red Reporter podcast yet? Why the hell not?

And tune into 1450 The Sports Buzz to hear KMiB in our new time slot!