Red Reposter- Off Day Hot Links

The Cincinnati Reds welcomed four new inductees into their Hall of Fame over the weekend, and Reds.com's Manny Randhawa detailed their enshrinement.  Ken Griffey, Jr., Dave Parker, Ron Oester, and old-timey Jake Beckley received the highest honor from the Reds on Sunday evening.  As Manny noted, each of the four spent time growing up in Cincinnati prior to their days in red, which made their inclusion in the Reds' HoF just a little bit sweeter.  Junior mashed 210 dingers with an .876 OPS in his 9 seasons with the Reds; the Cobra chipped in with two Top 5 MVP seasons, an .803 OPS, and 107 dingers in his 4 seasons in Cincinnati; Beckley amassed 1126 hits and a .818 OPS during his tenure in the Queen City at the turn of the 20th century (and has been in the MLB HoF since 1971); and Oester wore a Reds jersey for the entirety of his 13 pretty average-ish seasons as a pro.

The Cincinnati Enquirer's John Fay chimed in with his thoughts on the 4 inductees, too.

You know how we've all pretty much agreed that the Reds' bench has been, well, godawful in 2014?  Well, FanGraphs' August Fagerstrom broke down the benches of each of the major league teams in an attempt to categorize which have been the best and worst, and it seems that his analysis has the Reds' bench firmly in the middle of the pack in terms of their effectiveness.  My best guess is that Ramon Santiago's surprising OBP and plus defense has helped pull what would have otherwise been a disappointing ranking out of the doldrums.  The fact that FanGraphs adores Chris Heisey's defense obviously has helped, too.  If you stripped this out to offensive and defensive contributions, however, I'm pretty certain you'd find the Reds in the bottom two or three in all of baseball, however.

Look! It's Mat Latos dancing with Cat Latos! This is super cute and funny until you remember all the awful stuff the Cat Latos twitter account spewed over the last few years.  Oh well, that's neither Cat's nor Mat's fault, so just smile at kitty!

Ralph has an offseason plan for the Colorado Rockies (a seven part plan, at that), and part of it includes trading Charlie Blackmon to the Reds for Mat Latos.  It's behind a pay-wall (because somebody's gotta pay Ralph to be Ralph), but the premise is that the Reds will need to free up a bit of payroll this offseason and could use a cheap LF with some pop, and it's actually not the most terrible plan.  Ralph notes that Latos has excelled in SSS in Coors Field, and with the presence of Carlos Gonzalez, Corey Dickerson, Brandon Barnes, and Drew Stubbs, the Rockies could afford to part with an outfielder.  Nice #HotTake, Ralph.

Finally, Jon Tayler took a look at Devin Mesoblasto's breakout season for Sports Illustrated, and while it's full of plenty of things Reds fans will already be aware of, there's also some historical context and batting profile tidbits included that make it a worthwhile read.  Reading about how the Reds catcher is bashing brains at a rate not matched by Buster Posey, Joe Mauer, Yadier Molina, or any other catcher in baseball is pretty dang cool, I think.