Red Reposter - Injuries, Comebacks, & Bad Baseball

Remember when P-Doc and a host of other experts on the subject were giving Joey Votto flack for not playing through pain, sitting out too long, and letting his team down (no, I'm not linking to it)?  I wonder if they'll mention the similar nature of Brandon Phillips, who Mark Sheldon notes has not been nearly 100% since his return from thumb surgery. In fact, Bryan Price even corroborated that Phillips probably came back much too soon, and the numbers speak volumes about that being the case.  He's hit just .138/.194/.172 in 62 PA since returning on August 18th, is currently in the midst of an 0 for 21 streak, and he's done that while hitting 3rd in the order in 12 of the 15 games in which he's played.  Speaking of those 15 games, he has started and had at least 4 PA in each and every one of them, meaning there has been no easing him back into things, either.  As for the Reds as a whole, well, they lost the first 5 games after Phillips returned and are just 5-10 overall with him back in the lineup.  There goes any chance I'll ever have of interviewing Brandon Phillips, I imagine.

Planning on going to a Reds game next season?  Leave your magnets and canned food at home, folks, as walk-through metal detectors will be installed at gates around the league. Thanks, Seligbama.

John Fay of the Enquirer dropped a notebook-style post today, and it focuses on exactly what the injuries that have riddled the Reds this year have cost the team in terms of, well, I'm not really sure.  It's a rudimentary comparison between the production of the key players who have missed time on the DL in 2014 compared to their 2012 production, and while that's far from a 1 for 1 perfect way to compare them, it does show exactly how vast the difference in value has been between the two seasons.  Comparing imperfect scaled values from one season to imperfect scaled values from another doesn't really work, but it gets the basic point across that the 2014 Reds were older, less good, and a butt-ton more injured than their 2012 selves.  Here's to hoping that 2012 wasn't the end-all, be-all peak.

Remember when Walt Jocketty traded Jonathan Broxton and all of his salary to the 1st place Milwaukee Brewers for a pair of PTBNL prospects?  Well, Broxton hasn't even taken the mound for the Brew Crew, yet, since they've not won a game since his acquisition. They're in the midst of an 8 game losing streak that has dropped them 3 games back of the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Central, which has me thinking that Walt's residual Cardinalness has rubbed some of the devil-deal on Milwaukee in this trade somehow, someway.

Zack Cozart has been away from the team and with his wife for the last few days, and they recently welcomed their first child, Cooper. Congrats, baby Zackuum!  Sheldon also notes that Cozy has been dealing with a sore right wrist of late, and that has coincided with his time away from the team.  That's a bummer, since Cozart was coming off an August that saw him set monthly season highs for OPS, SLG, SB, and RBI.  Here's to hoping he's back in action sooner rather than later as he makes a push for a potential Gold Glove.

As an update to last night's foray into where Skip Schumaker ranks on the hierarchy (loerarchy) of the MLB fWAR list, it appears that his single and nonexistent defense actually catapulted him way up to -1.3 fWAR on the season. I don't know about you, but I certainly saw a half-win's worth of improvement out of him last night.  So while he's still the 2nd best at being bad in the NL (behind Domonic Brown's -1.8), he has vaulted all the way to being just the 6th least valuable player in all of MLB so far this season.  The race to Doug Flynndom is still very, very on, though.