Your 2006 Cincinnati Reds: The Bronson Arroyo Appreciation Edition

"Speaking of Cincy, are they this year’s White Sox? Too early for that kind of talk, though Bronson Arroyo’s complete game was masterful (and 109 pitches). They’re 8-2 against the Pirates, Nats, and Fish."

Mike LaCoss 1979
Paul Wilson

Neither of those two turned into starters, but LaCoss had just as crazy a hair as Arroyo.

I hope the Reds have finally turned the corner. They got a new owner who so far has not done anything too stupid.

The pitching coach Don Gullett finally seems to have some decent arms to work with these days and the beginnings of an actual staff. As bad as the Reds pitching has been since the Griffey trade, you might want to blame Gullett, but I think he has often times gotten the most out of what he had to work with. The Reds got off to good starts a few times in the past few years only to have the lack of any depth in the pitching to lead to a second half nose dive.

Either way, I will take Arroyo, Brandon Claussen, Aaron Harang, and now Elizardo Rameriez as the core of a starting staff over guys like Elmer Dessens, Chris Reitsma, Jimmy Haynes, etc. Claussen and Harang are not consistent, as they still seem to have one start in five where they really suck, but they are also putting together one or two really good starts in five. Those two also strike out batters, which is something most of the dead arms they have had the past five years could not do. I do think Arroyo is getting that boost from the fact that many NL hitters have not seen him, but it was what the Reds needed. Dave Williams and the hurt Eric Milton are both terrible, in fact Milton getting hurt may be a bonus, as Ramieriez has pitched great since getting called up to the Reds.

The bullpen is still a bit scary, as they got the Rhyme of the Ancient Reliever playing way too often with David Weathers, Kent Mercker, and Chris Hammond, but only Hammond has been terrible of those three. Todd Coffey has been real tough out of the bullpen.

They still need to improve their defense, but it seems a bit better this year.

The Reds lineup is young and talented at most positions.

1b/Util- Rich Aurila/Scott Hatteburg (So far Cinci is getting good production out of these two guys.)
2b- Brandon Phillips (This dude has been a machine.)
SS- Felipe Lopez
3b- Edwin Encarancion (Big Bat...but has made a bunch of errors.)
LF- Adam Dunn
CF- Ryan Freel
RF- Austin Kearns
C- David Ross/Jason LaRue/Jose Valentine

I would not call them the White Sox, as that club's starting pitching had more experience and they all just gelled at once with the bullpen being young and much more talented than what Cinci currently has today. The Reds could probably have a better offense than last years Sox.

But it is May not August, so I won't get too far up. The Reds have also had a bad history of second half collapses generally tied with half the club ending up on the DL. Maybe Griffey going is going ahead and getting his yearly injury out of the way so he will be back for a playoff run. I hope so.

(If a Mod sees this-- can we retitle this thread and making it the catch all 2006 Reds thread.)

Who's spiking his Wheaties?

Todd Coffey has been good out of the bullpen.

There has been talk about swapping Lopez and Phillips in the field, but Narron does not seem to think it could be done "in season", which seems pretty weak to me.

PITTSBURGH -- Bronson Arroyo didn't think he was going to pitch during the All-Star Game at PNC Park on Tuesday. In fact, he gently lobbied National League manager Phil Garner to try to avoid using him unless it was absolutely necessary.

It wasn't so much because Arroyo started for the Reds on Sunday, the final game before the break, and wasn't able to bounce back quickly enough.

No, Arroyo was hoping to get the night off mainly because he's been having so much ... fun in Pittsburgh.

"I just went out too hard the other night," Arroyo said. "I told him if he can get by without me, get by without me."

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/standings.php

7.9 to 3.0. That's Wily Mo Pena's VORP as opposed to that of the man he was traded for, Bronson Arroyo. Except that's just Arroyo's VORP for hitting the ball, not for tossing it. If you want to bring his main gig into the picture, he's at 39.6 for pitching. So, may I be the 4,321st person to say many, many kudos to Reds general manager Wayne Krivsky for engineering this deal. May I also say that whatever Krivsky managed to put in the positive column of his lifetime decisions--including saving orphans from burning buildings and cute baby aliens from space ship crashes if he has, in fact, done such things--was all obliterated yesterday.

We all make mistakes. We marry the wrong people, we get in the slow line at the supermarket, we choose the wrong careers. There are two types of wrong decisions, though. The first is the kind that seems like the right thing to do at the time but that goes wrong later. You marry a person because you're in love. You choose a particular checkout line because the people ahead of you don't have many items and the cashier has quick hands. You go into a field that seems lucrative. Sometimes these go wrong later and the decision looks bad in hindsight.

The second type of wrong decision is the one that looks bad from the moment of conception. It is this type that Wayne Krivsky has made with the Austin Kearns et al trade. Apart from the humiliation of being taken to the cleaners by a general manager who is not known as being one of the shrewder operators on the scene, there is nothing about this deal that makes sense. OK, it addresses the Reds need for relief help. Look at the list of highest-ranking relievers above. How many of them are found properties? Relief pitching--especially middle relief--is not the sort of thing one has to pry the gold out of one's teeth to buy. It's out there. What is especially frustrating about this trade--and here is where it mimics the other colossally bad trade of recent vintage, the Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano deal--is that Kearns could have brought so much more from somewhere else. I never upbraid a team for trading a player--they're commodities after all. What is painful to watch is when a team unloads talent and gets so little in return.

That is my main gripe with this trade. It could be that Kearns and Felipe Lopez--who are both in their primes--will go to Washington and do nothing. We don't know that, though. Their potential could have landed the Reds a lot more than what they got and this is why Krivsky should have woken up this morning with the same feeling of dread that a sailor does when dawn breaks and he finds himself in bed with a peg-legged 65-year old strumpet and a giant sea squid.

I've got a feeling that this trade is going to end up on the list of the most sucky ones ever.

If by some dumb luck fluke chance this idiotic deal somehow brings a short term gain of a Cinci a title, which by odds is about the same as getting struck by lightning. The deal is done and that is that, so I guess I can only hope for the best.