April 24, 2006
Reds Get Another Ross; DFA Womack
By
Amanda
Posted at 2:25 pm
The Associated Press via ESPN says the Reds have acquired outfielder Cody Ross from the Dodgers for a player to be named Monday. To make room on the roster, they've DFA'd Tony Womack.
So I guess the player to be named won't be Womack himself, then. As you'll recall, I never understood why O'Brien felt the need to sign Womack to begin with, but it's a shame it didn't work out better for him. He seemed like a good enough guy.
In less impressive news, the Reds have officially put Milton on the 15-day disabled list and called up EZ Ramirez from Louisville.
I predict Womack ends up on the Cardinals again. And I honestly thought the reason we got him was insurance against Freel doing something dumb like another DUI or something. It wasn’t as bad of a signing as people want to make it out to be. But with the emergence of Phillips obviously we don’t have a need for Womack anymore. He may come back to haunt us with the Cardinals.. not that I am terribly afraid of him, but he is better than Aaron Miles, that is for sure.
As for Cody Ross… didn’t he hit two home runs in a game a week or two ago?
Update: Did some research… Cody Ross hit 2 grand slams in his first two major league ABs… on April 13 he had 2 HRs and 7 RBIs for the Dodgers. Last year he hit 22 home runs for AAA Las Vegas — and let me tell ya, its like 120 degrees in Vegas during summer with no roof, so anyone that can post good numbers in that atmosphere is a “playa”… All this for a player to be named? Unbelievable. Kriv-dawg has the Midas touch. Of course this might ultimately cost us Denorfia, but we’ll see.
Almost forgot: Ross pitched a perfect game in high school while also being an everyday player.
Yup! He hit a grand salami and a 3-run shot for LA during a 13-5 victory over Pittsburgh on April 16. His reward from the Dodgers was that they DFA’ed him the next day.
For those who will have him in the guy-I-never-heard-of category, Cody Ross was drafted by the Tigers in the fourth round of the 1999 amateur draft, and traded to the Dodgers in April 2004 for Steve Colyer. He hit .267 with 22 homers for the Dodgers’ AAA farm club in Vegas last year. I haven’t seen him play, the teams in the PCL don’t play much against the teams in the IL so these guys never came to Buffalo for me to look at.
John (HMZ)
HAHA, I was looking at Cody Ross’ video highlights of that 2 home run game, and Ross Porter (Dodgers announcer) goes: “I don’t think he’ll ever leave town after this performance!” something like that anyhow… lol!
Does this mean Dunn can move to first base?
I think they are more afraid of Dunn’s defense at 1B than his defense in LF… which is pretty scary. Are you saying you don’t like the two-headed monster that is Scott-Hatteberg and Rich Aurilia? LOL. I think this is another depth move, probably because of Griffey’s lingering injury and it had to scare management the way they were throwing at Kearns yesterday including beaming his hand which was a lingering issue for him in the recent past.
You guys are whores. I WAS FIRST, DAMMIT.
I just checked the time stamps on your post and hers. Hers was at 2:25 PM, yours was at 3:32 PM. RHM had you by over an hour, Geki.
RHM does it again…SCOOP!
Sounds like everyone’s excited to get Ross (or perhaps to get rid of Womack). I could see him with St. Louis. I was surprised that they didn’t pursue Aurilia for second, seeing as they’ve got big fat nothing over there.
I’m not crazy about the idea of moving Dunn back to first, but if they don’t, I don’t know what they’re going to do with Ross. You hate to say that it looks like they’re setting up a trade, since we’ve said it about two dozen times already. But if they don’t do anything, will we ever see the Heartthrob again?
I think most Reds fans felt Freel should have been the starter at 2B coming out of ST and never saw any point in trading for Womack. It’ll be interesting to see if anybody picks him up, but I’ll lose no sleep over the fact that he’ll no longer be a Red. He just wasn’t a good fit for this roster.
So, let’s try to figure out this Ross deal: Setting up a trade? Be careful what you wish for, RHM, Ross is a right fielder.
Yes, I suppose they might try moving him to left, but Dunn does not want to play first. So either they leave Dunn in left, or they package him up with one or more other “extra” players and trade for an ace pitcher.
Not likely. Who has so much pitching they can trade an ace pitcher for a lousy defensive left fielder and a lousy defensive catcher? No team I can think of. They’re not sending that bunch to Florida for Willis, because of Dunn’s salary – the fish wouldn’t bite on that one.
I can’t see many teams taking Griffey in a trade for the same reasons, the price would be something nobody really can afford to part with – pitching – and Junior’s salary might as well be a poison pill. Plus trading Griffey might turn out to be the PR disaster everyone feared trading Casey would be.
Back to…trade Kearns to open RF for Ross? That would make no sense either the way Kearns has been playing. Nor would trading Phillips the way he’s been playing.
The only extra infielder now is Aurilia. He’s also part of the 1B platoon. And anybody who wanted him could have signed him on the cheap as a FA last winter. No takers. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.
The answer might be the obvious one. Get ready to say goodbye to Quinton McCracken.
HMZ
Castellini has identified Dunn specifically as the “kind of” young player they’re building this team around. Plus, as you mention, who has anything to offer for him?
Freel’s pretty good trade bait, too, though. And while he’s not on the big league roster, Denorfia could be pretty tempting too. In either case, I probably wouldn’t be able to speak about it for a while.
I’ll be livid if they trade Freel. He’s the only legitimate leadoff man on the roster. They could put Phillips up there and get by, but I haven’t seen Phillips show he can manufacture runs like Freel does.
If they trade Dunn they trade one of the best hitters in baseball. Hit batting avergae hasn’t been anything to write home about, but his IBP is among the best in the league, and a guy who does the 100 walks/100 runs/100 RBI thing isn’t a guy you trade away like he’s, well, Tony Womack.
If they trade Heartthrob they trade away one of the few real prospects they have in a minor-league system that is still lacking real hitting prospects. Encarnacion was the last one at AAA except for Denorfia.
If they trade LaRue, I’ll party. The guys mentioned above, I think they ought to keep.
I think I could get behind trading LaRue, but only if they could really get something good for him. We don’t need another Williams.
Real Reds, the pre-game show on FSN, just finished airing a series of four catching lessons with LaRue. Every time they showed one, I found myself thinking that they’d better hurry up ’cause Jason could go at any time.
LaRue is giving catching lessons? That’s a laugh. He NEEDS catching lessons.