In somewhat of a surprise, the Reds included power bat Daryle Ward in their latest round of cuts. This is actually a good thing, as Ward had been absolutely terrible with the Cubs the last couple of years, and the Reds already have plenty of terrible Cubs screwing up their team.

The cut of Ward and 5 others gets the roster down to 36 players. Just 9 more to go before Opening Day. John Fay runs down who he thinks is in and where the decisions lie.

Shockingly, Fay thinks only 2 catchers will make the team. Surely the apocalypse isn’t far behind.

For the Twitter addicts among us, you might be interested in a new service: Twackle. Twackle aggregates Twitter comments about your favorites sports into one convenient place. Plus, you can contribute to the the stream of tweets (twacks?) and subject every other Twackle user to your uninformed sports opinions. Just like having a blog!

Digging through my neglected RHM inbox uncovers another gem that’s of no particular interest to me but I know there are tons of baseball fans out there who will love it. And since I’m so far behind in posting it, it’ll hardly even seem redundant if any other blogs you read posted it.

Over at Sully Baseball, Sully had taken on an odd task: creating a roster of the best homegrown Cincinnati players throughout history and a roster of the best traded-for Cincinnati players throughout history. Brandon Phillips makes an appearance.

Check it out at http://sullybaseball.blogspot.com/2009/02/cincinnati-reds-all-time-home-grown.html

Watching the trailer, the pace seems a little slow for my particular tastes, but I know there are plenty of baseball historians out there who would love nothing more than to spend their evening watching a documentary about Cobb field. And there are some faces that Reds fans will recognize.

Intrigued? Check out the post on Church of Baseball.

BubbaFan was kind enough to post pictures from a spring training game she attended, including some of one of my favorites, Ray “Little Ray Ray” Olmedo. And my, how’s he’s grown. Compare her photo to one from his Cincinnati days:

I suppose it’s not that surprising to see a guy fill out at age 28, but it’s just a little startling to me when I’m so used to thinking of the guy as “little Ray Ray.”