CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Reds’ first baseman Joey Votto appears to be a shoo-in for the National League Most Valuable Player award, but many don’t realize the important role the exchange rate plays in the decision.

“It’s tougher for a Canadian in this sport,” said Minnesota Twins’ Justin Morneau. “Not only do we have to be 1.01422 times the player of an American to be noticed, but we’re also relentlessly subjected to lumberjack jokes.”

Despite the iniquity, things are better today than they were just a few years ago for citizens of the Great White North. As recently as 2002, a United States player (USP) was worth one and a half Canadian players (CAP). Things have been much different since 2008, thanks to a soft USP.

“Five years ago things were even worse, eh?” said New York Mets’ outfielder and British Columbia native Jason Bay. “You’d think that no one would really care about the Home Run Derby, but you’d be wrong, hoser. Try not hitting any and see how your exchange rate drops.”

Baseball macroeconomists cite the undervalued Chinese player, pegged to the USP at 0.14988 as playing a role in this changing baseball economy, but most people don’t really understand what that has to do with anything.

“I saw that Votto play,” said Chicago Cubs’ starting pitcher Ryan Dempster. “When I wasn’t busy listening to Alanis Morisette and Glass Tiger. He’s definitely worth 1.01422 times the best American player out there.”

Most agree with Dempster. The real question is whether the beat writers can avoid choking on all these stale Canadian stereotypes long enough to do the math: how a whole season of Canadian Votto compare to one month of Venezuelan Carlos González with an exchange rate of 1:4,240.11.

Well, damn.

So, the Reds are out of the postseason after just three games. The Phillies put a good foot forward, but the Cincinnati team did their part as well with five errors in the series and not many hits going around. Joey Votto and Scott Rolen’s lack of offense were particularly noticeable. Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce did bring a couple homers in the second game, but even those weren’t enough. The other two games were shutouts. One of them is the no-hitter that’s been so over-talked-about that I’m ready to puke.

There’s been something I’ve had on my mind since September, but I didn’t want to talk about it until after the appearance was over, instead wanting to let myself be entirely swept up in the optimism and excitement. Basically, I was sure I was ready, as a fan, to see the Reds go all the way.

Part of it is that I haven’t been able to commit myself to the team the way I wanted to this season, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the winning as much when I’d been only 80% in the game myself. That’s the selfish reason.

The other is my delayed-gratification reason: it’s like the first time you hold hand with someone when you’re a kid, and how tingly and worked up you get over it, but later when you’ve worked your way up to doing things that are described in baseball terms, that hand-holding doesn’t elicit any response at all. You get more net enjoyment out of slowly building up to it.

So, to use a seriously confusing metaphor, it’s like we’re at first base with Winning Reds this year. Next season maybe we’ll let them get all the way to third. If they don’t make it further than that, we’ll be even more primed for 2012. It’s totally tantric.

Of course, knowing that doesn’t make you want to stop while you’re in the middle of it in either situation.

It’s all moot now in any event, and I’ll be finishing up my damn degree next year and be able to get into the game 100% again. Even so, I did enjoy the hand-holding while it lasted.

As we know from every three-game series, it’s hard to win three games in a row. As we also know from the regular series, this team doesn’t have errors in most games, let alone multiple errors.

Line-Up tonight:

• Stubbs, CF
• Phillips, 2B
• Votto, 1B
• Rolen, 3B
• Gomes, LF
• Hernandez, C
• Bruce, RF
• Cabrera, SS
• Cueto, P

Sucks to be Paul Janish and scratched at the last minute when Cabrera magically turned out to be OK. Whether he’s really recovered enough to be playing in game three, we’re soon to find out. Whether he was ever really the top choice for the position is a discussion for another time.

Go Reds!

Leading up to the game tonight, several people at work talked about Roy Oswalt. “Heard he’s really owned the Reds,” they’d say.

“Yeah, like two years ago,” I told them. And he wasn’t really a problem tonight either. Throughout the time he was on the mound, the guys were rolling. I was thinking that my comments about how fortuitous it was that, if the Reds had to suffer through that Halladay performance, at least they got to work out their jitters at the same time, were actually going to reflect on a winning reality.

The other comment that I made would have been a great reflection of a winning reality was about how the Phillies could make the second-post-season-no-hitter-in-history even more historic by getting swept the rest of the series. Too bad. I feel like they’ve missed an opportunity tonight.

The rough part is that the Phillies didn’t really win the game tonight; the Reds lost it. That, and the cruel things that even non-Phillie fans are feeling the need to pop out with, as if the Reds have been the bullies of the NLC for the last decade or something. Reds fans have feelings too, people, and the four errors are really more than enough to hurt them.