John Fay reported this afternoon that the Cincinnati Reds are close to signing Edgar Renteria.

A Reds source told me today that the deal was close and they expect to wrap it up. The Reds have had an offer to Renteria for some time. They were waiting to hear back Monday.

According to ESPN, the deal is worth $3 million with incentives.

Seriously, what does Paul Janish have to do to prove he’s a major league player? I feel the most for him, because there’s no way Dusty Baker has a $3 million backup at short. Especially since Renteria had a couple excellent years for the St. Louis Cardinals almost a decade ago.

Maybe this will turn out to be an excellent move like the Scott Rolen trade, but right now, I fail to see how Renteria makes the team better than Janish does.

Yesterday, the increasingly broken voting system for baseball’s Hall of Fame announced its voting results for 2011. Our favorite shortstop, Barry Larkin, did not get voted in. The winners were Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven.

I didn’t pay attention to baseball much in the 1990s, so I missed the bulk of Alomar’s career. I knew he was a fantastic defensive second-baseman, but the only other thing I knew of him was the bizarre spitting incident. I didn’t realize he had been good enough to get in in just his second year of being on the ballot.

Blyleven was on the ballot for the 14th time, and finally managed to get in. Him, I knew. He was an outstanding pitcher for some terrible, terrible, undeserving teams. I’m glad that finally he wasn’t penalized for that.

In third place was the greatest shortstop of all-time (not that I’m biased), Barry Larkin. Like Alomar, he was also on the ballot for the second time. Unfortunately he fell short, but just as predicted by Chris Jaffe of the Hardball Times, he jumped from the 50s to the 60s this year, getting 62% of the votes. 75% of votes are required for entry, so things are looking good that another Red will enter the Hall of Fame next year.

The only other player with Reds ties on the ballot was Dave Parker. He had some awesome slugging years with the Reds in the 80s and also was involved in the trade that brought Jose Rijo to Cincinnati. He appeared on the ballot for the last time, and although he wasn’t quite good enough to get into the Hall, he certainly had lots of Hall of Fame moments with the Reds.