I didn’t hear about this until some 18 hours after it happened. When I did, I took a tour of the Reds blogs to see what reaction was. There was a whole lot of “everyone already knows about this” and “there’s nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.” I, as you may have noticed, have been busy with a life outside of baseball lately, though, and was actually looking for opinions, so clearly both those of those statements were dead wrong for me.

If they were wrong for me, I figure they might be wrong for someone else, and I might as well pile on.

Here are the offending tweets that BP was so up-in-arms about:

Reds go from a hitter with a .320 OBP in the 2 hole to one with a .310 OBP

— ctrent (@ctrent) August 28, 2013

and

Phillips career slash line: .272/.320/.430. career slash in 2 spot: .277/.320/.424

— ctrent (@ctrent) August 28, 2013

You might say these are stupid tweets to get upset over. They aren’t exactly damning. Oooooh, Phillips has 0.010 lower OBP than Franzier. BFD.

By the same token, you might also say they’re stupid tweets to have put up. The fact that C. Trent is drawing attention to OBP at all is tacit expression of disapproval. I mean, if he’d liked the move, he might have mentioned Phillips’ superior slugging (also a 0.010 difference).

And let’s not forget that moving BP to the second spot not only gets him more ABs, but also more for Jay Bruce, who moves up to Phillips’ previous position in the line-up. Frazier is great, but I really have a hard time taking seriously the assertion that he ought to be getting more ABs than Phillips and Bruce.

The whole situation sort of falls flat for me. It’s the brash, stressed-out guy versus the unbearably smug, under-deadline guy. You’re going to get hot words sometimes. And considering the people involved, some of them are going to be dirty words (cover your ears, grandma) and most of them are going to get reported. Shrug.

If it helps in putting the hurt on the opponent, though, I’m all for it. We could all take turns posting random stats, players can read whatever they want into them, go off, and then beat up on the likes of Adam Wainwright. Those Cardinals are the really smug ones.