Milton Hurt and Hermanson Out the Door
By
Amanda
Posted at 1:59 pm
In not-so-surprising news, Eric Milton was scratched from his start in Dayton yesterday with lower back stiffness. He may go on the DL. Like so many reasons in the past why Milton has been unable to perform, I hope that when this one is resolved, he's back to the adequacy that he's got stowed somewhere deep down. In the meantime, it sounds like the CTS and I were on to something when we declared Milton the fifth starter. From C. Trent:
The rotation for the next couple of days is Harang, Arroyo, Lohse, Belisle and then back to Harang. So it looks like Belisle is officially the fifth starter, or maybe the fourth and we'll see who the fifth is. However, that rotation, Narron said, isn't “set in cement”
In much more surprising news, in the same post C. Trent reports that the Reds released Dustin Hermanson after he refused assignment to Louisville. When did the party line change from “Hermanson is our closer” to “he's not even on the team”? Was it those four runs he gave up in a third of an inning against the Marlins yesterday?
But Wayne Krivsky sounds like he has something else up his sleeve as these mysterious comments indicate:
And another thing, Wayne was kind of on edge about the whole 25-man roster and the talk of it. He also dropped something about how he may be at 24 today at 3 p.m. when they must turn in their roster, but there will be 25 tomorrow.
I haven't found any corroborating sources for this news, BTW, but I'm assuming that C. Trent's got the early scoop and not a great April Fool's Day gag.
Corroboration:
[url=http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=2821345]http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=2821345[/url]
And Trent says he would never joke about something like this, and I believe him.
Krivsky’s got something cooking. Will we have to wait until tomorrow to find out???
Over at Trent’s blog, some are speculating that they trading for Cantu. Gawd, I hope not.
I don’t think the Hermanson report is an April Fool’s gag. [url=http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/redsinsider]John Fay[/url] is reporting the same thing – the Reds wanted him to go to Louisville, he refused, and he’s been released. Fay also wonders whether the Reds will go back to the Weathers/Stanton idea, or go the Moneyball route and stick Jared Burton in the closer role.
Well, it’s past 3pm. Still no word on who else was cut, but someone must have been…
And Trent has a copy of the roster. Milton is on the DL, Victor Santos is gone.
Obviously, they have someone in mind for the 25th spot.
It’s now on the official site about hermanson.
“It was tough to tell Dustin Hermanson he was not going to make the team,” Krivsky said. “We wanted him to step up. Unfortunately the last two or three times [he pitched], we had concerns.”
Narron had similar comments about hoping Hermanson returned to previous form, “But as spring training wound down to the end, we just didn’t see it.”
And Trent has posted the current roster:
[quote][b]Pitchers[/b] (11)
Bronson Arroyo
Matt Belisle
Jared Burton
Todd Coffey
Rheal Cormier
Jon Coutlangus
Aaron Harang
Kyle Lohse
Kirk Saarloos
Mike Stanton
David Weathers
[b]Infielders[/b] (6)
Juan Castro
Jeff Conine
Edwin Encarnacion
Alex Gonzalez
Scott Hatteberg
Brandon Phillips
[b]Outfielders[/b] (4)
Adam Dunn
Ryan Freel
Ken Griffey Jr.
Josh Hamilton
[b]Catchers[/b] (3)
Chad Moeller
David Ross
Javier Valentin
[b]Disabled list[/b] (8)
Bill Bray
Chris Denorfia
Jerry Gil
Eddie Guardado
Norris Hopper
Jeff Keppinger
Eric Milton
Elizardo Ramirez[/quote]
He also quotes Krivsky about the 25th spot:
[quote]Wayne said they’re down to 24 and there will be 25 tomorrow. It “could be Santos, it could be someone else. It could be somebody here, it could be someone not here.”[/quote]
Well, that clears things up. [img]http://www.red-hot-mama.com/images/emoticons/pm/rolleyes.gif[/img]
In other words, it depends who Kriv-Dawg sees on the waiver wire in the morning. OK, Fair enough.
If Santos doesn’t get added to the Reds’ roster, I fully expect Bowden will snap him up, and he’ll be in the Nationals’ rotation by the end of the week.
Kudos to Rosecrans, who got this info out to us Reds fans before anybody else did. ctr, good job!
HMZ
I think Krivsky has already seen someone he likes on the waiver wire. He’s probably waiting to see if his claim goes through.
BTW, for those who stopped after reading the roster and didn’t catch the supplementary comments (in Trent’s post) that followed…WAKE UP!
:plain:
I found this Narron quote almost as interesting as the 24-man roster:
“We don’t have a set closer — David Weathers, Mike Stanton, Todd Coffey, Kirk Saarloos – all those guys at the end of the game, we feel that with that combination we can get it done.”
Since there are people reading here now who had yet to discover RHM back when the Reds traded for Saarloos, Kirk was one of the best closers in college baseball during his sophomore and junior years at Cal State-Fullerton. It wasn’t until his senior year that he became a starter, won 15 games and established himself as the ace of their staff while Chad Cordero (who’s now with the Nationals) replaced him as the closer.
At the time, I theorized that maybe Saarloos would be the answer at closer, but since then, all the talk’s been about Saarloos as a starter, or in long relief. The above quote of Narron as reported by Trent is – Finally! – the first I’ve seen from anyone connected with the team that addresses the possibility of using Saarloos at the end of games.