Spring Training has begun, and the Reds have been busy.

For starters, Edwin Encarnacion avoided arbitration hours before his hearing by signing a 2-year deal worth $7.6 million. Personally, I’m a little surprised that the Reds are investing any money in offense. Their track record this off season has been anything but good in that regard.

In other news, the key player in the Adam Dunn trade, Micah Owings, seems to be ready to pitch this year. He was basically damaged goods last year when the Reds received him. Unlike the nefarious Gary Majewski, the Reds knew about this injury beforehand. Hopefully, he’ll rebound. However, even if he can’t pitch, there’s plenty of gaping holes in the Reds offense to find use for Owings’ impressive bat.

And lastly, the great vanishing shortstop Alex Gonzalez has actually spent time on the ballfield this year. Obviously, it can’t last long. For whatever reason, Gonzalez has seriously pissed off the great karmic powers of the universe. Should he last long enough to get a Reds bobblehead, they should have him seated on a horse with one leg in the air.

…candid photography, snap-snap, click-click, know what I mean, nudge-nudge, say no more. 😉

I got back from Florida last night. Two days of driving each way…but probably the smarter choice, given all those people sleeping in airports while the planes are inspected for cracks. (And yes, if I’d flown, it would have been Delta.)

I went to six baseball games in six days, and took a ton of photos at all of them. Weirdly, one of the ushers at a Reds game told me that cameras were not allowed in the stadium. WTF? Who ever heard of a rule like that? Practically everyone there had a camera and was snapping photos left and right, but he singled me out and told me to put the camera away. Jeez. I thought they were Nazis at Yankee Stadium, but they allow cameras there. (I simply moved to another section and continued taking photos.)

Yup, I’m afraid it’s the moment you’ve all been dreading: I’m inflicting my vacation photos on you.

Continue Reading »

I read a stat last week that said the average adult laughs 17 times a day. “Huh,” I said, thankful that I now have my own office where others cannot mock and laugh when I converse with myself. “I don’t believe I do that.”

Last year, the Reds’ season was painful. I’d entered it with hopes of them doing something. I was wrong, so very wrong, and I found it difficult to laugh at all the stupid things. Not this year! This year I’m ready.

Where to begin? How about right here.

Cincinnati has 34 healthy players, plus two that are injured, remaining on its Spring Training roster. With two days left in camp, nine more have to go to reach the 25-man limit.

Wow. Really? I can’t remember a team ever having that many players so late in camp. I mean, the Cubs, of all teams, are busy cutting down to their final 25. The Cubs! And the Reds have 34? Surely the GM realizes the ludicrousness of this.

“We will have 25 when Opening Day starts,” Reds general manager Wayne Krivsky said.

What refreshing candor. So nice to hear that you’ll be waiting until the last minute to do your job!

“It speaks to how good the competition has been in Spring Training. We’ve got some very close competition among non-roster players and in the bullpen and in the rotation.”

Really? Jerry Hairston and Jolbert Cabrera continue to have a legitimate shot at this club? You mean to say that you consider the pitching you’ve seen from Mike Lincoln and Jim Brower to be good? Well, that would explain The Trade and the Mike Stanton signing

But wait, as they say, there’s more. Let’s turn to that font of baseball wisdom, that intellectual of intellectuals, the man who is always ready with a toothpick to lend MacGyver a hand, Dusty Baker:

“If [David Ross]’s ready, there’s a possibility [of carrying three catchers].”

I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. I can’t imagine what kind of disease it is that infects these Reds managers with this 3 catchers notion (*cough*waynekrivsky*cough*). All one has to do is look around at teams that have won any worthwhile games in the last decade and counted how many catchers they had. I’ll even give them one free hint: It wasn’t three.

As I grow older, I grow less tolerant of repeated acts of stupidity and willful ignorance. The Reds, posing as the oldest professional ball club, do not. For that, I salute them. I look forward to them helping me achieve my quota of laughs throughout the coming season.

There’s concern in Houston about the defense, or lack thereof, of the infield. Here’s a brief bit from a report on The Astros Dugout.

[Y]ou are right about our gawd awful infield defense – bobbles and bad throws (Tejada nearly got Newhan killed on a routine DP toss us the line right into the runner), missed pop-ups (Wiggy and Loretta both missed pops to them in fair territory on the infield dirt – unreal), and we have no range up the middle It is downright ugly.

That could make for a long year for the Astros. However, it’s not entirely unexpected. How good could the defense up the middle be when you switch out Adam Everett, arguably the best defensive shortstop in the league, with Miguel Tejada. Sure Tejada’s bat was better by far than Everett’s, but the whole steroids spectre has made it difficult to predict how much offense Tejada will produce.

That trade continues to look worse and worse.