This happened last Thursday, but the Cincinnati Reds did make several moves to add players when rosters expanded. And some of those players have already come up big in the just completed series win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

Chris Heisey was activated from the disabled list, while Juan Francisco, Chris Valaika, Jared Burton, Carlos Fisher, Jeremy Horst, and Matt Maloney were all called up. Top prospect Devin Mesoraco had his contract purchased and was brought up, as well.

Fred Lewis was sent down Louisville.

“It’s never easy to do,” Baker said of Lewis’ departure. “Things didn’t really work out the second half as well as we thought they possibly would. And we got Heisey back. You hate to have to tell somebody, but it’s a tough part of the game.”

Hopefully, this means we’ll be seeing a lot more of Chris Heisey and Yonder Alonso in left field for the rest of the season.

Today the Chicago Cubs did what they should have done about 4 years ago: they fired general manager Jim Hendry.

Cubs owner Tom Ricketts had this to say about the decision.

“We just didn’t win enough games,” Ricketts said. “Nothing should diminish Jim’s tenure here. We won three division titles while he was here. … Jim is truly a first-class individual and we’ll all miss seeing him here in the office.”

Hendry did oversee the Cubs winning first place 3 times, but in recent years, he’d lavished large contracts onto players who underperformed and became untradeable, including Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez.

The search for a new GM begins immediately.

The Cincinnati Reds have had a tough go of it this year. Performances of several players has not been what was expected, injuries have plagued the team, and they’ve also been a bit unlucky.

The injuries continue. The Reds today put outfielder Chris Heisey on the disabled list.

Heisey is dealing with a strained left oblique. He was too sore to hit and play the field Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

To replace him, outfielder Dave Sappelt was called up from the Louisville Bats. In AAA, Sappelt was good, hitting .313 with a .387 on base percentage and 7 home runs and 27 RBI. Hopefully he can also avoid the injury bug.

The Cincinnati Reds announced today that their 3rd baseman Scott Rolen had arthroscopic shoulder surgery and will be out an additional 4-6 weeks. Rolen has been on the disabled list since July 22.

Cincinnati Enquirer beat reporter John Fay writes about the procedure.

The procedure was just to clean it up. Four to six weeks, which is projected to be out, still takes you to early to mid-September. I would not be shocked if he’s done for the year — depending where the Reds are in the standings when he’s ready.

If Rolen doesn’t return this season, he should be all the more healthy for 2012. And now Todd Frazier has a great opportunity to show what he can do, so long as Dusty Baker resists that urge to play veteran Miguel Cairo.

Clearly, that fan is Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker.

Why else would he describe the trade by the St. Louis Cardinals of promising young power-hitting, speedy outfielder Colby Rasmus like this?

There’s some level of frustration in here because the the rich teams get richer at this time of year.

I was confused by that statement about the trade because the only clear winner is Colby Rasmus. Well, and the public for being shown that the true general manager of the Cardinals is “genius” Tony LaRussa.

And then I realized why Baker thought the Cardinals were getting richer: they were getting Corey Patterson.