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I don't mind missing the playoffs; it's tough to win every year, and the Reds have done very well with some surprising performances, some earlier-than-expected development, and some things that have turned out well. An average performance would not, as it turns out, be good enough to win the central this year, and I'm not sure that is what was expected by very many people.

It took awhile for me to accept our fate ... which regrettably I felt like I saw coming in mid-July, but on the positive side, which allowed me to start reconciling to it early.

It feels like there were so many ways we could have made ourselves a little bit better, and really we did not avail ourselves of any of them (even adding Westbrook, a good add, did not make us better because to get him we gave up something we needed just as much or maybe even more). With the Reds good but not great, and the deficit just a couple games, and Albert/Holliday plus Carp/Waino/Jaime, and a little payroll wiggle room combined with lots of potentially useful short-money acquisition options out there, and a bottom half of the roster erally lending itself to getting better just via marginal acquisitions and addition by subtraction ... the July-August portion of our season really feels like a series of wasted chances and missed opportunities.

But at this stage, the time for building or repairing is past (or some might say, missed). We are not going to make up this deficit and go to the playoffs unless we really catch lightning in a bottle, so at this point I do not mind the front office shutting down ("Suppan, Reyes, and Stavinoha are coming ... hey, that's as good as a trade!"). I'll hope for some better baseball as we play out the string, alert to the possibility that the roster as it currently exists could, in theory, get hot and still win this thing but expecting that we're on the outside looking in come October.

I'm okay with that -- with the proviso that there is a lot for the organization, at practically every level, to have learned from the past 9 or so months, and I really hope we learned it.

skmsw wrote:
It feels like there were so many ways we could have made ourselves a little bit better, and really we did not avail ourselves of any of them (even adding Westbrook, a good add, did not make us better because to get him we gave up something we needed just as much or maybe even more). With the Reds good but not great, and the deficit just a couple games, and Albert/Holliday plus Carp/Waino/Jaime, and a little payroll wiggle room combined with lots of potentially useful short-money acquisition options out there, and a bottom half of the roster erally lending itself to getting better just via marginal acquisitions and addition by subtraction ... the July-August portion of our season really feels like a series of wasted chances and missed opportunities.

In hindsight, I think this was the beginning of the end.

I'm with ya. I hope if anything management learns from mistakes made this year. Making the playoffs simply condones their behavior. Maybe this failure will result in the end of the Schumaker at 2b project and end reliance on terrible veterans who should be retired.

I dunno... maybe I shouldn't be mad with management. We had some [expletive] luck (down years for Ryan, Molina and disappointment with Rasmus) and didn't do so well with gambles we were hoping would pay off (Freese and Penny).

I just want some change, maybe I was spoiled by the juggernaut lineups up 2004 and 2005, but watching the most inept hitters in the league attempt to assist Pujols and Holliday in scoring runs is almost as fun as driving a rusty nail into my skull.

skmsw wrote:
I'm okay with that -- with the proviso that there is a lot for the organization, at practically every level, to have learned from the past 9 or so months, and I really hope we learned it.

You're in denial. The fact that Mozeliak was out there looking for a loogy yesterday shows how [expletive] dumb and really [expletive] hapless he is as a GM. Let's look at who they picked up as the season wore on and how the team got consistently worse:

Miles
Suppan
Ludwick/Westbrook trade
Feliz

That's a pretty damn good job of [expletive] up a roster.
Edit: I forgot Winn.

Once Miles made the team, I knew we were in for a tough season. Once Luddy got traded, I threw in the towel.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:

skmsw wrote:
I'm okay with that -- with the proviso that there is a lot for the organization, at practically every level, to have learned from the past 9 or so months, and I really hope we learned it.

You're in denial. The fact that Mozeliak was out there looking for a loogy yesterday shows how [expletive] dumb and really [expletive] hapless he is as a GM. Let's look at who they picked up as the season wore on and how the team got consistently worse:

Miles
Suppan
Ludwick/Westbrook trade
Feliz

That's a pretty damn good job of [expletive] up a roster.
Edit: I forgot Winn.

I'm sorry, but this problem runs far deeper than Mozeliak. Namely, why the [expletive] can't Jeff Luhnow give the organization anything to work with either on the MLB roster or via trade? THAT'S the root of the Ludwick deal- that this organization's draft and development couldn't provide a B-grade prospect (or wasn't willing to trade one of the very few that they have). And going even deeper than that, the fact that Luhnow has been given this much sway in the organization by DeWitt is ridiculous. But hey, guys like Craig and Stavinoha and Ottavino and Walters sure were helpful, weren't they?

/sorry to beat the [expletive] out of a dead horse but I think it's a painfully obvious point that nobody is bringing up. People should be pissed that Luhnow's incompetence cost this team a chance to have both Ludwick AND Westbrook.

We knew going into the season that they weren't going to be able to make moves in-season because of the horse [expletive] farm system, a reason that I was pushing hard way back in February for them to go sign guys like Joe Crede, or add whatever depth they could, on the FA market. It wasn't going to happen via trade and all the indications were there that that would be the case way back in the off-season.

This past weekend I went to a Memphis Redbirds game and while watching, I realized that the team on the field probably wouldn't do much worse than the Cardinals right now.

They had Stavinoha in right, Mather in center, Cazafdkfajk in left, Gotay at 3rd, Tyler Greene at short, Descalso at 2b, Hamilton at 1b, and Steven Hill behind the plate. PJ Walters threw a solid ball game and Josh Kinney closed it out.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:

skmsw wrote:
I'm okay with that -- with the proviso that there is a lot for the organization, at practically every level, to have learned from the past 9 or so months, and I really hope we learned it.

You're in denial. The fact that Mozeliak was out there looking for a loogy yesterday shows how [expletive] dumb and really [expletive] hapless he is as a GM. Let's look at who they picked up as the season wore on and how the team got consistently worse:

Miles
Suppan
Ludwick/Westbrook trade
Feliz

That's a pretty damn good job of [expletive] up a roster.
Edit: I forgot Winn.

What 3B was available yesterday that was worth the price?

Again, Miles as a util defender on the end of the bench? Not awful when we picked him up. Suppan was poor planning - but what better, league minimum, no cost in players, 5th starter (who didn't pitch all that bad) was out there?
The Ludwick/Westbrook trade has been beat to death. There are so many angles on it it's not worth discussing againg - but I'm not ready to crucify him for it.
Feliz - Has actually worked out pretty well for us so far. As long as he doesn't become the everyday option for next year, I think this was ok.
Winn - See Miles.

There are three problems with mid-season acquisitions:
1. You can only get guys who are available
2. You have other teams bidding against you
3. You generally have to trade good minor leaguers, which we don't have.

I understand the first two apply to FA's as well, but FA"s leave contending teams - contenders don't typically trade away good players during the season. What he's saying is, hopefully the FO learned that an IF of Skip, Ryan, Feliz with Winn, Craig, Miles and Flip on the bench won't cut it and they will prepare in the off-season keeping that in mind. You can't use this roster as an example of 'Mo' not getting that we need to address 2B/3B/RF for next year. But you can use his off-season moves to do so.

JL21 wrote:
/sorry to beat the [expletive] out of a dead horse but I think it's a painfully obvious point that nobody is bringing up. People should be pissed that Luhnow's incompetence cost this team a chance to have both Ludwick AND Westbrook.

We knew going into the season that they weren't going to be able to make moves in-season because of the horse [expletive] farm system, a reason that I was pushing hard way back in February for them to go sign guys like Joe Crede, or add whatever depth they could, on the FA market. It wasn't going to happen via trade and all the indications were there that that would be the case way back in the off-season.

There's a line of thinking that holds that Luhnow is the 'golden boy' in the FO. Dewitt wants him where he is. If you follow that line all the way back and forth, you'd see Jocketty not liking that and being shoved out the door. You'd also see Mo assuming the GM role, perhaps as only a 'caretaker' until Luhnow gets a little more time under his belt.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mo gets moved out after this season or next and replaced by Luhnow.

Perhaps it's the eternal cynic in me that 'wants' to see this. I don't know.

dunno... maybe I shouldn't be mad with management. We had some [expletive] luck (down years for Ryan, Molina and disappointment with Rasmus) and didn't do so well with gambles we were hoping would pay off (Freese and Penny).

I have a hard time writing all that stuff off as "bad luck."

Ryan had off-season wrist surgery, and was not a good hitter to begin with. It's not hindsight to suggest they should have seen a black-hole offensive year from him as a very real possibility, and it's not bad luck we wound up in a jam with that.

Molina is having an offensive season that is statistically similar to four of his six previous seasons. His career OPS is 81 after almost three thousand plate appearances, and his present 2010 OPS is 79. Even his better years were still pretty marginal in terms of run creation ... I'm not arguing that he was not a useful player during those better years, just arguing that if you were expecting so much offense from Yadi that his 79 OPS is a variable in the team's overall success, you were probably in trouble to start with.

Hoping Freese -- a 27-year old rookie -- would have a consistent impact? Hope is not a strategy. I understand (and support) the need for someone like this in the lineup when you devote a high percentage of payroll to three or four uber-stars. But failing to try something else after he went a month without an extra base hit, then disappearing the rest of the season with a series of injuries? That's not the kind of adjustments I was looking for.

And hoping Penny was the guy he was for 40 innings with SF (and paying him to that level, immediately upon the opening free agent signing period) instead of accounting for the possibility that he was the guy he was for 135 innings for Boston in 2009, or the guy with the sore shoulder who missed 17 starts (and sucked for the other 17 starts) in 2008? Again, hope is not a strategy.

As I've said elsewhere this season, I don't mind the stars-and-scrubs approach to building the team fronted by Albert and supported by Holliday and Carp. The problem lies not in the approach, but the execution. I feel like most of the things that went wrong this year could have been better anticipated or avoided, and/or adjusted to better when they did become evident.