Thursday, July 13, 2006

Someone please explain this one to me...

Reds swap Kearns to Nats for Clayton, pitchers

Is Reds GM Wayne Krivsky serious? Doing whippits? Here's the trade:

Reds trade:

Austin Kearns (Age 26, 14.9 VORP in '06)
Felipe Lopez (Age 26, 16.7 VORP in '06)
Ryan Wagner (Age 23, struggling in AAA this year)

Nats trade:

Gary Majewski (Age 26, 13.4 VORP)
Bill Bray (Age 23, 4.4 VORP; 45 Ks/9 BB in 31.2 AAA innings)
Royce Clayton (Age 36, 3.1 VORP)
Brendan Harris (Age 26, 32 major league ABs in 2006)
Daryl Thompson (pitching prospect: 4 GS, 6.2 innings in short season New York-Penn league)

So let's break this down:

The Nats get two everyday players entering their primes and a young reliever with potential.

The Reds get:

1. An utterly fungible middle reliever (Majewski) -- a guy whose component skills barely rise to set-up level, let alone closer in grooming
2. The rotting husk that used to be Royce Clayton
3. An infield prospect (Harris) whose career path is shaping up to be "Tony Graffanino utility" at best
4. A pitching prospect (Thompson) who might never throw a pitch above A-ball level
5. And a former college closer (Bray)

To be fair, Bray's minor league numbers are very good, and he does have a chance to contribute. But this deal is an unmitigated disaster for Cincinnati. You can make all the "Wayne Krivsky couldn't win my fantasy league" jokes you want, but seriously, how dumb do you have to be in order to get swindled by...Jim Bowden?

Somewhere, Cam Bonifay and Allard Baird look at Wayne Krivsky's Reds and nod approvingly...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's really very, very easy - the Red's are plain stupid. They have been for many, many years - clear and simple as that...it's the "dumbing down of baseball!"

J Ballot said...

Hiya Mark,

You know, I expect baseball to be dumbed down by/for the fans, the broadcasters, Commissioner Selig, etc. -- but Krivsky's the farking general manager! Isn't he supposed to be the smart one???

But you're right -- the Reds have been pretty stupid for some time now. Could it be that the Bengals have become the city's class organization? Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?!?

J

Anonymous said...

If the BUNGALS have become the classy team - then I expect the four horsemen to ride out of Pete Rose's ass sometime in the VERY NEAR future...

Hope you guys are well!