Freel locked up through 2009; good or bad?

According to reds.com, Freel has been signed to a two-year extension until 2009. The monetary value hasn't yet been disclosed.

I'm really torn about this one. On one hand, I love Freel. He's the most fun guy on the roster to watch, and he brings that scrappy fire to the field that many players in the majors, let alone on the Reds, lack. I love his contact-hit, bunt, run, get-em-over-get-em-in philosophy to the game (as opposed to close-my-eyes-and-whale-and-pray-it-goes-over-the-wall). He's probably the only prototypical leadoff guy we've got.

On the other hand, though, he's 31 now, and by the time his contract expires, he'll be 33. He's nearing that cliff in the early-30s that players like him hit. Contact hitters and aggressive baserunners often see a sharp decline in their skills at this age. We might be seeing that already this year (.243 AVG, 4 SB through 12 games). His OBP is still .349, but with the way he plays defense and plays the game overall, I can't imagine him preventing that inevitable topple from the mountain for long.

Sluggers can play into their 40s because all they've got to do is press some weights (or shoot up, their choice), swing a bat as hard as they can, and transfer to first base or the American League when their brittle legs can't carry their Cro-Magnon bodies anymore to play athletically-minded defense. Guys like Rickey Henderson are an exception, but a rare exception.

See Ichiro. Three years removed from his record-breaking hit mark, his stock in fantasy leagues has fallen dramatically. Why? He's 33. Everyone is predicting his fall from the top very soon, if it hasn't already happened. So far, he's hitting .290. A pretty big fall from his .372 mark of 2004. It's early, sure, but even guys like Ichiro start their decline at some point, and scrappy contact hitters like Freel and Ichiro almost universally experience this much earlier than other players.

Not to mention, where are they going to play him? If Josh Hamilton continues to perform, you can't keep him out of the lineup (especially if Freel continues to struggle). Griffey's contract expires after 2008, but by that point, Jay Bruce should be about ready to come up. If Freel's contract ends up being a two-year, $2 million or $3 million contract, he's definitely worth keeping around as an 82-game guy. But expecting him to continue to perform at the level warranting a multimillion-dollar contract (as he will almost certainly get, given his popularity in Cincinnati--just see what Casey was getting, despite the fact that he couldn't hit for power and hit into about 500 double plays per season) is ludicrous. His current contract is two-years, $3 million. If everything doesn't stay status quo, he should be getting a cut. Nothing against Freel in terms of his personality or playing style, but we can't expect him to steal 40 bases a year and make a diving catch every game now that he's crossed the 30-year mark.

Gameday 4/10: Reds @ Diamondbacks (L 5-4) (11 innings)

It's late, I'm tired, and I've got class in the morning, so I'll only address some of the immediately pressing things on my mind about this game.

But I'm also angry, so I'll vent my ire in a lengthy post tomorrow. I've got a lot to say about this Reds team. And not much of it will make fans happy, that's for sure.

But two things right now:

1. Congratulations are in order to Josh Hamilton on his first hit in the bigs: a two-run homer. Not much can top that. I'd say the boys in red owe him a drink, but perhaps an O'Doul's would be better for Josh.

2. Jerry Narron should publicly apologize to Reds Nation for taking off the bunt in the 11th inning. I don't care that Edwin Encarnacion has never had a bunt in his major-league career. I don't care that his first attempt didn't look so good (he was jammed by a pitch! Of course the bunt's going to look bad!). If you're a major-league ballplayer, you need to know how to bunt, or you do not deserve to be on the team. Chris Welsh (who was absolutely belittled by Thom Brennaman in the booth tonight) said that perhaps the bunt was taken off because it was a 3-1 count and Narron probably figured that Cruz would feed him an easy fastball. All the more reason to bunt! If he's going to throw a fastball right down Broadway, any hack can stick a piece of wood in the way and put the ball in play. I'd say the Reds should be 5-3 right now, had Ross not been up to the plate next, ready to flail at the ball like an epileptic fish.

But I'll elaborate on point number two tomorrow. There's a lot to talk about.

Yes, Virginia, there is October baseball

And could it be coming to Cincinnati in '07? Maybe.

Wow, did I just say that?

Perhaps I was a little harsh on this team in my first post. Let me introduce myself. I am a cynic. Pure and simple. And this team has done nothing over the past six years to show me that it has any chance in Hell of playing into October.

That said, this is a new year. After a glimpse of our '07 Reds in a game that actually counted, a 5-1 win over the Cubs (who somehow seemed to find a way to break into Fort Knox this past winter), does it look like we've finally got a team to uncork the bubbly come autumn?

Probably not. But then again, this division is probably the weakest in baseball outside of the AL West. As Jon Heyman of SI.com put it in his article of preseason predictions, anyone could finish first and last in this division. Strange, perhaps, that he chose the Reds to finish in first with the Astros in last? Upon second glance, maybe not. Not to say that the Reds are even half the team that the Mets or Tigers are this season. But you take advantage of your situation, and if there is any year for this team to overachieve in the NL Central, it's this year.

The Cardinals are the stalwart of the division, but they're no behemoth from top to bottom, especially when it comes to pitching. The Brewers are the popular dark horse pick to win the division, but their inexperience could be their downfall (see: '06 Indians) or their strength (see: '06 Tigers). The Cubs got Alfonso Soriano, who scares the hell out of me every time he steps to the plate, but their pitching is also suspect.

The Astros have only gotten older, and they are still one of the lightest-hitting teams in the league. Don't even talk to me about the Pirates.

So could the Reds win? They certainly have almost zero chance of winning it all, but the division really isn't out of reach. Today's game certainly gave me some hope. And if I can gain some hope from seeing this team, I can only imagine that they're already printing the pennants and t-shirts in Cincy.

Gameday 4/2: Cubs @ Reds (W 5-1)

Pretty tough to tell which team on the field had spent in excess of $300 million this offseason, wasn't it?

The game really couldn't have gone much better for the Reds. They pitched well, they hit well (most of the time), and they played solid defense. Best of all, we didn't have to hear a peep out of those fair-weather yuppie Cubs fans that infest every city that the Cubs visit (let's get one thing out right away: I hate most Cub fans. Honestly, I respect those who really love the team, follow them, and know their baseball. But there are far too many Cub fans in this world that just pick them because they've got a nice ballpark and every other goddamn uneducated person in the world that doesn't have a favorite team just picks the Cubs by default. No disrespect to those of you who fall into the former category. But if your favorite player is still Sammy Sosa, you deserve to be bludgeoned with a corked bat).

Three things I saw in the game that helped me come to my senses:

1) Aaron Harang
What's funny is that he didn't even have his best stuff. But how about this line?

7 IP, 6H, 1R (0 ER), 2BB, 5K

Remember, this is the same guy that posted a 6.66 ERA during Spring Training. But that's why they say Spring Training doesn't mean jack. His best pitch, his fastball, didn't have the same zip on it today that it did last year, but his offspeed stuff was lethal, and his pitch location was impeccable. What impressed me most was his curveball. Anyone else notice that it had a sharper, 12-6 arc to it? Is this something he was working on in the offseason? Harang always had good fastball and knew how to put it where he wanted. But as long as he mixes in his offspeed stuff with the effectiveness he had this afternoon, he could have an even better year than last year. And that's saying something, especially for the Reds.
Funny to think that we were running Jimmy Haynes out there for Opening Day just a few years ago. My, how things change.

2) Adam Dunn
The guy's still got the same prodigious power. His second home run was a freaking cannon shot. You know what's funny? As soon as he hit that second home run, I started to think, "Could he break Barry Bonds' single-season home run record this year?" A little too early for that, I think. But if he keeps swinging for the fences like that, could he? Maybe?
Possibly. And he'd strike out 215 times in the process.
But just once, I'd like to see him shorten up his swing and smack it to the opposite field. I love home runs as much as the next guy, but all this talk about Brook Jacobi helping him find success as an all-around hitter during Spring Training didn't manifest itself during the game today. Not like that turned out to be an issue. A couple of home runs suffice, I suppose.

3) Plate Discipline
I really think Carlos Zambrano is one of the top pitchers in the National League. He's got a nasty fastball and a mean streak, to boot. But as the FSN guys noted at the beginning of their broadcast, if a team can get inside his head, it can exploit his weaknesses.
Zambrano didn't have good stuff today. This isn't the same Zambrano that normally terrorizes the Reds. His control wasn't there, and in the fifth inning, the Reds did just what they should have. He was all over the place with his pitches. His ball-strike ratio by the end of his five innings of work was 45-47. The Reds waited for him to make a mistake. Dunn walked. Phillips was hit by a pitch. Griffey singled after working the count to 2-0. After Encarnacion hit into a force-out, Hatteberg came to bat and, in probably the most crucial at-bat of the game, worked a six-pitch walk to force in a run.
I expect a guy like Dunn to have the plate discipline, but there were too many times last year that the Reds would either swing at bad balls or not come through in the clutch. Although they left a whopping 18 men on base, the fifth inning alone gives me hope that this team could at least work to hitting with men on base on a consistent basis.

Those three things said, there was one glaring disappointment this afternoon: David Ross. Yes, he made a nice throw to nail Derrek Lee in the first inning, but at the plate, he was downright awful. He went 0-for-4, leaving five men on base, and swung at too many bad pitches, especially those down-and-away. After his meltdown at the end of last season, I didn't think he could come back and produce with the same consistency he displayed at the beginning of last year, but if his mechanics and discipline at the plate don't improve from today, maybe it was right that we spent to keep three catchers.

But let's try to keep this positive. Arroyo starts this Wednesday against Ted Lilly. If only Glendon Rusch was pitching for the Cubs...

"Could Bronson Arroyo break Barry Bonds' single season home run record?"

Nevermind.

Harang: "Stay healthy and hope for the best"

The Reds are preparing to celebrate the seventh anniversary of their last winning season with all-day festivities on April 2, including a big parade through downtown and a free day off work for all the people that seem to get infected with a peculiar bug that goes around on Opening Day every year.

Unfortunately, the organization had to ruin everybody's fun by scheduling a baseball game against the Cubs at 2:10 on that day at Great American Ball Park.

Anybody as excited as me about seeing the Reds explode out of the gate and falter down the stretch once again? I swear, every season that goes by, I feel like one of the Wright Brothers watching his new byplane get off the ground. Only it flies for eight seconds before crashing into a beach dune in a ball of flames. And the Boeing 747 that's flying overhead? That would be the Mets and Tigers.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a Boeing of our own right here in Cincinnati? Maybe once Homer Bailey starts pitching on a consistent basis in the bigs and studs like Joey Votto and Jay Bruce get up here, we might see our byplane get a pair of jet engines. But right now, it's still a byplane, and it's probably going to stay that way for the 2007 season.

I was watching "Jim Rome is Burning" yesterday (I was in the cafeteria; I can only stomach Rome when I don't have any other choice), and guess who was the guest? None other than Aaron Harang. I was pretty surprised to see him on the show, too, especially given his hellish 6.66 ERA for the Spring, but given the fact that Spring Training is winding down, they'd probably gotten all the high-profile guests out of the way early.

One of the last questions Rome posed was whether Harang thought this would be the breakout season for the Reds or if it was a season to "stay healthy and just hope for the best".

Let's think about this for a second. Athletes aren't the best people to rely on to "tell it like it is". For most of the interview, Harang forewent legitimate answers for the usual sports cliches that ESPN's interviews tend to harvest.

But when it came to this question, Harang said that this season, the Reds are probably just going to "stay healthy and hope for the best". Really, that's probably the right answer. We're not likely to see Homer Bailey up with the Reds until September (unless the Reds go on a tear and are in first place around the All-Star Break), and nothing screams "pennant" to me about an outfield of Dunn, Griffey, and Conine. Not to mention the fact that I don't see Ross having the same year he had last year, and Alex Gonzalez isn't exactly a step up from Felipe Lopez (good glove or no).

But you don't expect a soft-spoken guy like Harang to answer with that. When he said that, I got a pretty sick feeling in my stomach. I thought that the Castellini administration was supposed to come in and instill a new attitude of confidence and success in this franchise. One season, and we're already back to the "chuck and pray" mentality?

This is all a fan's perspective, though. From a realist's perspective, it's going to be at least 2009 before this team has a legitimate shot at the division, let alone the pennant or a championship. It's obvious that guys like A-Gon, Conine and Hatteberg are just stopgaps for the young guys that are working their way up in the minors.

Homer Bailey wasn't exactly mowing them down in Spring Training. He's got a prodigious fastball, but word from Sarasota was that he was relying too much on just trying to blow batters away with the fastball, and he didn't use his curveball or changeup enough. I know he's got a ton of potential, and he'll probably work these issues out while with the Bats this season, but there's still that ever-present feel deep down that he's going to turn into an Adam Dunn on the mound. Like he's going to find what he does best and rely on it at the expense of all the other talent he's got languishing within, untapped. But if the Reds are in contention by July and he's finding tremendous success in Louisville, expect that shaky fifth spot in the rotation to be his by that point. But a lot's going to have to go right for that to happen, I think.

Joey Votto had a breakout year last year in Chattanooga, but he's clearly not quite ready for the big leagues yet. He batted .240 in 19 at-bats in Spring Training and has shaky defense at first base, but he's got a good eye and great power (.841 OPS). Sounds kind of like another, more vilified guy we've already got on our roster, doesn't it? But if he gets in enough cuts down in the minors, I think he'll get past his current shortcomings. This guy looks like he's going to be good. Whether he'll be scary good is going to be seen in time.

Jay Bruce just finished a season in low-A. He tore them apart down there, but low-A is still big steps below even AA. He's still a few years away, but his reputation as a young Griffey Jr. still follows him.

The Junior from Seattle, not the Junior from Cincinnati. Yes, it's a compliment.

A good core is coming. But it looks like for 2007 the Reds are just going to have to "stay healthy and hope for the best".

It's going to be a long year, Reds fans.