Do that with a $100M business, and you get . . . well, 15 years of losing records and multi-million-dollar losses.

This only improves our club if rolen can play ss.

I still say look at figgens and crosby. of course with third ‘covered’ it makes figgens less appealing, but with the departure of jhj, we could use an all purpose guy.

b) The Rolen deal: It was a steal. Rolen will play two or three seasons more, at the most, while the Reds gave up two young and almost major league level pitchers, the highest price commodity.

This could end up being one of those trades that looks ugly ugly if these guys pan out on career value. Sometimes no one gets much out of these things like the trade with the Nationals a few years back with Lopez & Kearns.

Roenicke looked pretty good, the best of the rookie relievers that had been up. I was thinking he might be the setup guy next year.

There seems to be some hubbub that the Jays GM failed by not dealing Holiday, but I think he did OK. He got younger at third with two good young arms and was able to keep a Cy Young caliber starter.

Bob Howsam turned over an entire roster (except for 5 of 25 players) in two seasons in 1968
while drafting the future.

Excuses excuses excuses…

It does make the defense better in the 100 games he will play next year. I guess Drew Sutton will play the other 62. We probably need to divide Rolen’s salary by by .375 to get his true cost per game since he will play 5/8 of the games.

Relievers are easy to find. So, we trade the inexpensive ones and keep the guys making $20 million and then complain about “small markets” and not being able to sign hitters.

I’m waiting the Rolen contract extension within the next week.

Also..young teams don’t get better signing older players (the “leadership”) until they are contenders (see Greg Vaughn….)

Old players get worse, not better. This is Rolen’s bounce back year…that means he’ll bounce backwards next year.

Our minor league does not have that many strong arms…

EE might go on hit .350 the rest of the way. Or, he might fall off the dugout and break his leg. Stewart might have Cy Young potential, but a quick thought reminds us that almost all hot pitching prospects cool down a lot, if not disappear altogether. Potential doesn’t win ball games.

You make what you think are the best deals on a given day. Tomorrow, everything changes.

Now, I’ll agree that the ability to judge talent, and to assess a team’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as bargaining skill, are attributes of good management. But, rolling out a plan? Not so much.

IMO EE was not getting any better, his defense has cost the Reds quite a few runs during his stay here. Its just getting old waiting for the lineup to turn over to see if Votto and Phillips could put anything on the board. The left side of the infield and most of the outfield have done nothing with the bat this year. Gonzo won’t be back next year, so there maybe some room in the payroll to bring in a quality shortstop.

This team needed a bat and some defense in the worst way. Were there better or cheaper deals out there? I have no idea, but my GUESS is that there weren’t or WJ would have taken them. This deal may turn out to be absolutely awful for the Reds, but a bold move had to be taken. Continuing to do what they had been doing was not getting it done, and another season has been wasted.