Kuzul

The 40 year old Ken Griffey Jr. retired earlier this week after playing professional baseball since he was 19. He will always be remembered for his time in Seattle, not in Cincinnati. In the late 90’s he was the best player in the game and was in the discussion for possibly being the best all around player ever.

The announcement ends a 22-year run in the major leagues that included 13 all-star selections, 630 home runs, 10 Gold Gloves and a .284 career batting average.

After being drafted straight out of high school he became the face of Seattle. His swing, his super human-like play in center field, his smile and his backward-cap wearing enthusiasm was a match made in heaven for him, fans and advertisers.

He was known, simply, as “Junior.”

He was consistently among the leaders in home runs. He had seasons of 49, 46, 46 and 48 between 1996 and 1999. Fellow major leaguers voted him the player of the decade in 1999. He was on pace to break Hank Aaron’s career home run record.

Then he decided to go back to his hometown. Back to where is dad spent the majority of his career—the Cincinnati Reds. He grew up running around the Big Red Machine’s locker room and played high school ball at the local powerhouse Moeller.

Griffey signed for $116M over 10 years, a monsterous contract at the time. He was joining a team that had won 96 games the year before, a team that was losing relatively little in exchange for the best player in the game.

“Well,” Griffey said at his introductory press conference at Cinergy Field, “I’m finally home. This is my hometown. I grew up here. It doesn’t matter how much money you make; it’s where you feel happy. Cincinnati is the place where I thought I would be happy”.

It was suppossed to be a fariy tale story. Too bad it had a nightmare ending.

After hitting 40 home runs and driving in 118 runs for a 85 win Reds team, the injury bug bit him hard and often.

Injuries limited his output and robbed him of his natural abilities—right shoulder surgery, right knee surgery, left knee surgery, left knee surgery twice, hamstring surgery and five or six drainage procedures after the hamstring surgery.

In 2002, his worst season ever, injuries limited him to 70 games and eight homers. In 2003, early in the season, Griffey dislocated his right shoulder while diving in the outfield, an injury that held him to just 166 at-bats. After four years with the Reds, Griffey had played in only 58 percent of games, and hit no higher than .286.

His pre-30s numbers (398 homers and a .300 average) weren’t even close to his numbers in his 30s (.263 and 83 homers).

In 2004, Griffey played well enough to earn his 12th starting selection to the All-Star team. In early July he collected his 500th career homer. But in mid-July he suffered a tear in his right hamstring. Two days after he returned from the injury he completely tore the same hamstring when he attempted to make a sliding catch. Less than a week later he had season-ending surgery to fuse the tendon to the bone.

The player of the 90s simply grew old and frail as his days with the Reds went on. The team never finished above .500 after 2000. The fans tired of the constant injuries and they voiced their displeasure with . He got in a verbal dispute with one of the radio commentators and he even gave a fan the bird in Cincinnati.

In 2007, he was moved to right field. In 2008, he hit just .245 until the team traded him to the White Sox for relief pitcher Nick Masset and Triple-A second baseman Danny Richar. Griffey’s contract gave him the right to refuse the deal.

The Reds organization has nothing bad to say about him.

“He was always happy, always in a good mood”, said former teammate Bronson Arroyo. “I enjoyed him because he always didn’t talk baseball. I’d talk to him about flying his plane. He was always like a kid in that he was enthusiastic about things he was passionate about. That’s first and foremost as far as what I remember about him.”

“I’m glad he retired on his terms,” said manager Dusty Baker.

From all accounts, Griffey is a class act that will go down in history as one of the greatest center fielders of all time.

Griffey will be eligible for the 2016 Hall of Fame class. He will be enshrined with his Mariners hat on. Baseball fans will always remember him for his days in Mariner blue. The lost years that were his Reds years will be forgotten.

The dream of bringing home a championship to Cincinnati didn’t even come close. The Griffey era with the Reds is a long painful stretch of time that both parties involve hope to forget.

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Roy Halladay threw the 19th regular-season perfect game in major-league history on Saturday in a 1-0 win over the Marlins. It was only the sixth of those perfect games thrown on the road.

A-Rod almost knocked David Huff’s head off. A walk off grand slam by the Angels Kendry Morales’ results in a broken leg.

And we have a 10-game winner who is on pace for 32 wins. Juuuust another week on the diamond.

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Dusty Baker has always been criticized for overusing his starting pitching. Critics point to Kerry Wood and Mark Prior as exhibits A and B. Then there is the whole fiasco with Aaron Harang in May of ’08.

I always thought he got a raw deal on that label. Wood’s delivery made him destined to screw up his arm, and Prior was simply a one-and-a-half-year wonder. Harang seems fine mechanically; he just hasn’t been able to avoid the home run ball.

Homer Bailey has recently been placed on the DL, and the critics are starting to blame Baker again. But his shoulder injury has nothing to do with Dusty, and Bailey looks to be ready to go in 15 days. Bailey himself got angry with the media when they tried connecting those dots.

The real problem for Baker and the Reds: his over-reliance on the back end of the bullpen. Sure, seemingly every game has come down to the final few innings. Sure, the Reds boast one of the best setup men in the league. But Arthur Rhodes, Nick Masset, and Francisco Cordero are all on pace to set personal records for appearances.

The 40-year-old Rhodes, who just pitched in his 800th career game, is on pace to pitch in a career-high 74 games. It’s hard not to use a guy with a 0.47 ERA and 0.62 WHIP. The problem is that he is ancient in baseball years and needs more rest if the Reds plan on using him in September.

The 28-year-old Masset hasn’t pitched well of late, blowing two games in the past week. Yet he is still a reliable setup man that can provide key outs in the eighth inning of a tight game. Giving up an Opening Day grand slam to the Cardinals’ Yadier Molina has left Masset’s 7.29 ERA as bloated as a Goodyear blimp.

He is projected to pitch in a whopping 88 games. That is 14 more than his career high of last year. He has closer velocity, but injuries are certainly a concern if he keeps this rate up.

Cordero, the $12M, 11-year veteran, has not been his usual dominant self this season. The 35-year-old “Co Co” has already blown three saves—he blew a total of four saves last year.

Is it because of his workload? His current career high in appearances is 77. This year Dusty has him on a pace for 90 games! That’s waaay too many. Sure, he’s on pace to have 54 saves, but there is no way his arm doesn’t fall off before that. In a five-game stretch last week, he pitched in four of them.

Why hasn’t Baker used the overpaid Mike Lincoln more? He’s only pitched three times since May 8. His ERA is a fat 5.87, but that is the result of two rough outings. Give him the ball a bit more to relieve the relievers.

What about Carlos Fisher? Pitching only twice since May 7, he hasn’t had a chance to deflate his 9.39 ERA. He has been better of late and is another fine candidate for a bigger part of the winning formula. After starting off the year on the DL, Fisher is 100 percent, young (27), and hungry for a bigger role. Why not give him a shot?

But the biggest head scratcher of the bunch is the lack of use of Micah Owings. I assume Baker views him as the long reliever, but why not utilize him more often? On pace for only 77 innings, the former starter threw 119.2 innings last year—including a stint on the DL. Clearly this guy has plenty of juice in his arm still. A perfect 3-0, and he averages a strikeout per inning so far.

The 27-year-old righty has a 3.43 ERA and is also a legitimate threat at the plate. Dusty always tiptoes around the pitcher’s spot in the batting owner, and Owings is an easy solution. Why can’t he be relied upon more often?

Baker has a bad rap for screwing up starting pitchers’ arms. Yet the real problem may be the lack of rest for the meat of the bullpen. Rhodes and Cordero are getting to the twilight of their careers and are being worked harder than ever. The results have shown lately in the multiple blown leads over the past week.

The time is now to ease up on them and give some of the others a larger role. If not, Baker could have a new title: reliever wrecker.

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The season is now 25 percent over. Certain trends are beginning to pop up consistently and getting a gauge on each team is now somewhat easier.

Yet most of the league is still hovering around the .500 mark. So there may be 45 plus games in the books, but plenty of baseball remains.

Will the Dodgers continue their hot streak without Andre Either? Will the Red Sox pass the Blue Jays and compete with the Rays and Yanks? Can the A’s and Padres sustain their lights out pitching? Will the White Sox ever start hitting? Can the Nationals actually finish above .500?

Plenty of questions remain.

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Ouch.

The tires are flat just a few days after the Reds bandwagon was getting full.

After holding a commanding 9-1 lead, the Reds end up losing 10-9 in stomach punching fashion to the Atlanta Braves.

The Reds jumped out to a eight run lead in the second inning and everything seemed juuuust fine. Rookie Mike Leake had his seventh quality start in eight appearances, going six innings giving up five hits and three runs (one earned).

Mike Lincoln breezed through two innings before manager Dusty Baker inexplicably left him in for the ninth. At 9-3, it didn’t seem like a big deal.

After getting into massive trouble Nick Masset was brought in for damage control in a 9-5 game. He walked a batter then was the victim of a Miguel Cairo error and was relieved by the 40-year old veteran Arthur Rhodes. He promptly struck out the Braves best hitter Jason Heyward (the guy that beat the Reds on Wednesday).

Then Dusty brought in closer Francisco Cordero to finish of Atlanta and those pesky Braves once and for all. Yet another questionable call if you ask me. Well, guess what happened? Pinch hitter Brooks Conrad hits a grand slam, and the Braves complete the epic comeback.

This one hurts bad. Really bad. Giving up a lead like that might stick with the club for awhile. It’s a loss that could be looked at in September as one of the reason the Reds just didn’t cut the mustard in ’10. Losing two games in a row via the walk-off has given the Reds a taste of their own medicine.

The Cardinals have regained first place, and now the Reds are playing catch-up again. This isn’t a “the sky is falling” article, but holy crap this is a tough one to swallow. The best thing the Reds can do now is completely erase it from their collective memories, and beat the living daylights out of the Cleveland Indians.

There are now legit concerns regarding the $12M closer, Francisco Cordero. He has blown three saves already, he only had four of last year! He is 35, and clearly not quite the pitcher he once was. He might be getting over worked by Dusty, but either way something aint right. Simply put, he is having trouble throwing strikes. Oh, and the set-up man Masset blew the game before.

As a strength for most of the year, the bullpen is now becoming a startling problem for the Reds.

It’s not the end of the world, but this next week will be very telling about the resolve of this young Reds team. This is the time when veterans such as Scott Rolen and Orlando Cabrera need to lead by example, and make sure the team doesn’t unravel. Sure it’s still May but the Red Legs need to put a hurting on their Ohio rivals to regain the swagger they had built up over the past week. 

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Week Seven didn’t have any perfect games or A-Rod controversies, but it did feature a new unlikely first place team. The Cincinnati Reds are in the first place after taking two-of-three from St. Louis. A team that ranks 11th in the N.L. in batting average and 13th in ERA is some how getting it done.

The Rays and Phillies keep rolling, while the Royals win the office pool for first team to hit the panic button by firing their manager. Surely there will be more to come…who’s next?

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The month of May has been good to the Cincinnati Reds. They have gone 7-4 through a Cardinals, Cubs, Mets and Pirates slate.

The hitting is coming around, currently ranked fifth in the N.L. with 158 runs scored. But the major turn-around as been courtesy of the starting pitching.

After a magical one-hit complete game shut-out by Johnny Cueto, Homer Bailey followed suit. He gave up a whopping five hits over a complete game shut-out. The legendary Dayton Daily News beat writer Hal McCoy sums it up best:

“Reds pitchers gave up one run over 27 innings. The Pirates third base coach was as lonely as a cop directing traffic in the Arctic Circle”

Bailey (1-2) needed only 90 pitches—73 for strikes—to close out the Reds’ fifth straight win. He did not go to a three-ball count the whole game and only went to a two-ball count four times.

“That’s the epitome of pitch conservation right there,” manager Dusty Baker said. “He followed Johnny Cueto’s lead right there. That’s the most well-pitched two days that I’ve seen in a long time.”

Cueto and Bailey become the first pair of Reds pitchers to fire back-to-back complete-game shutouts since Jose Rijo  and Tom Browning accomplished the feat on June 9 & 10, 1989 at Los Angeles.

Bailey loves the Pirates—he has a 5-0 record lifetime against the AAAA club. Sure he got rocked against the Cubs last week, but he seems to have found out how to conserve his pitches better than in the past. He is still a work in progress, but the 23 year-old is finally learning from previous mistakes.

Couple the terrific past two days with a seemingly revived Aaron Harang, a steady Bronson Arroyo a phenom in the making in rookie Mike “who needs the minors” Leake, and the Reds suddenly have one of the best starting rotations in all of baseball.

Sure the ERA and wins, loss records aren’t there. Yet after a rocky month of April the Reds hold 16 quality starts—sixth in the N.L.

Sure it’s only May, there is plenty of games to be played (128 to be exact), but the season is over 20 percent complete.

Still too early to declare 2010 “the year”, last season the club was 26-20 at one point. But this team has the right chemistry. No more aging stars with ego’s too big for the clubhouse. No Corey Patterson’s or Willy Taveras’. Just a lot of youngsters that are enjoying the ride that is being a Major League baseball player.

Reds media relations guru Jamie Ramsey blogged about how manager Dusty Baker took the team out to dinner Sunday night. Baker seems to genuinely like this team:

“He gave a heartfelt post-dinner speech to the guys in which he called the group “special” and told the guys to believe they can win this season.  It was nice and the team responded to it.  There was a nice energy in the room”

Dusty picked up the check for the whole team too!

On the offensive side, the veterans (Scott Rolen, Brandon Phillips, Orlando Cabrera, Johnny Gomes) are starting to put up numbers usually expected when looking at the back of their respectiveve baseball cards. Joey Votto is on his way to the All-Star game, and even Jay Bruce has righted the ship.

“He’s been much better,” Baker said. “We try to give him some theories and philosophies. We have talk to left-handers who can hit left-handers.”

Baker has had Bruce talk to Luis Gonzalez and Raul Ibanez.

Bruce’s splits are pretty even this year, quite the opposite of ’09. He went into Wednesday hitting .250 off left-handers and .273 off right-handers. He has two homers off LHs and two off RHs, even though he had 49 more at-bats vs. righties.

He is second on the team with 16 walks and seems to not fall for the garbage in the dirt as much over the past few weeks.

So all is well in Red Leg land, but a larger question still remains. Can this team compete with the division leading St. Louis Cardinals? Beating the Pirates is one thing, but getting Albert Pujols out consistently is a whole different beast.

Nobody likes to throw the term “must win series” out in May, but the Reds need to take two of three to let themselves know it’s not just a one team race in the N.L. Central. The Reds sit only one game out of first, but it feels like the gap is much wider. This weekend the Reds can prove that’s not the case.

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What a way to end the week that was in baseball. Dallas Braden threw a perfect game for just the 19th time in the history of the game.

Baseball is the only sport that offers precisely this sort of drama, no other sport offers perfection as an option. NBA, NFL, and NHL have never seen the likes of this—a player that doesn’t make a single mistake, miscue or hiccup.

“There’s nothing you can say,” Braden said in his television interview immediately after he became famous forever. “It’s perfect.”

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Brandon Phillips is a good player, one of the best players for the Cincinnati Reds. Yet he continually disappoints fans with his lack of hustle.

Case in point: Tuesday night against the New York Mets.

Phillips laces a pitch off the left- center field wall that ended up taking a weird bounce. Had he been hustling, Phillips would have easily cruised into third with a triple. Instead he admired his hit and managed to only make it to second.

Joey Votto followed Phillips with a deep drive to left-center. Had Phillips been on third he would have been able to trot home on sacrifice fly. Not a big deal? The Mets beat the Reds by one run.

“He’s been talked to about this,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said. “We’ve talked to Brandon quite often”.

Phillips is one of the Reds best players. He plays outstanding defense at second base, and has a Golden Glove to show for it. He has been a career .274 hitter for the Reds and is very durable, having battled various finger and wrist injuries throughout his Redlegs tenure. He’s the only Red to play every inning this year.

But he is not the leader the Reds need.

He has claimed in the past of his desire to be the “face of the franchise”, and how he wants to play the rest of his career in Cincinnati. Sure, he busts out that huge grin for the annual Reds van PR campaign. He does his part in the community to ensure the Reds maintain a positive image with it’s fans.

Unfortunately, he simply doesn’t lead by example on the field.

“I guess he’s better than he used to be. We’re trying to get him to the point where he can be a big difference maker every day. He certainly has the skill and ability,” said Baker.

Better than he used to be?? Last year he was called out in a series against the Royals for missing a sign. He was also criticized for lack of hustle on another deep hit that could have been a double or triple. Instead, Phillips got a single out of it.

There is no need to admire the ball you hit Brandon, that’s what replays on the scoreboard and game tape are for. The Reds are bad enough on offense as it is (.238 team average), they need every base they can get.

Joey Votto and Scott Rolen hit back-to-back home runs in the eighth inning of the Mets game, and both players practically sprinted around the bases. Was this a direct signal from the true leaders of the team to Phillips?

Baker has always been a “player’s manager,” and it really does show with the way he handles Phillips. A day after the gaffe he was once again in the starting lineup, business as usual.

“What’s tough as a manager is when you’ve got an A-student who’s getting Bs,” Baker said.

Time to put Phillips in detention for a few games until he learns his lesson. But will he even get the message?

History says no.

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The Rays own the best offense in baseball and Evan Longoria’s .347 average and .621 slugging percentage are looking like possible MVP numbers. Tampa Bay is keeping the pressure on the rest of the division.

Injuries to key pitchers are beginnng to add up for the Phils and A’s. The Red Sox are reeling and the Padres are doing the little things to stay atop their division.

Ryan Howard is making $25MM a year? The 2015 Phillies will be awful. But that’s a ways away so keep the slugger happy while you have a legit chance to win it all.

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