FanHouse Walt Jocketty

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2010.

The Reds are at a crossroads. They've compiled some nice young talent at the major league level with guys like Jay Bruce, Joey Votto, and Johnny Cueto (plus the injured Edinson Volquez) and they have some prospects close to the big leagues in Drew Stubbs and Yonder Alonso, but that might not be enough to get them quite over the top in 2010.

This winter the Reds have to decide what to do with their roster. Should they keep some of their older, more expensive players and gun for what might be a weak division, or should they sell off on the veterans and try to rebuild a core around the younger guys before they leave town?

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Two good things happened to the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday. They beat the Pittsburgh Pirates and emerged from their one-day stay in last place in the NL Central. That coincided with Scott Rolen's return from the disabled list. Unfortunately with the Reds, their two pieces of good news were balanced with two more players hitting the disabled list. Aaron Harang will miss the rest of 2009 after an appendectomy on Saturday night and Chris Dickerson badly sprained his ankle during a pick-off attempt during Sunday's game.

The list of Reds' injuries this year is staggering. John Fay at the Cincy Enquirer has a good run down of all of them; every opening day starter except Brandon Phillips has spent time on the DL while Harang joins Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto there, making up 3/5ths of their opening day starting rotation. It's an incredible run of bad luck that's certainly part of the reason the Reds are battling the Pirates for last place. I also think it's creating an easy excuse for a team that has deeper running problems.

WASHINGTON -- Reds manager Dusty Baker called his team's three-day visit to the nation's capital "taxing." Two rain delays and a 12-inning game -- even if it's a win -- have a way of leaving that impression.

So does blowing a 2-1 lead and a series sweep in the eighth inning of the finale on an error.

That's just what happened to Cincinnati Thursday evening. Second baseman Brandon Phillips compounded some spotty relief work by the soft underbelly of the Cincy bullpen by throwing the ball away on a double-play attempt in the eighth. The error wound up plating the decisive run for the Nationals in a 3-2 win and cost the Reds a chance to move within a 1/2 game of first place in the NL Central.

Phillips was unapologetic for the airmailed throw that went past first baseman Adam Rosales and scored Washington shortstop Cristian Guzman.

MLB Power Rankings: Where we care what you've done for us lately when we break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world each week.

We're almost there. You can smell it in the air, can't you? That's right ... the NHL playoffs! Ha. I kid, of course. No one actually watches hockey (if it even exists). But people do get amped up for baseball, and the season is upon us. So, in that vein, we've got our final installment of preseason power rankings ready for your digestion. Play ball.

Walt Jocketty set out this offseason to find a right-handed bat to replace some of the pop lost when Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. were traded last year and to offset the left-handed core of the lineup formed by Jay Bruce and Joey Votto. He very nearly traded for Jermaine Dye and has showed interest in Pat Burrell and Rocco Baldelli. And now, according to Hal McCoy at the Dayton Daily news, he's signed Willy Taveras.

The article quotes Jocketty as being excited by the "speed at defense" that Taveras adds to the club. Taveras does add speed, as shown by his 68 stolen bases last year. Defense? Maybe not. Ultimate Zone Rating, or UZR (which is now published at FanGraphs) shows pretty significant negatives for Taveras in center field in his last two years in Colorado, though David Pinto's Probabalistic Model of Range shows Taveras as above average.

Of course, the main reason this is a terrible move is that Taveras is just an awful offensive player. Last year, in Colorado, he hit .251/.308/.296, good for a mind bogglingly bad OPS+ of 56. So he's 27, he's got no offensive ability, and his defensive value is nebulous, but he's fast as hell. I'm sure that means Dusty Baker will bat him leadoff every night. If that happens and Taveras fails to find the form that lead him to a .367 OBP in 2007 you can probably cross the Reds off the list of your NL playoff sleepers next year.

When the winter meetings draw to a close today, it seems likely that they will do so without Jermaine Dye pulling on a Cincinnati Reds' uniform. Just because that trade fell through doesn't mean the Reds are giving up on finding a right-handed power hitter to bat between Jay Bruce and Joey Votto, though. Today, John Fay is reporting that the Reds have been in contact with Juan Rivera, Rocco Baldelli, and even Pat Burrell to fill that role.

Burrell signing in Cincy is probably a pipe dream right now, as he's certainly not signing anywhere before Mark Teixeira does and once Tex signs, Burrell's value probably goes way up. Baldelli is interesting, but probably ultimately not helpful to a National League team due to his fatigue-causing disorder. Rivera would've been a nice pickup in 2006. He's had a hard time bouncing back from his broken leg and his .286 OBP in 2008 will probably discourage even Dusty Baker.

If Walt Jocketty is still inclined to pick up a right-handed slugger, a trade is probably still his best bet. Still, I'm not sure that whoever he picks up is going to have the effect of catapulting the Reds into contention. They did have Adam Dunn last year, after all, and they only won 74 games. The Reds competing in 2009 will have much more to do with how their young players develop than it will on who they pick up this winter.

It looks like the 2009 Winter Meetings are going to get a little bit of a kick start tonight, as a little more than 12 hours before things are scheduled to kick off in Vegas tomorrow, the Dayton Daily News is reporting that the Reds and White Sox have agreed to terms on a Jermaine Dye for Homer Bailey trade. Nothing's official yet (Hal McCoy's source says the deal won't be announced until next week), but this isn't really a surprise since the two teams have been discussing trading Dye for about a week now and even long-sideburned bloggers were able to guess that Bailey would have to be involved for the Reds to pry Dye loose.

The White Sox are apparently serious about re-making themselves into a younger team next year and in Bailey they have a guy that's not even 23 yet with great stuff who's been absolutely maddening over the past two years, to the point that people are already wondering if he's ever going to live up to his potential. Still, Dye is almost 35 and Bailey at almost 23 is only two years removed from the end of his breakout year in the minors. If the Sox can put him back together after a rough 2008, they win this trade hands down.

The Reds, on the other hand, are apparently convinced that the time is now to strike in the NL Central with their young core, and adding Dye should help make up the power void created by losing Adam Dunn. If Bruce and Votto and Cueto and Volquez grow a little more into their projections this year, they could surprise people. Bailey was very disappointing last year and the team's frustration with him was evident. Still, cutting bait on a 22-year-old who's bad season saw him strike out 7.8 hitters per nine innings in AAA is pretty risky business. I hope Walt Jocketty knows what he's doing.

UPDATE: The Reds are, of course, denying the trade. Don't you love Hot Stove Season?

There have been several stories lately about how slow the offseason has been. It's very true and that becomes obvious when throw-away comments by general managers suddenly become full-fledged rumors.

When asked about his interest in Jermaine Dye, Walt Jocketty told the Cincinnati Enquirer, "I'm not going to comment. But we have talked to the White Sox about some players. Nothing is close," and that was all. And that's probably the most interesting thing to happen in the NL Central in a month.

It's interesting because Dye would be a good fit for the Reds, adding some real pop to a lineup that could use some, especially with Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. now departed. He would create a nice veteran presence on a young team and would be very useful to the Reds if they've decided that 2009 is the year to arm up and make a run at the top of the NL Central.

On the flip side, he'd be awfully costly to pry out of Chicago. Some of the best years in Dye's career have come in Chicago and I don't know how quickly they'd be willing to deal him, even with his hefty $11.5 million price tag. I'd guess the Reds would have to part with at least Homer Bailey and probably more to bring Dye to Cincy. Would giving up on Bailey be worth picking up a soon-to-be 35-year-old outfielder?

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

How many teams in baseball can match a young core of Jay Bruce, Joey Votto, Edinson Volquez, and Johnny Cueto? The Reds have four young players to build around right now that would make every other team in the league jealous. The problem they currently have is that none of the older guys around those young players, namely Brandon Phillips, Aaron Harang, Edwin Encarnacion, and Bronson Arroyo, have performed up to expectations recently.

The question that Cincy now must answer is when their team is going to be ready to contend. They weren't last year, and Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Jr. were shipped off as a result. They're still a ways away right now, though if players like Cueto and Bruce can take steps forward this year, they might be closer to contending then people realize. So should they try to arm up for a run to the top of the Central this year? Or should they sit back and wait.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

Unless you're a Red Sox fan, the best story in baseball this year is the Tampa Bay Rays. By now, everyone likely knows the story but let's recap. In 1998, the Rays came into existence. In every season between 1998 and 2007, they won between 61 and 69 games, except for in 2004. They won 70 that year.

This year, though, is a different story. With last night's win over the Red Sox, they've got 90 wins and a two-game lead in the AL East, a division that seemed to be locked in a deep stranglehold that the Yankees and Red Sox would never let up. The amazing part is that everyone saw this coming in some form. GM Andrew Friedman has rebuilt Chuck LaMar's mistake from the ground up and the Rays are winning because they're good, not because they're lucky.

Baseball is cyclical and every couple of years, a young team bursts on the scene and surprises everyone. Who among baseball's long suffering franchises is next? There are seven franchises that haven't made the playoffs since the turn of the century; the Pirates, Nationals, Royals, Brewers, Blue Jays, Reds, Orioles, and Rangers (sorry Mariners and Giants fans, you've been good this century and that disqualifies you from this exercise), so let's take a look at them and see if we can't figure out who might be in line for the next turnaround.