Reds Round Table: All Star Break
By
Amanda
Posted at 7:07 am
Welcome to part 8 of the Reds Roundtable discussion. I'll update links to the other parts as they appear:
Part 1 on Shawn's Cincinnati Reds Blog
Part 2 on Church of Baseball
Part 3 on Reds (and Blues)
Part 4 on …and this one belongs to the Reds!
Part 5 on Red Reporter
Part 6 on We Heart the Reds
Part 7 on On Baseball and the Reds
Part 8 - You're looking at it.
Shawn: OK, any questions from the floor?
Red Hot Mama: How's the blogging treating everyone this year?
Shawn: It's been a good year for me.
JinAZ: My traffic died when I had the baby for some reason. 🙂
Doc Scott: counting down the days until I can get away from my cruddy website
Ashlee: It's easier when the Reds are winning. 😉
Red Hot Mama: Counting the days? Are you in a contract or something?
Jacci: Markedly better than last year, aside from the fact that I can't find enough time for it right now
Daedalus: my traffic has been halved in the last two weeks
JinAZ: Probably 'cause I stopped posting for a while…
Shawn: That'll do it
JinAZ: 🙂
Doc Scott: Rock Star is eating all of our lunches
Doc Scott: and he's not even here now
Shawn: We're thick with the girls tonight. Lotsa chicks in here!
Doc Scott: it's as if I'm at my own house
Red Hot Mama: Shawn, that's so insensitive
Shawn: Yeah, so?
Red Hot Mama: We prefer “dames”
Doc Scott: RHM: no, I just don't want to uproot in the middle of the season
JinAZ: Ok, well, I better go make dinner… I owe the wife for an hour now…
Shawn: Anything else for the official write-up?
Doc Scott: once the claws are sunk in… 🙂
Red Hot Mama: Nice to have you, J. Have a good one.
Jacci: Enjoy ze dinner
Doc Scott: it is quite neat to see the Reds blogosphere expanding
JinAZ: Thanks for the invite. Was a lot of fun!
Doc Scott: heck, now there are like three of 'em just focusing on the minors
Red Hot Mama: Good to see everyone again. Thanks y'all.
Shawn: Good night, John-Boy
Starting the second half with a trade, huh? You’re now collecting players who have or have had funny hair?
Some fast facts about Jeff Weaver:
* Is 0-2 with a 9.72 ERA in postseason play
* Has led his league in hit batsmen in three of his seven previous major league seasons
* Ironically, Baseball Reference’s age-based similarity scores show Sidney Ponson as the #1 similar pitcher to Weaver through age 28. Yes, the same Sidney Ponson the Cardinals just dumped to make room for Weaver.
[url=http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/weaveje01.shtml]http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/weaveje01.shtml[/url]
This could be the best move the Cardinals have made since they traded away Arroyo for Larry Hisle.
Rudy Arroyo, that is.
Go easy on her, John. She’s [url=http://bellyitcher.blogspot.com/2006/07/if-answer-is-weaver.html]already gone on record[/url] saying she’s not crazy about the Weaver deal.
As for you, Ms. Scratcher, at least no one on my team dyes their soul patch with strawberry Kool-Aid. And we could do worse than players with funky hair. Can Jimmy Rollins be far behind?
Putting aside the irony that’s evident in my comments from yesterday, I do have to admit that at this point, I can see more upside to having Jeff Weaver than having Sidney Ponson. I mean, Ponson’s been with the Cardinals through spring training and half the season now, so one would think that if there were something in his delivery or arm angle or positioning on the mound or whatever that was responsible for his struggles, that Dave Duncan would have found and fixed it by now. He just hasn’t shown signs of coming around.
Weaver, meanwhile, has also struggled recently. But since he first hit the bigs in ’99 he’s pitched 200+ innings four times and fell a third of an inning short two more times in seven seasons. And guys who consistently pitch 200 innings a year don’t grow on trees. So, since the Ponson experiment was obviously a flop anyway, might as well let Duncan take a shot at resurrecting the career of the older Weaver. It’s not like it cost them a fortune to get him, and who knows, if the Cards can turn Jeff’s career around, maybe in a few years his little brother Jared will jump to St. Louis as a FA to be on the same team with his brother, and the Cardinals will have a modern-day brother act on the mound to make old-timers think back to the days of Dizzy and Daffy Dean (Dizzy was the older brother and definitely the better pitcher of the two).
As for the hair thing, hey, it worked for the Red Sox in 2004. They had to be the hairiest team in baseball that year.
HMZ
Sydney seems to have a great love of partying and food, so New York ought to suit him well. Wether he’ll suit New York is likely to be another story.