The Astros have named a new administrative type:

The Houston Astros announced today that the club has named Bobby Heck as the club’s director of amateur scouting.

Journalists in the greater Houston area are going to have to stretch to find reasons to make puns on the Astros’ new director of amateur scouting, but I bet they’ll try. Maybe he’ll make it easy by getting in trouble with the law or something. “To Heck in a Handbasket” is a phrase I expect we’ll be seeing in headlines in the coming months.

Two Brewers have been honored with baseball’s Nobel Prize: the Player’s Choice Award.

First, Prince Fielder is the most outstanding player in the National League:

“That’s an awesome feeling, knowing that the guys you play against every day respect how you play and how you go out there and give 100 percent,” Fielder told Yahoo.com, which announced the results on a webcast.

And as if that weren’t enough, the players had the love for Ryan Braun as well, voting him the National League’s top rookie:

The 23-year-old did not debut until late May but nonetheless led big league rookies with 34 home runs, a .324 batting average and a .634 slugging percentage. On Thursday, he won the Players Choice Award for most outstanding rookie in the National League, decided by a vote of his peers.

“It really wasn’t easy,” Braun told Yahoo.com in a webcast announcing the award. “I came up, tried to make adjustments as quickly as possible, and as long as I was able to do that, I was able to find some success.”

Congratulations to the winners. Though these awards can’t make up for a missed postseason appearance, they do bring the rare opportunity to appear on a Yahoo.com webcast, so you’ve got to like that.

Welcome readers, to the new and improved Red Hot Mama. You may have noticed that the past season has been kind of a downer around here, due in part to the fact that it’s been the same old mediocrity around Cincinnati but also due in fact to my perspective getting stale. I mean, honestly: there are only so many funny ways that a woman can say “please, for the love of all that is good, stop sending out Stanton.”

So we’re mixing it up around here. We’re taking the exclusive focus off of the Reds in favor of a broader picture of the whole National League Central. If we’re lucky, maybe one of these teams will win the division.

“But you don’t know anything about any of the teams in the NLC except the Reds,” you might say. To which I would respond, “what do you mean ‘except the Reds’?”

In case you were wondering what my Crack Technical Staff was up to while I was undergoing my team-identity existential quandary–and I know you were–he’s been working on a pretty massive change as well. Not only did he design the new look and feel for the site, but he also changed the entire underlying technology. Even as you read this, you have the ability to comment even if you’re not registered, plus edit those comments for up to 10 minutes after you post them.

Speaking registering for an account, if you were previously registered, your account has been migrated to the new software. Check your email for a message with your new password. If you have any problems, drop me a line and we’ll get it figured out.

And with that, I’ll get down to business. This is quite a thrill for me. I haven’t been this excited about baseball since Bronson Arroyo went to Cincy. And just look how well that worked out!

CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati Reds today announced that Major League coaches Mark Berry, Billy Hatcher, Brook Jacoby and Dick Pole along with bullpen catcher Mike Stefanski will be offered contracts for the 2008 season.

The club also announced that bullpen coach Tom Hume will not be offered a contract and that bench coach Pat Kelly has been reassigned within the organization.

The bullpen coach and bench coach vacancies on new manager Dusty Baker’s staff will be filled in the near future.

Berry will return for his 25th season in the organization and for his 10th year on the Major League coaching staff. He has been the club’s third base coach the last 4 seasons.

Hatcher has been with the organization for 2 years, both as first base coach.

Jacoby and Pole will return for their second seasons as hitting coach and pitching coach, respectively.

Stefanski will return for his fifth straight season as bullpen catcher. Hume was with the organization for 11 seasons as bullpen coach and for 1 season (2006) as pitching coach. Kelly will return as manager of the organization’s Gulf Coast League Sarasota affiliate and as director of Florida on-field operations, positions he held last season until he was named interim manager Pete Mackanin’s bench coach on July 3.

It looks like the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) lost their case about players' stats being personal property. That's good news, not only for fantasy sites, but for blogs and other places that utilize that information.

The case didn't make much sense to me. How could there be ownership of publicly available information?

Our friends at Home Run Derby are hypothesizing that everyone’s favorite slugger, Barry Bonds, could be interested in coming to Cincinnati to reunite with Dusty Baker.

Just imagine: an outfield of Adam Dunn, Barry Bonds, and Ken Griffey, Jr.

I bet people would lay off Dunn’s defense.

You can find the press conference where the Reds management announced Dusty Baker at Reds.com.

The Crack Technical Staff is encouraged by some of the things he has to say. You might be too. Me? I’m moved by this particular quote from Dusty:

I’ll never let you win. I’ll let you get close.

So, it looks like Dusty Baker has signed on with the Reds for three years. Dusty Baker. He whose managing quirks we have seen first hand for so very long.

I was just saying earlier today that I thought I might need a break from the blogging scene. I didn’t expect it to be three years long, but Baker’s not likely to last three years anyway, so it might just work out after all.

I wonder if I can get “fireDustyBaker.com” from that Cubs guy. In the meantime, you can listen to the heartbreak in my voice in this episode of the Red Hot Broadcast. Whether there are further episodes will depend on whether my need to express my rage outweighs my need to demonstrate how severely the Reds have alienated me.

Episode 79: Dusty Baker as Reds Manager (12.8MB, 18:42)

Just got a text message from a sympathetic Cubs fan who says that he just heard Joe Morgan say on ESPN that the Reds have signed Dusty Baker to be their manager next season.

If anyone has a corroborating source, I’d love to hear about it. And to start crying.

UPDATE 11:09 pm
Thanks, Zeldink, for the link:

Dusty Baker has agreed to a three-year deal to manage the Cincinnati Reds, beginning with the upcoming season, ESPN has learned.Baker, a former Cubs and Giants manager and current ESPN analyst, will continue to work with ESPN through this season’s League Championship Series and World Series.

Baker is expected to be introduced at a news conference in Cincinnati on Monday.

With so many managers still in flux–Larussa, Torre, etc.–is there really any reason to make this decision before the postseason is even over? Even if your GM has a long history of jumping the gun?

My irritation over this issue is significant. Podcast soon to come.