After a season that showed the Cincinnati Reds general manager had less cajones than Wayne Krivsky did when he pulled off the Trade–and yes, I’m referring somewhat positively to that travesty–Cincinnati Enquirer reporter John Erardi filed an excellent report about what the Reds should consider doing this off-season.

The question for the Reds this offseason is how to compete next year with an $85 million payroll.

Toward that end, they must 1.) Play the odds, and 2.) Make sure the entire organization is on board with the plan.

Item number two is particularly apt considering the obvious disconnect there has been between Jocketty and manager Dusty Baker. That clearly has to be addressed. In a season where Baker refused to test out the youngsters in the final month of a lost season, you have to wonder if the manager cared one whit about the general manager’s plan.

In addition, the team really has to consider whether it brings back Brandon Phillips and Francisco Cordero. Both have been very good, but as Erardi writes, there comes a time for a smaller-payroll time where a cost-benefit analysis must be performed. For them, there isn’t enough payroll flexibility to pay for what a player has done. Both Phillips and Cordero have been successful, but they are getting older. The team should consider finding cheaper alternatives.

I’m not totally sold on Erardi’s arguments against bringing the players back. But the team should be having these discussions. And they should trust their scouts and team to make the hard decisions. Doing that has made the Tampa Bay Devil Rays so successful.

It’s a tough spot for the Reds. Perhaps the best line in the article pertains to Cordero.

Keeping the manager from having to think is no reason to re-sign Cordero.

Amen. Every part of the organization has to be rock-solid, and has to be trusted. Just because Dusty Baker has a weakness for veterans is no reason to drop $10 million a year.

Last I checked, his contract is considerably less than that.

So I guess this is it, then. It’s over. I barely noticed.

Literally. I was at work and my phone chimed to signal the start of the game. I had every intention of checking in on the Game Day, but the next time I heard my phone ding, it was to say the team was already on its way to the airport to head home. Guess they were in a hurry to get it over with.

It sucks thinking back to the beginning of the season when it really seemed like this wouldn’t be Get Away Day, but what sucks more is that the Cardinals are still in it. Those guys were the pits; even when the Reds were already starting to throw in the towel, the Cardinals were worse, and yet look where they are tonight.

It’s just frustrating, that’s all. I suppose I ought to hypothesize on how it’s the leadership’s fault, or bad luck, or the curse of Rob Butcher, but I’m kinda feeling like calling it a season.

Go Braves.

CoCo Cordero, meet the strike zone. Strike zone, meet CoCo. I’d like for you guys to get familiar with each other, even get to be friends in the off-season, since the Reds are on a freaking contract extension frenzy lately and you’re probably going to be spending a lot of time together. Or at least near each other. At least we hope so.

Aside not related to the title of this post at all:
In other news, the Cardinals are going to win their game tonight, and continue the hope of overtaking the Braves for the wildcard spot this season. Oddly for the Brewers, they may be rooting, just a little bit, for the Cards, since if they take the wild card, then there’s no way the Brewers would have to play the Phillies in the first round of the playoffs.

When we were kids, my brother got the nickname “the tree” on his little league team for setting the league record for drawing walks. He didn’t do badly–taking a walk is good–but he just didn’t do a lot of anything in the box. Nevertheless, he did get awarded bases a lot at the expense of the opposing pitchers.

Since the last time I wrote, general manager Walt Jocketty’s contract was extended for another three years. You might see it as another case of getting awarded first for doing not a lot of anything other than failing to strike out.

I mean, credit where credit is due for giving away Jonny Gomes for big fat nothing and hosting the worlds’ largest game of musical chairs with Louisville, but this team was waving and screaming for two months before finally disappearing into the waves and Jocketty never took the bat off his shoulder.

But he didn’t commit The Trade, so let’s let The Tree grow three more rings (the kind a tree grows that indicates how old it is, not the championship kind) in Cincinnati. Thanks to this contract extension, Jocketty will be in town the perfect amount of time to play it safe and fail to bring in any more help for the entirety of Joey Votto’s contract.

Boxscore

As has been well documented, Dontrelle Willis has been searching for a win for a long time.

And in his last start for the Cincinnati Reds in the 2011 season, he finally got it, with very little thanks to closer Francisco Cordero.

Willis turned in his customary 6 innings, 3 runs start, and this time it was enough.

The Reds scoring started in the 1st, when Jay Bruce drove in Brandon Phillips. In the 2nd, Devin Mesoraco drove in Juan Francisco. And then Paul Janish sacrificed a fly to plate Mesoraco.

Willis struggled in the bottom of the 2nd, allowing the Pittsburgh Pirates to tie it 3-3, but he soon took matters into his own hands. In the 6th, Mesoraco singled. Janish doubled. And Willis added his own double to bring both runners in, making it 5-3.

Cordero was brought in to close out the game in the 9th. Like so many previous times, the bullpen allowed some runs. Cordero allowed a run-scoring double to Neil Walker, and with a runner on second base, it looked like Willis’ win was in jeopardy. But Cordero was able to strike out the final two batters to end the game.

The win makes Willis’ record 1-6 on the season, over 13 starts.

Today the Cincinnati Reds announced a new 3-year contract for General Manager Walt Jocketty that will keep him with the Reds through 2014.

CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Reds President and Chief Executive Officer Bob Castellini today announced the signing of President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Walt Jocketty to a 3-year contract extension through the 2014 season.

Jocketty’s original contract was to have expired at the end of the 2011 season.

“Since he’s been here, Walt has vastly improved our baseball operations within the organization,” Castellini said. “You can’t develop a winning tradition without stability. Walt and his staff are doing good things here. We want to keep that momentum going.”

Jocketty joined the organization in January 2008 as a special advisor to Castellini, and three months later he was named to his current position. In 2010, in just his third season at the helm of the club’s baseball operations department, Jocketty led the Reds to the National League Central Division title by 5.0 games with a 91-71 record and their first appearance in the Postseason since 1995.

The 2010 Reds club was the eighth led to the playoffs by Jocketty and, including his time in St. Louis, his seventh to win the NL Central outright. His 2006 Cardinals team won the World Series.

After the Reds’ 2010 championship season, Jocketty was recognized by his peers and Sporting News as Major League Baseball’s Executive of the Year. He also won that prestigious award in 2000 and 2004.

In four years as the leader of the Reds, Jocketty has had exactly one winning season. Granted, the team won its division then, but it sure would be nice to see better results. I’m optimistic that his next 3 years will see at least 2 winning years.

You might remember the lackluster off-season for the Cincinnati Reds of 2010. Coming off their first winning season in a decade and their first division title in more than that, the team lost big in the playoffs. The weaknesses were obvious: left field, shortstop, and a top-of-the-rotation starter.

Instead of doing anything about it, Reds General Manager Walt Jocketty spent his time signing players who were already under club control to long-term contracts.

But 2012 is going to be different. John Fay interviewed Jocketty about next season, and the GM made Reds fans a promise.

Jocketty promises that this offseason will be busier than last.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” he said.

Time will tell if “busier” will actually mean improving the team or just keeping more of the players that lead the team to a 3rd place finish.

Bronson Arroyo has been having a pretty rough year, what with his 8-12 record and 5.34 ERA. But today he had a complete-game, 6-hit shutout. Clearly, the problem all along has been not playing the Astros.

I know I said I’d be raking Walk Jocketty over the coals tonight, but I have been so pleasantly surprised to watch the team looking competent for a change that I find I’m simply feeling too good to do the task justice.

Instead, I’ll just put up this picture of Dave Sappelt and his 24″ vertical for all the nine people out there still paying attention to this team to enjoy. He did catch it, by the way.

At the end of the 2010 season the Reds were the NLC champions, owners of the NL MVP award, and just generally full of promise and hope. The offense was killer, the rotation looked solid, and that ridiculous Jim Edmonds experiment was at an end. Things were looking good.

Then, a month into 2011, and it was already becoming clear that this was, again, not going to be Cincinnati’s year. The pundits are out and talking about how the offense underperformed (though really, they performed plenty, just not at the right times) and how the pitching that was supposed to be a strength turned out to be a liability and how the injury bug bit the team.

While all that is true, I want to make sure that Dusty Baker gets his fair share of the where-did-it-go-wrong attention. Though Brandon Phillips had to take matters in to his own hands to shake up the line-up, I’m not talking about line-up construction this time. And though Juan Fransisco had to await an act of God to get a couple innings at third, I’m not even complaining about the young guys not getting a chance.

My complaint about ol’ In-Dusty-We-Trusty these days is two-fold. First, this just doesn’t seem to be the kind of team he’s good at motivating. Give him some big stars and more mature players, and he’ll get the most out of them. But the most tenured players on this Reds team are Bronson Arroyo and Brandon Phillips. Frankly, I give more of the credit for the team’s success last year to Scott Rolen than Dusty Baker.

Second, there seemed to be an utter strategy disconnect between Baker and Walt Jocketty. Not that I won’t have plenty of words for Jocketty tomorrow, but these two guys have got to be on the same page if there is any hope of wringing the potential out of the roster. The fact that Baker doesn’t care for statistical advice and resents bloggers is really just a footnote compared to being given a roster full of high-potentials whom he was bound and determined to misuse, apparently on principle.

It was not, however, the kind of season that gets a manager fired. If the team wins out, they’ll still make .500, and let’s not forget that they’re still just a season removed from winning the division. Even so, unless Jocketty acknowledges the special needs of Baker and brings in a motivational old guy who can be a leader on the field, I’m afraid we’ll be seeing more of this season in 2012.