Last week the Reds announced that Cam Bonifay and Mike Squires would join the front office as special assistants to GM Walt Jocketty. At the same time, they announced Jamie Quirk as a professional scout.

Bonifay comes to Cincinnati via Pittsburgh, where he was the GM for the Pirates from 1993-2001. So you know he’s quality. One wonder’s whether he’s coming aboard to tell everyone else what not to do. As in, “Cam thinks we ought to extend Dusty Baker for another two years, so I guess we’d better not.” Of course, since then, Bonifay acted as Jocketty’s special assistant in St. Louis. Similarly, Squires had been a Major League scout for the Cardinals since 1995.

Here that sound? It’s the sound of millions of snark-enjoying web surfers crying out in anguish as they discover the news that Fire Joe Morgan is calling it quits.

Like Ken Tremendous wrote, it’s been a good 21 years, and I will greatly miss their criticism of stupid writers and broadcasters everywhere. Now it’s up to others to mock the ignorant and pointless drivel.

I’m sure Dusty Baker was a close second.

“Link-eh…linkeh”
“Lin-seh-come,” corrects the CTS.
“Who the hell is Tim Lincecum?” I say.
“Someone the Reds could have drafted.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird that the NL Cy Young winner is someone I’ve never even heard of?”

But by this time, he was already pulling up the list of draft picks. The Reds chose Drew Stubbs in 2006 when they could have had this year’s Cy Young winner. Thank you Wayne “Kriv-dawg” Krivsky. Not to say that Stubbs won’t still turn out to be the bomb or that the Reds were lacking for Cy Young-caliber pitching this year: hell, Edinson Volquez even got Rookie of the Year votes he wasn’t eligible for.

Award Non-rookie 4th Place in Rookie of the Year Voting

See that little table just above here? That’s the results of the 2008 Rookie of the Year voting, as performed by the Baseball Writers of America. The writers did manage to get the top two correct, as there was no doubt the Cubs Geovany Soto was the best rookie, with the Reds Joey Votto a close second. Congratulations to both of those players who had breakout years in the bigs.

However, see that little asterisk next to the name of Edinson Volquez in fourth? That’s there because he wasn’t even a rookie! It’s really nice to see the writers doing their best to ensure that criticism of their intelligence and voting ability has no basis in baseball blogs. Maybe they can follow this up by voting for Babe Ruth for Cy Young.

Statistics K501 is kicking my ass tonight. Would it really be so freaking hard to explicitly say that if the standard deviation of the population is unknown, you can use the standard deviation of the sample to calculate the standard error? For f*cking out loud, I’d still be on question 4 if it weren’t for Wikipedia.

And it’s impossible to do a gut check on whether these answers are right when the book fails to tell you the significance of the values. Woo boy, now I know the t value with 45 degrees of freedom. What the hell does that mean??

Homework’s due Wednesday night. Seriously, if you’re an expert and want to help, I’m sure we can work out some sort of exchange of goods or services. Just think: there’s a Paul Janish-autographed baseball that could be yours!

In the continuing series on Women in Baseball, the ladies at We’ve Got Heart talk to Cheryl Zimmerman, mother of Washington National’s third baseman, Ryan Zimmerman. In addition to being his biggest fan, Cheryl has inadvertently been the inspiration for his Multiple Sclerosis foundation.

Check out Cheryl Zimmerman’s story for yourself.

Dates: Friday, Dec. 12 and Saturday, Dec. 13
Times: Friday 4-10:30 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.
Location: Duke Energy Convention Center
Ticket Info: Now on Sale!
Adults - $20 for 2-day pass; $15 for 1-day pass
Kids 12 and under - $10 for 2-day pass; $7 for 1-day pass

The Red Hot Family still hasn’t decided whether to make it out for Redsfest this year. On the one hand, last year was a really quality setup with lots of cool stuff for the kids. We didn’t take our son, and swore we would next year. On the other hand, we might run into Dusty Baker there, and I’m still mad at him for the whole 2008 season thing.

Brandon Phillips is your NL 2B Gold Glove winner for 2008. I give this move three “Yippee!” and two and a half “it’s about time”s.

In an effort to make up last year’s slight to the NLC–or an effort to prove that the winners may as well be chosen by a roll of the 16-sided die–Nate McLouth of the Pirates was selected as the Gold Glove CFer.

Congratulations to all our winners, worthy or otherwise.

On Thursday, the Brewers signed Ken Macha to a two-year manager contract. From the official release:

Macha, 58, has four seasons of Major League managerial experience with the Oakland Athletics (2003-06). He owns a career record of 368-280 (.568). Under his leadership, the Athletics won 96, 91, 88 and 93 games, respectively, and captured the American League West Division championship in 2003 and 2006. The Athletics’ winning percentage ranked fourth in the Major Leagues during Macha’s tenure, trailing only the Yankees (.608), Red Sox (.577) and Cardinals (.577).

My first thought upon hearing the news was to remember in Moneyball how the role of the A’s manager was that of impotent figurehead. That wasn’t Macha, of course, but I’ll still be interested to see how he works out.

In other Brewer’s press releases, the team has declined Craig Counsell’s option:

MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Brewers today declined the 2009 club option for infielder Craig Counsell. The Brewers and Counsell will continue to negotiate. The announcement was made by Executive Vice President and General Manager Doug Melvin.

Counsell batted .226 with one HR and 14 RBI in 110 games in 2008.

If it doesn’t work out, there’s another NLC team in need of a shortstop and in current possession of a GM who loves the Scrappy White Guy.