Welcome to the championship round of the Jason Romano Commemorative NLC’s hottest baller contest. 15 of the best-looking players on NLC (plus one guy in limbo (again)) faced off in a single-elimination tournament that culminates with tonight’s match up.

This is it. The final round. Your votes this week will decide who is the NLC’s hottest honey and who is just a modestly famous athlete with a bunch of online fans.

Bubba Crosby has been the cult hero of the competition, and certainly wasn’t a favorite at the beginning, considering that he hasn’t truly been a member of an NLC team the whole time. Now, it’s looking like he’ll sit a year out while he rehabs his shoulder, which at least would give him more time to enjoy his inappropriately named reign as NLC’s Hottest Baller, should he win. And right now I’d give him the odds; no other player has been able to rally the groundswell of support.

Brandon Phillips has been a front-runner from the beginning of the competition. Most recently, he nudged out perennial hottie Jason LaRue with 51% of the vote. As the Reds’ second baseman for years to come, Phillips certainly seems to be a more natural choice for the competition, but it’s going to take an inspired populous of Phillips fans to overcome the Crosby mafia.

Bubba Crosby
ht: 5-11 wt: 195 dob: 8/11/1976

Brandon Phillips
ht: 6-0 wt: 195 dob: 6/28/1981

[poll=28]

I read a stat last week that said the average adult laughs 17 times a day. “Huh,” I said, thankful that I now have my own office where others cannot mock and laugh when I converse with myself. “I don’t believe I do that.”

Last year, the Reds’ season was painful. I’d entered it with hopes of them doing something. I was wrong, so very wrong, and I found it difficult to laugh at all the stupid things. Not this year! This year I’m ready.

Where to begin? How about right here.

Cincinnati has 34 healthy players, plus two that are injured, remaining on its Spring Training roster. With two days left in camp, nine more have to go to reach the 25-man limit.

Wow. Really? I can’t remember a team ever having that many players so late in camp. I mean, the Cubs, of all teams, are busy cutting down to their final 25. The Cubs! And the Reds have 34? Surely the GM realizes the ludicrousness of this.

“We will have 25 when Opening Day starts,” Reds general manager Wayne Krivsky said.

What refreshing candor. So nice to hear that you’ll be waiting until the last minute to do your job!

“It speaks to how good the competition has been in Spring Training. We’ve got some very close competition among non-roster players and in the bullpen and in the rotation.”

Really? Jerry Hairston and Jolbert Cabrera continue to have a legitimate shot at this club? You mean to say that you consider the pitching you’ve seen from Mike Lincoln and Jim Brower to be good? Well, that would explain The Trade and the Mike Stanton signing

But wait, as they say, there’s more. Let’s turn to that font of baseball wisdom, that intellectual of intellectuals, the man who is always ready with a toothpick to lend MacGyver a hand, Dusty Baker:

“If [David Ross]’s ready, there’s a possibility [of carrying three catchers].”

I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. I can’t imagine what kind of disease it is that infects these Reds managers with this 3 catchers notion (*cough*waynekrivsky*cough*). All one has to do is look around at teams that have won any worthwhile games in the last decade and counted how many catchers they had. I’ll even give them one free hint: It wasn’t three.

As I grow older, I grow less tolerant of repeated acts of stupidity and willful ignorance. The Reds, posing as the oldest professional ball club, do not. For that, I salute them. I look forward to them helping me achieve my quota of laughs throughout the coming season.

Tonight on the podcast we talk with Lambo, host of The Astrocast, about how the Astros are looking going into the season. Among other things, we discuss:

• The starting rotation. It isn’t the imposing group it once was, but Roy Oswalt still holds down the fort, and the rest of the division isn’t exactly kicking ass either.
• Miguel Tejada: his bat, his defense, and the impact of his appearance in the Mitchell Re–hey look over there! Roger Clemens is poking someone with a stick!
• The promise of Hunter Pence.
• The impending visit of the Red Hot Broadcast crew to the fair city of Houston for spring break fun.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Chicago Cubs on Tuesday signed OF Reed Johnson to a $1.3 million, one-year contract.

Johnson, a 17th-round draft pick by Toronto in 1999, had been released by Blue Jays on Sunday after missing more than three months last season due to a herniated disc in his lower back. The Cubs reportedly hope Johnson will help out in center field – he started there on Tuesday against the Giants, going 2-for-5 with a double – as well as resting Kosuke Fukudome and Alfonso Soriano in right and left.

The Cubs also put RHP Angel Guzman on the 60-day DL because of an injury to his right elbow, and said that they expect southpaw Scott Eyre to start the season on the DL due to a bone spur in his left elbow.

There’s concern in Houston about the defense, or lack thereof, of the infield. Here’s a brief bit from a report on The Astros Dugout.

[Y]ou are right about our gawd awful infield defense – bobbles and bad throws (Tejada nearly got Newhan killed on a routine DP toss us the line right into the runner), missed pop-ups (Wiggy and Loretta both missed pops to them in fair territory on the infield dirt – unreal), and we have no range up the middle It is downright ugly.

That could make for a long year for the Astros. However, it’s not entirely unexpected. How good could the defense up the middle be when you switch out Adam Everett, arguably the best defensive shortstop in the league, with Miguel Tejada. Sure Tejada’s bat was better by far than Everett’s, but the whole steroids spectre has made it difficult to predict how much offense Tejada will produce.

That trade continues to look worse and worse.