I remember February of 2000.  When your favorite player is joining your favorite team, how can you forget?  The home team had just won 96 games, and added Ken Griffey Jr. 

2000 was going to be a great year for the Reds.  The months of February and March dragged on forever, it seemed.  I couldn't wait for the season to start.  I went to the mall and bought a new Reds mug.  The salesman told me that sales for Reds items were up big time.  The season came and went.  The Reds couldn't beat some pretty lousy teams like the Astros and Marlins and they finished with only 85 wins.  Griffey himself started slow, but ended with 40 HR, 118 RBI and a .271 average.  His average was on the rise when he was injured in September and had to sit out the month.  It was a disappointing year, but hey, we had 8 more to go with Ken Griffey.

Then came those years.  2001 started with a hamstring injury rounding 3rd in spring training.  Griffey missed over 2 months.  He had a very good year after that, but it was somewhat late.  2002-2004 were years of much injury and very little production.  The Reds suffered as a result.

2005 was a nice comeback year.  .300 with 35 HR and 92 RBI.  06 wasn't very good, 07 was very good, and 08 was the worst we've seen without injuries as an excuse.

We got 4 very good years out o Ken Jr.  It's unfortunate that we didn't get more.  It seemed he was never conditioned well enough to avoid injury.  Either that, or just couldn't get into shape because of recovering from injury.

Yesterday was bittersweet.  Sad in a way because it didn't go how it was supposed to, but also good because the Reds clearly need to move on.  The Reds never really put the team around Jr that would have contended, healthy or not.  Paul Wilson, Jimmy Haynes, Pete Harnisch, Joey Hamilton........these are not opening day starters......but they were for the Reds. 

Thanks to Ken Griffey Jr.  for the exciting times.  It was worth the pain to get to watch you for 9 years.  I hope you get a ring in Chicago......you deserve it.

 Reds offense has a very bad habit of making bad pitchers look good (Moehler, Eaton, Myers and on and on and on.  They can't put a rally together to save their lives, even against bad pitchers.

Why?

Because they have 6 guys on a daily basis in the lineup with bad on-base percentage.   The opposite of OBP is outs.  If your OBP is .323 like Brandon Phillips', your out percentage is .677 or 2 out of every 3.  How can a team filled with guys who make a lot of outs, start or even sustain a rally?

Here are the culprits.

Edwin             .344
Votto                .338
Keppinger      .329
Phillips            .323
Bruce               .318
Bako                 .294 (still playing with Ross's .394???????????)
Patterson         .216 (still leading off for some reason????????????) 

I'll give Votto and Bruce some leeway since they're rookies.  The rest need to either figure out how to be more selective or get out of town. 

Until, Jocketty wakes up and gets some guys in who get on base, either by lots of hits or lots of walks or both, things will not improve.  Nobody can sustain a rally with these guys.  None of them are proven producers yet.

So you're a big Josh Hamilton fan because he has 98 RBI.  You think Ryan Howard is a stud because he has 88 RBI, and you think Adam Dunn doesn't drive in enough runs.

Think again.  Going into today, Hamilton had driven in 98 runs with 228 plate appearances with men on base.  Howard had driven in 88 with 224 plate appearnaces with men on base. 

And then there's Adam Dunn who has driven in 68 with only 154 plate appearances with men on base.

Who's driving in more runs per opportunity?  Let's go to the grade school math.

Hamilton: 98/228 = .429 RBI per PA with men on

Howard: 88/224 = .392 RBI per PA with men on

DUNN: 68/154 = .441 RBI per PA with men on

Can't believe your eyes, can you?  Dunn drives in more runners per opportunity than your beloved studs.  Like the sabermetricians tell you, a huge part of RBI are opportunity.

They're right. 

 "But he doesn't hit with runners in scoring position!"  Please save it.  If RBI came only from hitting with runners in scoring position, Edwin Encarnacion and Sean Casey would have 100 RBI years.

RBI come from two main factors:  Opportunities and SLugging percentage.  It's proven over many years.  It's not arguable.

If we apply Dunn's .441 rate to Hamilton's 228 opportunities, we get 100 RBI even. 

You don't let Dunn walk, you put guys in front of him to give him more opportunities to drive him in, and you watch the offense jump.

Walk Jocketty (or Jockerty if you're Alan Cutler or George Grande) gets to remodel the Reds a bit in the off-season; not as much as we think, though, because several players will get increases.  Are those increases going to be the result of a higher payroll, or are they going to be paid with money coming off of the books (Griffey, Weathers, Dunn and more are free agents)?  This remains to be seen.

The Reds clearly need another starting pitcher and more offense.  More offense doesn't mean getting of your most productive hitter (Dunn).  It means adding onto the current offense.  Replacing Jr's bat with a CF who can hit would go a long way, and the rest of the lineup can really stay the same if we want an offensive boost.  Almost every team is hiding a bat in LF as the Reds are doing with Dunn because most LF simply don't play good defense.  You can cound the number of good defensive outfielders who also produce (over .850 OPS) on one hand.

I keep hearing catcher.  Is this really a problem?  David Ross is decent defensively and has a .397 OBP thus far.  Somehow, this guy has become patient at the plate.  It sure beats the opposite (an out).

You keep Dunn and Ross, and you upgrade CF while moving Bruce to RF.  Find a 5th starter as well.  If possible, deal Arroyo, Cordero and anyone else who is overpaid and overvalued to give you the flexibility that you need to make more moves.  Jarrod Burton has already shown that he can hold leads in the 8th, so there's no reason he can't do it in the 9th.