After listening to the press conference, all I came up with was this thought:
Our owner has his heart in the right place wanting to win, but has his head somewhere else on how to actually accomplish it.
Lets fast forward to July 1st, here is what our roster could look like;
- 1B Joey Votto
- 2B Brandon Phillips
- SS Jeff Keppinger
- 3B Edwin Encarnacion
- LF Adam Dunn
- CF Jay Bruce
- RF Ken Griffey Jr
- C Who cares
- SP Aaron Harang
- SP Johnny Cueto
- SP Bronson Arroyo
- SP Edinson Volquez
- SP Homer Bailey
- RP Francisco Corder
- RP Jared Burton
- RP Bill Bray
Does anyone honestly think that team can’t win? Thats what Wayne was on the verge of putting together here. Instead, he was fired and a guy who was run out of St Louis was brought in for the job. Why was Jocketty run out of St Louis? They wanted to go more scouts/stats than just scouts and he wasn’t with that ideology so they let him go. Great. Thrilling.
Now lets think about what this can do for our farm system, lets look at the first three picks of every draft that Walt Jocketty oversaw as a GM:
- Matt Morris
- Chris Haas
- Braden Looper
- Brent Butler
- Adam Kennedy
- Rick Ankiel
- JD Drew
- Ben Diggins
- Chance Caple
- Nick Stocks
- Shaun Boyd
- Blake Williams
- Justin Pope
- Dan Haren
- Calvin Hayes
- Josh Bell
- Daric Barton
- Stuart Pomeranz
- Chris Lambert
- Mike Ferris
- Colby Rasmus
- Tyler Greene
- Adam Ottavino
- Chris Perez
There are a few names in there worth noting, but there are a whole lot of ‘who the heck is that guy’s in there for having so many first round picks over the years. So be careful on getting attatched to some of our kids, I don’t trust Jocketty to keep them so much. He did trade two of the better picks listed above in Daric Barton and Dan Haren for Mark Mulder who has pitched 20 games and gone 22-18 with a 1.52 WHIP and a 5.04 ERA. Haren over the same period of time has gone 43-34 with a 1.21 WHIP and a 3.64 ERA along with a Top 25 prospect in baseball in Daric Barton and Kiko Calero who has been pretty strong out of the bullpen for Oakland.
Here is my open letter to Bob, not that he will read it.
Bob Castillini,
Trust me, I want to win. We all want to win. The issue is though, I don’t want to win just this year. I want to win for years and years to come and Wayne Krivsky was well on his way to making that happen before you prematurely pulled the rug out from under his feet with your trigger happy ways. Unless you want to put out about 25-30 million more per year toward player salary, Walt Jocketty isn’t going to do much for you. You have made me bitter today toward the Reds and its the second time you have done that since the end of last year and trust me, its real difficult to make me bitter toward the Reds. Mama still ain’t happy Bob, but this time its not because of the losing, its because your heart is in the right spot but you decision making abilities aren’t.
Doug Gray
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