The hometown nine (again)

There is a concept called the success cycle in sports - particularly in baseball. As summarized by Ryan McConnell, the cycle states that

The cycle runs through three stages: Rebuilding (selling off older players and restructuring the team), Building (having a solid core but needing to rearrange the talent around that core), and Competing (having a winning team and adding players to push it over the top).

Assessing where your team is in the cycle is a critical talent necessary for every front office in baseball. Making a trade or roster move at the wrong time in the cycle may not hurt your team immediately but could have horrendous long term effects on the success of the organization.

Yesterday Reds management made what I - and most of the folks I can find online - think was a misstep in this cycle. They believed themselves to be in the Competing stage in the cycle, believing that they needed only a couple of players to put themselves over the top, and in what appears to be a much greater misstep, seem to have believed that two relievers that I had never heard of were those couple of players.

The Reds were competitive in one of the weakest (as the recent dartboards pointed out) divisions in baseball. The current leaders - the St. Louis Cardinals have a decent record but against a weak schedule and with a lot of luck, they currently rank sixteenth in the majors in projected record. The Reds are just behind in 18th. No other division has their best team ranked anywhere lower than tenth (the Padres).

Depending on your definition of competitive, the Reds just might have (prior to yesterday's trade) qualified. They were competitive for the rights to make the playoffs and get their heads handed immediately back to them by a team that is competitive for the NL title (which the Reds were not) or for the World Series title (which the Reds were not remotely close to).

Even if they were competitive, however, they won't be now because they got weaker at two positions who play everyday in return for getting marginally stronger at two positions that play every couple of days.

In my view, this is not the time to sell the future and assume that your team is truly Competitive. If they can't possibly win the Series, keep building.

Heading into the season, the Reds looked to have one simple but glaring weakness: their pitching. With a likely rotation of Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo, Elizardo Ramirez, Eric Milton, and Brandon Clausson, the Reds looked again to be serving up gopher ball specials to visiting batters. Through the first half of the season, Arroyo has been excellent (9-6, 3.12) while Harang (9-6, 3.70) and Ramirez (3-6, 4.14) have both been better than expected. Milton (6-4, 5.19) and Claussen (3-8, 6.19) have both stunk, but the offense can carry two bad pitchers.

Instead, the Reds' weakness turned out to be the bullpen - having blown thirteen saves in thirty-three chances, ranking twenty-first among all MLB teams and being reviled in the press of late. Things were coming to a head, and the Reds' first move (last week's trade for Eddie Guardado) was a good one. They took a flier on an eperienced pitcher with a track record for success but who had found himself in a bad situation and with failing confidence in that situation. The Reds gave up little to acquire him, and it was a typically low risk-high reward trade.

The trade yesterday, however, befudles me. The Reds gave up a full-time starter (Felipe Lopez) and a part-time starter in a brittle outfield (Austin Kearns - who was finally finding his health and stroke). They also threw in the towel on Ryan Wagner, their first-round draft pick in 2003 who didn't seem to be panning out. In return, they got an aging (36) replacement shortstop who can't hit and is a bad (though by all data, not quite as bad as Lopez this year) fielder in Royce Clayton (welcome back, stinky). The major goal of the trade appears to have been to acquire two relievers in Gary Majewski and Bill Bray, neither of whom anybody seems to have heard of.

Majewski has an ERA of 3.58 this year and a career number of 3.27 in two and a half seasons. He doesn't strike people out (96 in 162 career innings), and he puts too many runners on base (WHIP of 1.38). As a bonus, he's already blown five saves this year.

Bray has an ERA of 3.91 and a WHIP of 1.43 in this, his rookie season. He has struck out 16 batters in 23 innings and at least hasn't blown a save (not that he's had many opportunities, having only been credited with even one hold).

These are not the saviors, and the two prospects thrown in by the Nationals seem to not impress anybody that I can find on the web.

This move stinks of narrow-visioned leadership that saw a problem and did everything possible to solve that problem, thinking only of the short term and not at all of what solving that one problem would do to the rest of the team.

I am, yet again, disappointed in the management of my favorite team. This is why Cincinnati prepetually seems to be a second-rate baseball town.

For more scathing reviews of the trade, check these pages:

• Baseball Primer's transaction oracle
• The Hardball Times's column on the trade
• The Cincy Enquirer's analysis of the trade
• The Cincy Enquirer's report of the trade

The best attempt at actually explaining the trade came from Baseball Primer member Sam M. who commented

I don't know how anybody could possibly think this makes any sense whatsoever for the Reds.

OK, I'm going to try.

"Our bullpen has been an unmitigated disaster. We are in a position to contend this year, but to do that we simply had to add some quality arms in the pen to help us convert some of those leads into wins. To do that, we knew we'd have to give up something of value, and obviously Austin Kearns is a very valuable player. We feel, however, that we have the offense to compensate for his loss. Majewski and Bray will make a huge difference for us late in games, and that was a primary need if we're going to stay in this race in the second half.

As for Felipe Lopez, we just have to get better in the field. It's that simple. We know he's a talented player, but unless we start catching the ball better and making the other team beat us, we're not going to be able to win consistently. Royce Clayton is a fine player, and he will solidify our infield."

I haven't looked at any press releases or anything, but their story's got to be something along those lines, doesn't it?

It's clear, however, that even he doesn't believe his words.