This team has failed every gut check it has had before it. No reason to
believe they would have actually won today to finish with a non-losing
record.

I don't know, it is really hard right now to feel too good about how this
all turned out this season.

************************************************** ********************
Kevin McClave

"The reward of suffering is experience." ~Aeschylus
************************************************** ********************

On Sun, 01 Oct 2006 20:19:43 GMT, Kevin McClave
<kmcclave@twcny.rr.com> wrote:


Looking back at that damned west coast trip?

And yeah, it would have been nice to finish at 81-81 for symbolic
reasons if nothing else.

That said, there's a lot more to feel good about right now than there
was last season, Kevin...or so it seems to me.

Considering where this team came from in 2005, they had absolutely no
business being in a playoff race and playing meaningful games in
September to begin with. In January, if someone had told us the Reds
will make it to .500 this year, coming off the debacle of 2005, I
think most of us would have taken that as a good first step in the
right direction. They missed that by one game. The 80 wins represents
a seven-game improvement over last year's 73 wins, and if they are
able to follow that up with another seven-game improvement next year,
that would be 87 wins. Note that the Cardinals lost today and backed
into the division title with "only" 83 wins.

The new management tried to make a go of it, but realistically, they
took over too late. This season was only the beginning for them. By
the time they took over the equipment truck was already headed down to
Danny's neck o' the woods. What they started with, no way it was good
enough to win anything. They were lucky to be able to add Arroyo when
they did - starting pitching help is generally not something teams
start to gather during spring training. The fact that Krivsky was able
to pull Brandon Phillips out of his hat when the best O'Brien could do
was Tony Womack says a lot; and he got David Ross out of virtually
nowhere. Still, this team simply wasn't good enough yet. Hell, they
inherited pieces from, what, four different GMs?

Krivsky now has the entire offseason to work on closing that four-game
gap between the Reds and the division champs, they've had an entire
season to look at what they have and thus to determine what needs to
be done over the winter, and Castellini sat in front of the fans with
Krivsky last week and said something like, "I don't think it's any
secret that our payroll is going to go up next year."

So what we saw this year was the Reds in a playoff race they had no
business being in...the first such race for this front office group,
but I'm firmly convinced it won't be the last.

So, on today's game: They got another look at Belisle as a starter and
he put up a row of goose eggs while he was out there today. Yeah, it
was the Pirates, but zeroes are zeroes. Maybe they have an idea now
who their fifth starter might be in 2007. I've always felt Belisle
would be better off starting anyway. Can't put my finger on why, but
my gut tells me he'd be better prepared mentally to pitch as a starter
than out of the pen.

On what happens next:

We know the front end of the rotation is set with Harang and Arroyo.

We know one middle infield slot is filled with Phillips.

Rest of you guys can pick it up from here. Gonna be another
interesting winter, but not in the same way as it was last winter.

John D, Kasupski, Tonawanda, NY
Reds Fan Since The 1960's
http://kc2hmz.net <-- Note New URL

On Sun, 01 Oct 2006 18:14:13 -0400, John Kasupski <kc2hmz@wzrd.com> wrote:


I really don't consider myself to be overly optimistic, nor pessimistic by
rule. Right now, though, I don't feel overly positive about how things
went since that west coast trip. I see a team that quit, whether by
intention or by simply not having the horses, I don't know. I am not at
all pleased at what I perceive to be the team mailing it in down the
stretch.

The fact that the rest of the NL sucked this year doesn't take that away.


I agree with all of that.

Still, where was the urgency and the pride down the stretch? Two straight
*shutouts* to end the season when they could have pulled themselves up by
their jockstraps and gone out with a .500 record or even a winning record
for the first time in six years? Fuck 'em.


I am interested to see what Wayne can do with a full off-season. In fact,
I am excited about finding out. I am not at all pleased about not just the
results, but about the way this team has gone about things starting with
the west coast trip (but even before...the sleepwalking I have mentioned
at various points in the season). It's like they visibly gave up...and
that does not sit well with me.


We'll see, and I am not down on the owner or the GM.


What about the rest of the players? What about the last month or two?
Where is the hustle (with the usual exceptions)


I think the tail end of last winter wound up being a lot more interesting
than we thought it was going to be.

************************************************** ********************
Kevin McClave

"The reward of suffering is experience." ~Aeschylus
************************************************** ********************

Kevin McClave wrote:

I really can't say I feel one way or the other. Despite the
disappointment, they still finished 4 game above their expected W-L
record. The reason it feels deflating is because the Cardinals are one
of the weakest division winning teams in MLB history (there are eight AL
teams with better records than the Cards).

All in all, the team exceeded my expectations by about six games, and
ended up about where I'd have anticipated in the standings. Lindner and
DanO left a mess behind, and it takes more than a year to turn that sort
of thing around. We do finally have an off-season to be legitimately
optimistic about, and that makes me happy.

Of all of the 2007 situations, I'm most concerned with Adam Dunn. His
OPS has dropped for a second straight year and he's not showing any
improvement with his defense. Most significantly, he really doesn't
give me the impression that he cares, or at least not that he cares for
more than a few weeks at a time. He wasn't among the game's top 50
hitters, and he needs to be there to be worth the $10 million he'll earn
next year.

The pitching will get better with rest and recovery (I hope) along with
a few acquisitions, and I think that the defense is likely to improve
just as the players mature - more experience from EE and Phillips can
only help. It'll be interesting to see how Krivsky handles his glut of
infielders over the offseason.

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:15:39 -0400, tom dunne <NOSPAMdunnetg@gmail.com>
wrote:


I don't disagree with you. Again, though, I'm talking about the demeanor
of the team the last month plus...or even before that. I fully realize
that hustle doesn't completely make up for a lack of talent and all, but
it does matter. This team is a bunch of zombies. They clearly mailed in
the last two games. That is troubling to me.I understand the
disappointment of *finally* being officially eliminated and all, but then
that doesn't explain the sleepwalking leading up to and being the reason
for that elimination.

And I don't agree with the whole "they exceeded my expectations" argument
when they had raised them from the spring. At least they should have
(after seeing that Hatteberg was still a viable ML hitter, Arroyo was a
top two starter, etc.). We expect a team to do A, but due to the
surprising performance of X number of players they do A+. That to me
should raise the expectation, but often I see at the end of a season like
that comments like yours above that essentially say I didn't expect much
anyway, so this wasn't bad. I think that ignores the fact that, yeah,
sometimes it is bad.

I'm not sure I described that in the way I mean, but I've argued about
this with my fellow NFL Giants fans before.


We can agree to disagree on his actual worth and ranking, but he is the
poster boy for what I am complaining about here (unlike Griffey, he has no
injury history to use as an excuse for not busting it down to first,
etc.). I try not to assume that everybody has to act like Sean Casey to
show they care...and that is in fact 100% true, but I have been getting a
bad vibe from Adam.


I think we will see a fairly radically different team next spring.

************************************************** ********************
Kevin McClave

"The reward of suffering is experience." ~Aeschylus
************************************************** ********************

"Kevin McClave" <kmcclave@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:ij80i21ajf2gk3k9ljs11o8jt2oa92bfoo@4ax.com...

I created another thread with 5 reasons why we lost by only a few games.
I'm not sure why it didn't show up but here they are:

- Dan O'Brien. Initially stocked the bullpen with re-tread hacks, resulting
in how many first half games blown by the pen?

- Homer Bailey. Sure seems more intriguing now than allowing Michalak and
Mays to stink up the joint for several starts.

- Griffey. Day to day once again turned into a whole month. Sure would
have helped in September instead of Dino and Hopper. Out of shape as usual.

- Dunn. Abysmal performance to close out the year. Out of shape.

- Narron. More than just two games coughed up due to stupid moves. Right
off the top of my head, the bonehead move in Philly to put the winning run
at 3rd with nobody out and the 2-1 game in St.Louis where he had to use
Franklin because he burned up Coffey the night before in a 7-2 game.

- Team medical and fitness staff. The whole lineup struggled down the
stretch as we watched the averages of Encarnacion, Hatteberg, Phillips, and
Dunn plummet. Are these guys physically conditioned well enough to play 6
months? Milton and Guardado were allowed to pitch with elbow issues.

"John Kasupski" <kc2hmz@wzrd.com> wrote in message
news:aua0i2lsongcsjhjlus3abgpbosl6uhuq1@4ax.com...

I disagree. Many of the predictions made before the season started were
meaningless, because those predictions were made without Arroyo, Phillips,
Ross and these guys were key in making it an 80 win team. In addition,
don't get your hopes up because they won 80 games as that was largely in
part to weak opponents and a weak NL general.

RJA wrote:

Funny thing about division wins, the Cards actually had a losing record
against the NL Central. They won the division primarily because they
went 23-11 against the West, where the Reds were 11-20 and the Astros
14-19. In interleague, the entire NL was average to awful with the
exception of the 11-4 Colorado Rockies. I guess we can take solace in
the fact that even if the Reds should have made it to the series, any of
the AL contenders would have eaten them for breakfast

I'm calling for a Twins-Padres World Series, by the way, and hoping that
the Yankees don't make it out of Detroit.

"tom dunne" <NOSPAMdunnetg@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4odj0bFe2cdnU1@individual.net...

I'll root for Detroit to win it all, but it will be a satisfying season for
me as long as the Yankees don't.

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:43:25 -0400, tom dunne
<NOSPAMdunnetg@gmail.com> gave us:


It's well known here that I'm a Cardinals fan, so the fact that I'm
backing them comes as no surprise. The other teams, though?

I have to root against the Twins until they tear down that abomination
of a "stadium". I will never forget the travesty of the 1987 World
Series, and I would expect that you would have similar feelings about
1991, Tom.

The Yankees? Satan.

That leaves me with Detroit and Oakland in the American League from
whom to choose. My well known distaste for the wildcard, though,
prevents me from advancing Detroit's cause. If they hadn't have had
the wildcard upon which to rely, though, maybe they would have done
more to beat Kansas City this past weekend, so maybe I need to revive
them from elimination.

Oakland? I don't have anything against them other than the fact that
they employ Jay Payton and Milton Bradley, whom I detest. It's going
to be hard to cheer for a team with those two jerks on it. And I
don't care much for Jason Kendall, either.

The Dodgers tried to intentionally lose on Sunday in an attempt to
secure the wildcard. With the division tied on the last day of the
season, Grady Little rested Drew, Lofton, Anderson, Furcal, Kent,
Garciaparra and Martin. Why? Because the Dodgers were 0-7 this year
against the Cardinals and apparently preferred to play the Mets in the
first round.

The Mets? Pond scum.

The Padres? They're playing my Cardinals in the first round.

--
Lance

"The Cubs will have fun kicking around the Cards
for years to come, and rubbing your snotty punk-ass
nose in it every chance they get."
-- Jed Taylor 9/30/03

St. Louis Cardinals, National League Champions 2004
NL Central Champions 2004
NL Central Champions 2005
NL Central Champions 2006

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