You have to be kidding me

I’m heading to the Friendly Confines tonight to watch my first night game/bleacher game at Wrigley. I love baseball enough to be excited about that, despite the fact that my team sucks violently. Today management sent a letter to the fans asking for patience. Let’s be clear: this Reds team is light years away from being even a .500 club. Going into next year they have serious problems at:
Catcher
Short Stop
Third Base
Center Field
Left Field
Even if I’m generous and say that that Harang will rebound, Cueto will be filthy (his peripheral numbers are very strong so I actually believe this one), the bullpen will be good, and Bruce and Votto are seriously big time players (a claim for which there really isn’t any evidence yet), this team is still lacking viable big league players at FIVE positions. They aren’t going to sign any free agent who is even as close to being as productive as Adam Dunn. And at most positions they a collection of retread/borderline MLB talent junk. The Reds have been a sub-.500 team with talent and interesting players for 8 years. Now they are a last place team with far less talent and zero chance to contend.
Patience? Don’t fire your GM 20 games into the season and lecture me about patience. Don’t deal your best player who takes more pitches than anyone in baseball and lecture me about patience. Drive four hours to a game and lecture me about patience. Unless Volquez or Cueto are on the mound there is no reason to watch the Reds.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch Bronson Arroyo give up 5 dingers tonight.
LINKS:
Here’s a good piece on Phil Wheeler. It came courtesy of the AFC South blog on ESPN.com.
It’s a little unclear, but it sounds like Tony said that Manning is taking all the ‘walk through reps’ now. Click on the daily football wrap for 8/20 and listen to the -1:25 mark. Sorgi is taking the practice reps, but Manning is on the field for the walk through. I think all the angst is a little misplaced. It sounds like he’s up and about and on the field, even though he isn’t practicing yet. That sounds like progress to me.
The AFC South blog came up with this nice piece with Junior Seau Jr. as well as the following report. I don’t understand if the video of Manning at practice is current or not. They said it was a ‘close door’ walk through, but there is video of Manning (with a black wrap on his knee) taking snaps and throwing. If the footage was taken today, then BOOYAH. It looks good. If it wasn’t, then this is a crappy media trick and represents awful reporting.