Its Been Awhile

So, Its been about 2 weeks since anything new went up on this blog. Call it a combination of ample distractions in Hawaii combining with the NCAA Tournament combining with a term paper. Basically, a perfect storm of things that made blog writing a little less desirable.

The goal for this week is to pump as many previews out as I can before the season gets under way on Sunday. So check for updates early and often, 2 or 3 a day will be going up.

Right before I went into Hawaiian hibernation, Dmitriy Zakharov was kind enough to admit his Cincinnati Reds fandom in lyrical paragraph form. Its a good read.

Not many baseball movies centered around the Reds, but, a youtube search revealed this gem from the 1950s.

None of the guys in suits featured will be walking through the clubhouse doors this year.



Enjoy.

In the eight seasons since the Cincinnati Reds last finished with a winning record, they have never finished last in their division. This fact, a product of the Reds sharing the NL Central with the even-more-star-crossed Pirates, is as good of an explanation as any for why a whole-scale house cleaning and rebuilding has not been attempted after any of the failed campaigns of the 2000s. That is, until now. For even though the Reds cannot be said to have hit rock bottom, the disappointment of the last few years has slowly but steadily amped up the pressure for massive organizational restructuring. As with the country as a whole, change came to Cincinnati in a big way during the past late fall and winter. Whether this change is to be accompanied by hope remains to be seen.

To be honest, in many ways I am a lapsed Reds fan, somewhat akin to the lapsed Catholics that inhabit Georgetown in considerable quantities. Sure, I go through the motions and pay my respects once in awhile, a handful of games on WGN or MASN taking the place of attendance at the occasional mass. However, what are supposed to be the central experiences of fandom instead take a backseat to other, seemingly tangential parts of the Cinci supporter identity. Where other team’s fans spent their time scouring lists of minor league prospects and performing salary cap computations that make Tim Geithner’s taxes look elementary, I simply laughed. Laughed, that is, at the demise of Jim Bowden, the former wunderkind GM of the Reds and a man who many followers of the Redlegs believe to be responsible for the plateauing and eventual decline of the franchise that took home the 1990 Commissioner’s Trophy. Call it Cincinnati Schadenfreude, a glum baseball fan’s inversion of Catholic guilt.

Perhaps it was a mistake to sleep through this offseason, though, for the usual Riverfront Rip van Winkle routine has been replaced with a march to the fountain of youth. In his first winter as Reds GM, Walt Jocketty has filled the team with fresh faces – in both senses of the word. Gone are Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey, Jr., the faces of the franchise for the past few seasons, along with fan favorite Ryan Freel. Instead, six of the projected starters for this season are 27 or younger, and three of the five spots in the presumptive rotation are manned by hurlers 26 and under. Bronson Arroyo, who brought his rock-star-cum-pitcher act to Cincinnati less than three years ago, has been with the franchise for longer than all but three of his teammates. Speed, borne of young legs, and effort, fueled by a desire to cement a place on the roster and in the big leagues, are not expected to be in short supply this season.

But what about wins? This is where things get dicier. To quote a recent MLB.com account, “On the first day of camp, manager Dusty Baker threw down the gauntlet. Baker said he wanted to have the best fundamental team in the game with the fewest mental or physical mistakes.” Youth is good for plenty of things, but minimizing mistakes is not one of them. And while Wayne Krivsky, Jocketty’s predecessor, did a commendable job in restocking the Reds farm system, experience and polish remain indispensable ingredients that have yet to be added to the cupboard.

So what does all of this mean? For one, there is a renewed sense of optimism about the long-run future of the franchise. That in itself is a significant accomplishment by Jocketty, and it should help reanimate an increasingly resigned fanbase. In the short term, however, there is a general understanding that the flame-outs of seasons past could very well repeat themselves. Sure, there’s hope that Edinson Volquez might repeat and even improve upon his 17-win outing of a year ago; that sky-is-the-limit righty Homer Bailey realizes his potential and becomes the superstar he’s supposed to be; that Willy Taveras gives the Reds a long-absent threat on the basepaths while Jay Bruce comes into his own and Aaron Harang returns to his prior form. There’s hope, but there’s also realism. And the reality is that, after 8 consecutive seasons under .500, Reds fans are willing to endure another one or two, so long as they are seasons of rebuilding for the future, rather than a repeating of the past.

If you’re looking for predictions about how this season will go for the Redlegs, you would best be served by looking elsewhere – young teams are notoriously hard to predict, much less young teams with a coach like Dusty Baker at the helm. What I can say is this: for the first time in what feels like forever, it looks like the Reds will be playing with a purpose and with a destination in mind, rather than simply playing out the season with a “get your stats, get paid, don’t get hurt” mentality. And this fan, at least, plans on rejoining the flock of the faithful.