I want 16 days a month, including at least 2 full weekends, with Papa Frank

via lockersmash.com

Apparently, the Dodgers, when they are part of a divorce proceeding between the McCourts, are the sleeper team of the NL West for 2012.

I’m not sure I really buy it, given they arguably have only 2 legit guys in their rotation (Kershaw is a lock, Billingsley is a maybe), and they are hoping Kemp & Ethier keep doin’ what they do in the lineup while still waiting for Loney to realize his potential.

Brief aside about Loney.. after coming out of the gate red hot in 2006 & 2007, he’s pretty much been a .750 OPS guy since. The Dodgers need more from him, as below you’ll see they don’t have much aside from Kemp & Ethier in their lineup.

More about the 2012 Dodgers after the jump..

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I, for one, am glad that the airwaves should return to their normal programming as of today, and I won't have to rely on my iPod and my AUX input for almost all of my car time. That shit was getting old, fast. Granted, I love me some TSO, but I just couldn't take much more of the Christmas music. At. all.

While some Christmas music isn't bad, mainly the classics and some of the comedy stuff, the remakes by "newer" artists just sound awful to me. Yes, even I do not enjoy Justin Bieber's Holiday album.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed a relaxing Holidays, and will be able to spend time between now and the beginning of 2012 with friends and family before we flip the calendar and get back after it.

I have 2 simple questions for Red Reporter, as we look back at this Christmas music season:

1. Favorite Christmas Song/music of all time

2. Least favorite Christmas Song/music, or least favorite artist/band/group that butchered the Hell out of some Christmas music?

I'll offer some answers after the jump..

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While I'm certainly not on the level of thevole around these parts (who is really, except maybe crolf-dog?), and this won't have the grand turn out of VoleFest (I mean really, what ever would?), I figured I'd extend the invitation to the general Cincinnati RR public (I'd say Tri-State Area, but I only know a few idiots stupid enough to get in the car to come see me!) if you want to experience an awesome evening your evening ruined to meet The Man, The Myth, The Legend: Highlifeman21! Line forms to the right people....

While everyone that will attend (and some people are contractually obligated by rent a Red Reporter) knows this get together will involve food, the question is when, where, and pray tell what?

Details after the jump. Might as well, right?

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With the final version of Harry Potter now out in theaters, and me having seen a combined maybe 45 minutes of all of the movies, I wanted to get RR's take on the best multi-movie series EVAR.

There's a lot of good series out there, and I know that I won't think of all of them (since we've deemed my intelligence just North of eggplant - who am I kidding? That's an insult to eggplant!) so that's where RR comes in. I know that together we'll figure out the best multi-movie series, or at least enjoy ourselves making fun of our nominations. (cue the music, envelope please)

Per any decent SIS, we'll need some criteria (or is it criterion, b/c there will be multiple?) to figure out what should make the cut, and what shouldn't even be in the argument.

Requirements (since I'm not sure if it's criteria vs. criterion and too lazy to look it up right now while watching The Open Championship - go Martin Kaymer and Fredrick Jacobson!) after the jump.

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So a certain RR regular texts me around 11 AM this morning, suggesting I check out a humorous response to a question I posed before I went into work.  I shoot back a text saying that I can't b/c RR is blocked at work.  I work in big, bad Corporate America where we filter every thing, Big Brother watches everything I do, my interwebz traffic is monitored like whoa, and every now and then I'll get a friendly email or phone call from our fascist saying that I either approached the line and or crossed the line.  Oops, sorry.

So, my previous attempt to get to RR @ work, the denial response I received was the same I got when I tried to check my ESPN Fantasy Baseball Team; Site Blocked: Pro Sports (Fantasy).  I thought to myself, "Odd, RR isn't a Fantasy site, I wonder what some of the tags are that might filter it as such?"  So, this was back in July when I first started, I didn't know the right people to get what I want, what I need, so I knew to not wade too far from the shallow end of the pool.

Back to today after the jump....

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While enjoying the fine and always entertaining company of BK, Mads, obc, and 'tHan last night, we discussed who's in the Reds rotation right now.  Figured I might as well extend that courtesy to rest of y'all, since someone's going to have a magical answer which will make me less depressed about The Nasty Hook, and stop having visions of 'Ol Hoss closing dance in my head.  Please, someone.  I'm begging you.


The way I see things, the Reds currently have 9, count em, 9 SP on the 40 man roster.  Last time I checked, MLB teams typically only carry 5 man rotations, and every now and then will do some crazy 4 and 6 man short-term rotations.  Let's unmask these 9 suitors after the jump.

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The San Diego Padres open their 2010 campaign armed with the secret weapon known to RR faithful as Cherry Hudson, Jr.

via weblogs.wpix.com

Combine Cherry Hudson, Jr with his younger brother, Scott, and on paper the Padres have to be unstoppable, right?  Wrong, wrong and oh so wrong.  If you need a heart-warming read for the can, or find yourself out of toilet paper and need something with which to wipe, take a gander at this fine read. (HT to padres.com)

More on the lovable Padres after the jump.

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Assume you're Johnnie B. Baker, Jr., and you're managing the Cincinnati Reds in 2010.  From the looks of it, you have 4 options:

Chris Dickerson

Chris Heisey

Drew Stubbs

Willy Taveras

Chris Heisey saw no time with the Reds in 2009, however the other 3 most certainly did.

Taveras - 98 G, 95 Starts, 839 innings

Stubbs - 42 G, 40 Starts, 369 innings

Dickerson - 27 G, 19 Starts, 171 innings (27 Starts in LF, 13 Starts in RF)

Offensively, some players produced better than others.

Taveras:

437 TPA     .240 AVG     .275 OBP     .559 OPS     34.2 RC     2.82 RC/27     25 SB     6 CS     80.6 SB%

Dickerson:

299 TPA     .275 AVG     .370 OBP     .743 OPS     39.1 RC     5.42 RC/27     11 SB     3 CS     78.6 SB%

Stubbs:

196 TPA     .267 AVG     .323 OBP     .762 OPS     26.2 RC     5.13 RC/27     10 SB     4 CS     71.4 SB%

I'd post Heisey's minor league numbers, but he tore up AA, and then laid an egg @ AAA.  If you really want to see them, then clicky clicky.

The reason I chose the above stats is because I think they give us a pretty good picture of a leadoff hitter.  Runs are a teammate dependent stat, since you need teammates to drive you in if you do not drive yourself in, so I chose to exclude them.  While I've never been a fan of AVG, showing AVG next to OBP shows us who has an AVG driven OBP, and who finds other ways to get to 1B without actually getting a hit.  For my leadoff hitter, I care about getting to 1B by any means necessary.  RC/27 is a nice way to show individual offensive production, normalized for a 27 out window, whereas regular RC can be a tad misleading since it's it's sort of a counting stat (as much as a sabermetric stat can be a counting stat), but I wanted to show the total RC as well.

Lastly, ideally we want our leadoff hitter to create HAVOC once they get to 1B, no?  I want a guy who swipes bags without creating unnecessary outs, which by my estimation is a successful SB% North of 75%.

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