The Reds are cutting payroll:

Add the Reds to the list of teams that are slashing, rather than spending, this off-season.  Fanhouse's Ed Price and Jeff Fletcher are reporting that Cincinnati is looking to cut their payroll from $71MM in 2009 to between the $65-$70MM range next season.  While it may not sound like much of a reduction, Cot's Baseball Contracts lists the Reds as owing just under $66MM to just ten players for next season, leaving little room to fill out the rest of the roster.

Lagging attendance figures are to blame for the Reds' financial cutbacks.  Price and Fletcher noted that attendance at the Great American Ballpark dropped by more than 15 percent from 2008 to 2009.  General manager Walt Jocketty was quoted in the piece as saying, "We're going to probably have less to spend this year than we have in the past...It just depends on how [ticket] sales go this offseason."

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Ok, so things are kind of hard to think about right now with the current team, so here's a historical question: Would the '74 Reds have won it all if the Wild Card had been in effect?

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Hopefully you guys don't mind me asking for some votes here, but my wife's aunt passed away several years ago of breast cancer, and her daughter is taking part in an essay contest to be an honorary bat girl this year on Mother's Day. You can see her story here:

Link update:

I believe this should work now (user name Rounding 3rd):

http://www.mlb.com/enterworkflow.do?...ortOrder=VOTES

Page 11, second from the top if sorting by votes, or:

http://www.mlb.com/enterworkflow.do?...sortOrder=TEAM

Page 25 if sorting by team.

Here's her essay:

I inherited my love of the Cincinnati Reds from my mom, Martha, who was a life-long fan. She spent childhood summers attending games with her cousin, listening to Marty and Joe on the radio, and checking box scores in the newspaper. She loved the Big Red Machine, the Nasty Boys, and the #8, worn on the jersey of her favorite player, Joe Morgan. When I was four years old, my mom and dad took me and my brother to the first of many Reds games at Riverfront Stadium. Nearly every following summer was spent visiting Cincinnati three or four times, staying in a hotel across the river, and walking across the Roebling Bridge to the games. Great American Ballpark opened its doors in 2003, giving my mom one summer to enjoy the new park and our favorite team before she passed away in 2004. At the age of 46, my mom lost her six year titanic struggle with breast cancer. After two remissions in six years, the third time proved too aggressive. Although she fought bravely, she died on October 24, 2004 only four short months after the cancer returned. Before passing away, she shared with my dad her sadness at knowing she would miss the major life events of her children, including my prom, graduation from high school, and start of college. Inspired by the nurses who gave my mom the love, hope and compassion she needed to continue her fight until the end, I decided to pursue a degree in nursing, and am currently in my second year at Capital University. Because of my mom’s devotion to the Cincinnati Reds, her passion lives on through me and my family. Just as my mom’s lucky number was 8 for Joe Morgan, mine is #17 for Chris Sabo, and my brother’s is #11 for Barry Larkin. My siblings and I still prefer to listen to a game on the radio thanks to my mom introducing us to Marty and Joe’s broadcasts as kids. May 10th, 2009 is not only Mother’s Day, it will also be my 20th birthday. I have dreaded the combination of these two days for the past five years, but now I can think of no better way to honor my mother, a great reds fan, than to be the Cincinnati Reds/Susan G. Komen bat girl in the “Going to Bat Against Breast Cancer” celebration. .

There's a judged part of this, but a portion comes down to voting, so if you have a moment it'd mean a lot if you could toss a vote her way. Thanks for any help you can give, it's much appreciated!

I came across this today and thought it was pretty cool, Google is now indexing the back issues of a bunch of different magazines, and they've included Baseball Digest. Combine that with SI's vault, and a ton of baseball history is now available on the internet. Some of the cool stuff I've found so far:

Johnny Bench is baseball's best RBI man

Joe Morgan is 1975 Player of the Year (also the game Johnny Bench will never forget)

And also 1976 Player Of The Year

Chris Sabo: Spirit of the Champion Reds

Can the Nasty Boys keep the Reds on top? (Answer: No)

Barry Larkin: Majors Best All Around Shortstop

I'm sure there's a lot more, but I thought this was a good start. I recall Baseball Digest being kind of a lightweight publication when I was a kid, but it's still cool to see some of the old stuff. They need to get on scanning some early 90's Beckett's, now that would be nostalgic. My Todd Van Poppel cards are going to pay for college!

Tonight could go better, right?

Matt Belisle is hard to watch.

So I just came across this and it was presumably brought on by this blog post about Ken Griffey Jr. potentially leaving and all I could think was how utterly predictable it all was.

I'm not from Cincinnati, not even from a suburb. You could maybe call Hillsboro, Ohio an exurb, but I think even that would be stretching it, as it's about the same distance from Hillsboro to Columbus (and Dayton for that matter) as it is to Cincinnati. That being said, I always identified with Cincinnati growing up, I consumed the Cincinnati media, and pulled for the Cincinnati teams, but I never really understood the racial issues and general idiocy of so many people who live there.

I don't think its at all a stretch to say that it really is worse in Cincinnati than it is in most other cities. Cincinnati is still the most recent city in America to have race riots. The Ken Griffey Jr. saga has always had racist undertones. No matter what you might think about Chad Johnson (and I've certainly given up on him, but not until I felt it was justified which was this offseason) there were definitely racist things going on there as well when it came to fan response.

For some reason, Cincinnati has a particularly toxic climate when it comes to sports, and this is a big part of it. And if you disagree I challenge you to listen to Cincinnati talk radio or read the Cincinnati.com or MLB.com boards or look at the man love for every white guy who plays hard in this city and tell me you don't see what I'm talking about.

**Obvious disclaimer, most Cincinnatians aren't racist, etc. etc. etc. and so on, but this is a real issue there and it definitely pertains to quite a bit of Cincinnati sports discussion. Also I realize this is probably outside of the scope of Red Reporter's usual fare, but that Daugherty blog post really got to me for some reason. So here we are.

Um, WTF Dusty?

Can't really see the reasoning behind that in a game the Reds were winning 9-0. And it's not like the bullpen needs resting the day before an off day.

What do you like least about the team this year?

As Krivsky tore down the offense to build the pitching, I've said all along that it's great if that works, but if it doesn't then I'd actually prefer to watch the Reds lose 9-7 than to watch them lose 3-1. They're both frustrating, but the latter much more so. And low scoring losses are just boring.

It's hard finding reasons to watch a team that lately seems hard pressed to put together more than 3-4 hits.

Two games, one run, eight hits, against a pretty good pitcher in Tim Hudson, and a not at all good pitcher in Jo-Jo Reyes. It's boring.

Now your turn. Plenty to choose from, what's irritating you the most so far this season?

Maybe the first month of the season has been a fluke, but as things stand right now I have to say that I'm more pessimistic than optimistic when it comes to the 2008 Cincinnati Reds. I'm pretty sure we're not going to be seeing a cover like the one above this November. Here's my reasoning:

- Paul Bako is going to get a lot worse. All the credit in the world to the guy for what he's done so far, but he's going to be 36 in June and he has a lifetime OPS+ of 64. He's never slugged over .358 in his career, and he's currently at .507 for the season. A lot of 0-3s are on the way.

- Brandon Phillips, Edwin Encarnacion, Joey Votto, and Jeff Keppinger have all been as good as we could have hoped, so I don't see improvement coming from those three.

- Aaron Harang probably is going to fall back to earth a little bit. I'm holding out some hope that he's on his way to a career year, but more than likely he's going to finish at his customary 3.75 or so ERA, which means he's been pitching over his head for the first month.

- Ken Griffey Jr. might be simply slumping, but he is killing the Reds hitting third. Griffey and then Phillips seems like it's an automatic two outs time after time after time.

- The bullpen, for being a Reds bullpen, has been great. Todd Coffey was really bad, but that problem's been fixed. I can't see it getting much better.

- The rotation, for being a Reds rotation, has also been great. I think Arroyo (assuming he's not hurt or anything) will get a lot better, but if the Reds aren't winning now with how decent the pitching has been than that doesn't bode well for the future.

- The roster construction this season is probably the poorest I have ever seen, which is pretty amazing given the past seven years. Any of the current problems would be excusable if they were singular, but when you add up the two lefthanded firstbaseman, the three catchers (Javier Valentin has had 6 at bats since April 17th), carrying Freel and Hopper, and then Freel and Hairston ... it's just too much. Pretty much every team is going to have weak spots, but the Reds seem to actively seek them out. Corey Patterson hitting leadoff and playing center field day in and day out is another great example.

This isn't the end of the world. A lot of smart people have been pointing towards 2009 as the Reds year to start contending again. But while I know that's always made sense, I still had hope that things might fall the Reds way in 2008. Not looking like that's going to happen.