In March, Caleb and I will be heading to Las Vegas and drafting a team in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship Main Event. This is a league that has a $1400 buy in, pays out $5600 for winning your division, and can pay out $100k for winning the entire event. I'm looking for advice.

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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.

Hal McCoy has a pretty crazy blog entry up tonight with some parting shots from Wayne Krivsky:

“When I’m told before the season that I better win, I’m going to get all the pitching I can get,” he said. “Fogg was a $100,000 gamble, what we would pay him if he didn’t make the team. He made it so it cost $1.5 million and I still think it’s a good deal.

“When Homer Bailey didn’t make the team and Matt Belisle was injured, who did we have for our fifth starting spot? Nobody,” he said. “That’s where Fogg fit in. He made $3.7 million from the Rockies last year.”

And then there was the $3 million paid to outfielder Corey Patterson.

“I was told to get him signed, whatever it takes,” said Krivsky, who signed him for $3 million. Patterson was paid $4.7 million last year.

And Mike Stanton? “Stanton and the $3.5 million is on me,” he said. “And Juan Castro ($975,000), but I had something going with the Los Angeles Dodgers when I was let go. I told (new GM) Walt Jocketty to please try to find something for Castro.”

Krivsky kept quiet about pitcher Rheal Cormier and it was thought the Reds had to eat his salary when they released him. But when the Reds traded outfielder Chris Denorfia to Oakland the A’s agreed to pay Cormier’s $2 million, “And, actually, with interest we got $2.08 million,” said Krivsky.

Does this change anyone's opinion at all? The Cormier thing looks a little more defensible now, but Krivsky seems to think it being a money neutral deal makes it ok. That was a bad move all the way around that actively damaged the team, financially sound or not.

I'm also not surprised that Krivsky is distancing himself from Corey Patterson. Did anyone ever think that was anyone but Dusty Baker's idea?

Just wanted to interject a quick post here amidst the little winning streak the Reds have going now, and let everyone know where I've been for the past few weeks. Carter James Arney was born on April 9th, and he's been keeping me pretty busy since then. Here he is in his first (I'm sure of many) Reds outfit.

I also wanted to thank Slyde and everyone else who contributed for the outfits and Reds book. Alli and I loved it all (the "Juan Castro makes my cry bib" was probably my personal favorite) and I'm going to get some pictures of those up ASAP.

Open thread question: Parenting advice. Share what you know, I'm always looking to learn. And it looks like I'm not the only new father around, so it could be a lively thread.

How long until you stop poking them in the middle of the night to make sure they're still breathing?

First the bad:

- Jeff Brantley is a moron.

- Todd Coffey doesn't look any different from 2007. Hopefully it was first appearance of the year jitters and he'll settle down, but that was even more discouraging than his final line would indicate. He doesn't seem to be fulling anyone.

- I really don't understand throwing slower breaking stuff to pitchers. You're just giving them something that's more their speed by doing that. If an average Joe went up to the plate against Bronson Arroyo or Todd Coffey I'm pretty sure he'd rather see something coming at him at 75 mph than 92 mph, no matter how much the ball might drop or move. Three fastballs as hard as you can throw them oughta be enough to sit down 99% of pitchers.

Now the good:

- Kent Mercker looked like a genuinely good pitcher. If he could put up a good season that'd really be a big unexpected help.

- Jeff Keppinger needs to keep doing what he's doing and force the Reds to make a decision when Gonzalez comes back. Sure would be nice to have Gonzalez on the bench instead of Juan Castro.

- I have never understood why guys like Marty Brennaman and Jeff Brantley have such sticks up their asses when it comes to Edwin Encarnacion, but it was incredibly gratifying to see him hit his walk off home run tonight.

Photo by AP and Al Behrman

- Jeff Conine is up to some interesting things post baseball.

- Keith Law is fairly high on the Reds.

- This may have already been linked somewhere on Red Reporter, but Jonah Keri recently took an interesting look at the 1990 Reds as a failed dynasty. I really hadn't ever thought about how young that team was, it is kind of surprising how far they fell in '91. Lot of career years in 1990.

- And finally, Bill James took questions over at Freakanomics. Good, pretty much as always.

I think I'm getting too old and crotchety to enjoy April Fool's Day (seriously not sure why I even bother reading anything online on April 1st), but in the spirit of the day here is April Fool's Day done right:

The Curious Case of Sidd Finch:

Standing outside the enclosure, Stottlemyre explained what he wanted. "First of all," the coach said, "the club's got kind of a delicate situation here, and it would help if you kept reasonably quiet about it. O.K.?" The three nodded. Stottlemyre said, "We've got a young pitcher we're looking at. We want to see what he'll do with a batter standing in the box. We'll do this alphabetically. John, go on in there, stand at the plate and give the pitcher a target. That's all you have to do."

"Do you want me to take a cut?" Christensen asked.

Stottlemyre produced a dry chuckle. "You can do anything you want."

I have been playing MLB08 The Show now for a couple of weeks, and I'm honestly loving this game more than any other baseball game since ... I don't even know. Ken Griffey Jr. baseball for the Super Nintendo? It's been a really long time since I've enjoyed a baseball video game (unless you count OOTP, which is an entirely different animal in my mind).

I haven't gotten into online play or even franchise play yet (you might want to check out more in depth reviews for that) but I have been playing the Road to the Show format quite a bit, and it's a really good time seeing the incredibly detailed minor league stadiums and trying to advance your created player through the organization's minor league system. I also want to know that, incredibly, the announcers haven't been at all annoying, something that has always driven me crazy in the past. Even Madden has suffered from repetitive speech, but I haven't seen this as an issue in The Show (although it's possible I haven't played enough yet).

If you have a PS3 I'd definitely suggest picking this up.

Ok, on to our winners. The correct answer was 1466, and here are the email addresses of the people who came the closest without going over:

hurricanseason2001 [at] yahoo [dot] com

dnic24 [at] gmail [dot] com

sleuck [at] purdue [dot] edu

JHall [at] transy [dot] edu

jch24 [at ] hotmail [dot] com

If one of these addresses belongs to you send me your shipping info and I'll get your game mailed out tomorrow (want to get all the addresses together before heading to the post office so get them in quick if you can).

Nobody got the number exactly right, but stevo154 was the closest with a guess of 1465.

Thanks again for all the guesses everyone.

UPDATE: The Answers

1. The Reds lost more starts by Tom Browning than any other pitcher in the last 50 years. How many games did the Reds lose in which Browning was the starting pitcher during his career? (124)
   
2. Adam Dunn has homered in 218 games in his major league career. How many of those games have the Reds won? (131)
   
3. How many times has Ryan Freel stolen third base as a Red? (31)
   
4. How many games have the Reds played at GABP where the home team has not homered? (117)
   
5. What is the total number of runs scored by the Reds during the month of August since 2000? (1063)

I ran queries on my own computer against Retrosheet data for #3 and #5, but #5 should match Baseball-Reference (once they get their splits fixed).  I don't know of anywhere that #3 can be found online, but I can post the raw data below if someone needs it. - Slyde

Quick thoughts:

- Corey Patterson looks like he'll be a pretty good defender in center, but I'm still not behind him leading off, and I'm pretty sure I never will be. I mind the Patterson pick up a lot less now than I did when it happened, but he needs to be hitting sixth or seventh. But that's not going to happen I imagine.

- Aaron Harang looked find, just made a couple of mistakes which will happen. Still managed a quality start. More importantly the bullpen looked halfway decent. Sure, Burton gave up a run, but I'm used to games getting completely out of reach come about the 8th, so any day when the Reds managed to put up 0s in the 8th and 9th is an encouraging one.

- All the Cincinnati writer's seem to be making a big deal out of Valentin not running hard out of the box on his long single, but I'm not so sure he makes it to second even running hard. He looked even slower than I remembered.

- I hope EdE doesn't let the error get into his head. I'm pretty sure he didn't get a good grip on a wet ball, and those are the exact kind of errors that are excusable.

- Brandon Webb is kind of good. The Diamondbacks are going to win most of his starts, so there's no shame in dropping that one. Hopefully they can just come back and get the next two.

- The Nuxhall jersey thing was a great gesture. They need to get his number retired ASAP.

Picture via AP and Al Behrman

All of a sudden it's raining baseballs in the outfield stands, and Aaron Harang is having some difficulties. Hopefully he'll settle down.

From Big Texan Steak Ranch:

 In the early `60s when Bob Lee first opened the Big Texan Steak Ranch the cowboys still came into town at the end of the week.  One night a lanky cowboy came through the front door of the restaurant declaring he was so hungry he could "eat the whole darned cow."

Bob, always ready to have some fun, gave him a big grin and started cooking steaks.  When the cowboy finally yelled, "calf rope," he had consumed 4 ½ pounds of meat.  Bob declared from that day forward, the meal would be free to anyone who could eat it all in 1 hour.  

[...]

About 8,000 have succeeded in completing the feat and joining the ranks of Big Texan champions.  They come from all walks of life.  Winners have included an 11-year-old boy and a 69-year-old grandmother. Former Cincinnati Reds Pitcher Frank Pastore did it in a record time of 9 ½ minutes.  The unofficial record for the fastest time belongs to a Bengal Tiger.  His meal was limited to the steak only and he dined in the front of the building.  The technique was the simplest we've ever seen: sniff, lick, gulp!  It took him less than 90 seconds.

I can't even begin to imagine how sick you would feel after downing four and a half pounds of steak in under ten minutes. Wow.

Two weeks of spring training to go, and here are my two questions:

Would anyone have a problem with a rotation of

Aaron Harang
Bronson Arroyo
Matt Belisle
Johnny Cueto
Edinson Volquez

And:

If Johnny Cueto was 6'4 would he be a higher ranked prospect than Homer Bailey? Is his height really the only red flag, or is his stuff really inferior to Bailey's? Because I'm seeing a guy who seems like he already knows how to pitch, versus a guy who seems to have serious control issues. I'm still high on Bailey, and I think he'll figure things out, but I'm thinking the time when he was a more exciting prospect than Johnny Cueto is past.

Joe Posnanski obviously can't come right out and respond to Daugherty's idiocy today, but this blog post was clearly inspired by Daugherty's column:

*I want to point out that I got these statistics from the Bill James Website. I would also like to take a moment to say something about my friend Bill, something that he probably would not want me to say. But every couple of weeks, it seems I will see yet another person throw Bill out there as the essence of statistical evils and pajama-wearing baseball geekdom. It makes makes me pretty ill. True, part if it is because we are friends, but a much larger part is that if you read Bill's work at all, if you look at his theories with anything resembling an open mind, if you consider at all what he's getting at ... you realize that the man LOVES baseball. I mean loves baseball, loves the game, loves the stories, loves the characters, loves the ins and outs of strategy, loves the moments, loves trying to figure out why things happen, and why so many people buy into stuff that is probably nonsense. I don't mind people saying that Bill is full of crap -- hell, we ALL have to deal with that (and Bill is never shy about saying that someone else is full of crap, including me). But the people who try to make it sound like Bill's love and understanding of baseball are wrapped up in obscure mathematics and unworkable thoughts and cold data just don't get it at all.

Aaron Harang also gets some love towards the end.

Ok, after hearing about the Patterson signing and briefly considering becoming a general Cleveland sports fan (it's been a bad few days for the Bengals too), I started thinking about the 25 man roster and how I have little clue on how it's going to look on Opening Day. Here are, in my opinion, the absolute rock solid, guaranteed to be here players, barring trades or injuries:

1. Aaron Harang
   
2. Bronson Arroyo
   
3. Matt Belisle
   
4. David Weathers
   
5. Jeremy Affeldt
   
6. Josh Fogg
   
7. Jared Burton
   
8. Francisco Cordero
   
9. David Ross
   
10. Javier Valentin
    
11. Scott Hatteberg
    
12. Brandon Phillips
    
13. Adam Dunn
    
14. Ryan Freel
    
15. Corey Patterson
    
16. Ken Griffey Jr.
    
17. Juan Castro
    
18. Edwin Encarnacion

Ok, so that's 18 players (I'm not going to count Alex Gonzalez because of his injury). I know some might argue with me on some of the above (Castro?), but I don't see any reason to believe any of the above won't be on the 25 man come Opening Day, unless they are injured or traded. Now here are the players that one could reasonably assume will make the roster:

19. Edinson Volquez
    
20. Homer Bailey
    
21. Bill Bray
    
22. Todd Coffey
    
23. Mike Stanton
    
24. Gary Majewski
    
25. Joey Votto
    
26. Jeff Keppinger
    
27. Norris Hopper

Any of the above 27 players would surprise me, at least a little, if they were to be cut. And we haven't even discussed guys like:

28. Johnny Cueto
    
29. Josh Roenicke
    
30. Kent Mercker
    
31. Brad Salmon
    
32. Scott Sauerbeck
    
33. Paul Bako
    
34. Jerry Gil
    
35. Jerry Hairston Jr.
    
36. Andy Phillips
    
37. Adam Rosales

And finally,

38. Jay Bruce

All of the players in the last group either have major league experience, major prospect cred, or have been talked up by Dusty Baker already in Spring Training. Any of that final group, in a normal year, could make the team without shocking me.

I know it's cliche to say after a signing that you expect a forthcoming trade, but I don't see how this roster shakes out without getting rid of some players, or sending a bunch of players to AAA that we all want to see in Cincinnati come Opening Day.

It's amazing how the signing of one player can really put a damper on things. And just wait until they sign Neifi, once his suspension is over and Juan Castro inevitably gets hurt.

Reds vs Twins, lineups from Fay:

Chris Dickerson CF
Norris Hopper DH
Ken Griffey Jr. RF
Adam Dunn LF
Jeff Keppinger 3B
Scott Hatteberg 1B
Javy Valentin C
Juan Castro SS
Andy Phillips 2B

We are mostly out of luck on radio this week, but I'll still try to get a game thread up every day.

Not sure if this has been brought up in a diary, but I just came across a Reds offense projection from David Pinto over at Baseball Musing:

In 2007, the Reds scored 4.83 runs per game.

I plugged in a likely lineup to the Lineup Analysis Tool, using the Marcel the Monkey predictions from Tom Tango. For pitchers, I used the 2007 Reds pitchers averages. The lineups rate as follows:

    * Best: 4.82 runs per game
    * Given: 4.60 runs per game
    * Worst: 4.22 runs per game

I was surprised to see the Reds drop so far from their 2007 level. One big reason is the falloff by Ken Griffey, Jr. Ken's OBA bounced back from a poor .316 in 2006 to a very good .372 in 2007. The Marcels have him falling off again. Adam Dunn falls off a bit as well, but nothing that shouldn't be expected. He's still the best hitter on the team. Young Joey Votto looks like he's going to put up good numbers as well. Otherwise, the Reds did nothing to improve the offense.

4.60 runs per game is 745 runs scored for the season. 4.22 is 683, and I really have a hard time seeing the Reds offense being that bad. I guess it's theoretically possible, but wow.

I was personally really surprised to see such a pessmistic projection. I don't disagree that the Reds did nothing to improve the offense, but I'm not sure moves are necessary when you have guys like Jay Bruce and Joey Votto coming from within the system.

I suppose there's certainly a possibility that a lot of guys had career years last year (BP, Keppinger, Griffey with the late career surge), but given the ages of most of the Reds starting eight I think I'm pretty comfortable with the offense heading into this season. I think they'll match last year's output pretty comfortably.

As an aside, got my hands on the 2008 Baseball Prospectus this week, and they really love Jay Bruce. If BP is correct he'll be one of the best players in baseball as soon as this year, not just a solid rookie. Hopefully he gets his shot as early as possible.

Lineups from Fay:

Norris Hopper CF
Jeff Keppinger SS
Jay Bruce RF
Joey Votto 1B
Jerry Gil LF
Javier Valentin C
Jolbert Cabrera 3B
Andy Green 2B
Andy Phillips DH
Pitchers: Aaron Harang, Matt Maloney, Richie Gardner, Josh Roenicke, Tyler Pelland.

Ryan Freel CF
Juan Castro SS
Scott Hatteberg 1B
Brandon Phillips 2B
Edwin Encarnacion 3B
David Ross C
Chris Dickerson RF
Drew Anderson LF
Ryan Hanigan DH
Pitchers: Bronson Arroyo, Johnny Cueto, Alexander Smit, Daryl Thompson, Sergio Valenzuela, Ramon Ramirez.

Rick Wise sucks, I think the Reds can hit him. Still have the feeling this'll be a tight one though.

Go Reds!

I can't believe they aren't calling this game, it's miserable out. What do you guys think, does that benefit the hitters or the pitchers?

Snow on the ground in Columbus, but pitchers and catchers are reporting in Sarasota. Spring is here.

No details as of yet, but Hal McCoy is reporting it:

Brandon Phillips and the Cincinnati Reds have agreed in principle to a long-term deal, a source close to the negotiations told The Dayton Daily News Thursday night.

Terms and length of the deal were not available, but the long-term deal is done and an arbitration hearing between the Reds and Phillips has been canceled.

Phillips was asking for a one-year contract worth $4.5 million and the Reds were offering a one-year $2.7 million deal, but the long-term deal wipes that all out.

Tough to give much of an opinion without knowing more, but I think it's ultimately a pretty smart move, assuming they didn't break the bank. Phillips is probably a little overrated by most Reds fans, but he's definitely still the kind of guy you keep around as a building block.