ok....a couple years ago the Reds traded its most productive player at the time (Guillen) to make room for Griffey and its young, budding star outfielders. The emergence of Harang has certainly helped offset the loss of a bat like Guillen however, point remains.
Randa does things that this team badly needs. He provides solid if unexceptional defense. He uses the whole field. He makes George Grande giddy with his "professional" at bats. With Casey's power loss he and Lopez have best mix of avg. and power on team. He is also pretty much immune to extended slumps. He is steady.
Additionally, for anyone who hasn't seen Encarnacion play live....let me lay a little bit of a scary comparison on you, BRANDON LARSON. Hopefully not, but they both have that short, stocky build and from what I saw Encarnacion had a long stride, swoop swing that looked to be more of that dead pull hitter stuff we see every night with 80% of the current Reds players. Again, a little Brandon Larsony..........
Hopefully, what I saw was not representative of the full Encarnacion batting tools but he didn't tear up AA pitching the past couple years and is doing something less than having a field day with AAA this year (while putting up 18 errors).
If Randa wants to play a few more years and wants to stay in Cincy, with his game there is no reason he couldn't be solid for a few more years to come. It's one thing to move along a marginal/bubble guy to make room for a "prospect" but displacing a solid producer for anything but a surething is another thing.............
