This is a recurrent topic in this forum that I thought deserved a poll. I've tried to lay out the options that appear to be the most salient at this point. As always, feel free to explain how you voted and why in the thread below.
Stay with an internal option (some combo of Gonzalez/Keppinger/Janish/Valaika)
Sign a free agent (Furcal, Crosby...)
Trade for a young player (Escobar, Hardy, Izturis, Aybar...)
This is a recurrent topic in this forum that I thought deserved a poll. I've tried to lay out the options that appear to be the most salient at this point. As always, feel free to explain how you voted and why in the thread below.
Last edited by RedEye; 12-19-2008 at 10:24 AM.
“Every level he goes to, he is going to compete. They will know who he is at every level he goes to.” -- ED on EDLC
I would like us to get an external young guy, but I think the cost will be prohibitive.
Sign an outfielder with a big bat and go "in house" with a defensive emphasis at short.
We can fill the LF & right handed CF needs in the free agent market.
Then use our trade chips to fix the SS position.
.
Move Phillips to SS. Groom Valaika for 2B.
I picked the first option, but it's qualified. I've said through this off season that the SS position is the last priority. With Gonzalez remaining a question mark, it's very possible that we'll need to address it before the start of the season, but for now, I think we need the right handed bat, perhaps a platoon for center, before we need the SS question answered. I agree with others who mentioned that filling it via trade may come at too high a price and therefore, I think that's why this question is lowest in priority.
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Trade for a young player--though I also wonder if moving Phillips would be an easier solution.
It is on the whole probable that we continually dream, but that consciousness makes such a noise that we do not hear it. Carl Jung.
Elvis Andrus.
"My mission is to be the ray of hope, the guy who stands out there on that beautiful field and owns up to his mistakes and lets people know it's never completely hopeless, no matter how bad it seems at the time. I have a platform and a message, and now I go to bed at night, sober and happy, praying I can be a good messenger." -Josh Hamilton
Staying in house strikes me as a case of willfully ignoring calamity. The veteran options are injured and inadequate, there is no long-term answer in the system (Janish can't cut it at the plate, Valaika lacks the defense). The Reds need to find someone from outside the organization and there's no point in putting it off. It has to be done and no amount of procrastination will change that.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
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