Even while succeeding up to this point last year the team had obvious holes.
Alex Gonzalaz contributed nothing with his bat on a fairly regular occasion and he played everyday.His .210 AVG and .258 OBP last year is actually a bit misleading considering he got hot in his last few weeks with the Reds and while he did end up slipping down in the order he was one of three guys that could have helped the team much more last season if they would've just went away.
The next one, Jerry Hairston Jr. isn't a real bad guy to have around but if you stick him toward the top of the lineup everyday he's going to end up hurting your team.A .250 BA and .300 OBA with little power isn't going to win you many games at the top of the order.
We all know the last guy in the equation and he was by far the worst.After a nice start Willy Taveras did a nice job of leading the team down the crapper.I think that about sums it up for him.
While you can point to a drop off in pitching and a few injuries when trying to figure out what went wrong last season I think the fact that the Reds plan was to pencil these three guys in everyday, is where you should start looking.You knew that every time the Reds took the field that if you included the pitcher, 4 out of the nine guys were going to be making outs the majority of the time.