Playing "what if" is always an exciting and entertaining game. Playing "what if" with the Cincinnati Reds could leave you bordering on depression.
Wallowing in another season that seemed lost before it began, the real Reds highlights this season are what some of their former players are doing, or what they've done since leaving here.
We all know the reasons why Aroldis Chapman, Jay Bruce, Johnny Cueto, Todd Frazier and Didi Gregorius were shipped off. They became too expensive for the Reds to retain. Or so we were told.
Inexplicably, All-Star shortstop Zack Cozart was allowed to simply walk away. In virtually every instance, the compensation that came back to the Reds was a shadow of what they were trading away. Two things compounded to create that circumstance: holding on to their soon-to-be-too-expensive players too long and overvaluing what was coming back to Cincinnati for them.
John Lamb, we hardly knew ye. Johnny Cueto should never have been traded. Period.
In the spring of 2014, the Reds had a decision to make: Cueto or Homer Bailey. Convinced they could afford to sign only one of the two, the Reds chose Bailey. They didn't choose wisely. Maybe it was because Cueto lasted only eight pitches into the 2012 playoffs, most likely costing the Reds a chance to chase a World Series. And to be honest, Cueto did have other injury issues in his time in Cincinnati. Maybe enamored with Bailey's two no-hitters, and the fact that he was a Reds first-round draft pick in 2004, the Reds put their money on Bailey. Cueto was gone the middle of the next season.
Hindsight is always 20-20. Up until this season, Bailey made only 26 starts in the previous three seasons. He's had major arm surgery twice, since signing a six-year, $105 million deal. He remains the second-highest-paid player on the Reds roster. You can't predict injuries, and certainly none of what he's gone through medically has been his fault. Since signing his contract in the spring of 2014, Bailey's major league record is 17-22. In his career, all with the Reds obviously, Bailey is a .500 pitcher. The most games he's ever won, in one season, is 13.
Cueto was a 20-game winner the same year the Reds signed Bailey to his six-year deal. Rather than trading him in the middle of that season, when any teams interested in him would have him contractually under control for at least a season and a half, the Reds elected to keep him. They violated a baseball truism doing that: The more contract years a player has, the more valuable he becomes to the team acquiring him.
In other words, for no good reason then or now, the Reds misplayed it.
Cueto was dealt just before the MLB trade deadline on July 25, 2015. The Kansas City Royals wanted him. He was 7-6 when he left Cincinnati. He was 4-7 the rest of the way, in the regular season, that year. But he started three postseason games for Kansas City and won two. The Royals won every one of his three starts and won the World Series that year. Sure, Cueto walked to the Giants in free agency that next offseason. But look what he helped the Royals give to their fans.
The Reds got pitchers John Lamb, Brandon Finnegan and Cody Reed in exchange for Cueto. Other than being a dead ringer for country star Alan Jackson, Lamb did little here. The Reds let him go in the winter of 2016. The Tampa Bay Rays had him for a minute. He's now in his second stint in the Angels organization. And he hasn't pitched in a major league game since leaving here.
Reed has been the most agonizing of the three pitchers to watch. Big and left-handed, he looked like the second coming of Randy Johnson when he got here. He's won exactly one game in two years-plus since joining the Reds. That was in relief. Reed hasn't won any of his major league starts to date and has spent as much time in the minors as with the Reds.
And then there was the supposed centerpiece in the deal, Brandon Finnegan. If Reed has been agonizing to watch, Finnegan has been frustrating. He's currently in the Reds starting rotation, as much for need as talent. But with the Royals and his time here, Finnegan would be a bullpen pitcher on a contending team. Because of injuries and surgeries, along with falling off a boat dock last summer, Finnegan has won just one game in the last two seasons. He also throws an inordinate number of pitches in his starts and has trouble getting a game to the sixth inning.
If you're not totally depressed by now, consider the story of Didi Gregorius, once a prized piece of the Reds minor league system. He was a rangy middle infielder deemed expendable because Zack Cozart was blossoming and Brandon Phillips was at the top of his game.
So the Reds basically gave Gregorius away, for one year of Shin-Soo Choo.
The Reds hadn't developed an outfielder in seven years in the winter of 2012. They had wasted several high draft picks, including 2008 when they drafted Yonder Alonso with the seventh overall pick. Why would you draft a player who could play only first base when you already had a budding superstar in Joey Votto? That's another column for another day.
But in the winter of 2012, without a center fielder and with Billy Hamilton's conversion from infield to outfield not complete, the Reds decided to trade Gregorius, in a three-team deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and acquire Choo. They knew full well Choo would be a free agent at the end of the 2013 season. They made the deal anyway.
Gregorius wasn't an instant star. He hit .252 and .226 in two pedestrian seasons with Arizona. But then he was dealt to the New York Yankees. All he's done there is fill the massive shoes left behind by Derek Jeter. This season, Gregorius is hitting .327 with an on-base percentage of .421. He also leads the majors in home runs and RBIs. Could anyone on the Reds have predicted that? Of course not. But a year after the Reds let Cozart simply walk away to free agency (how in the hell did that happen?) and a year and a half down the road from parting with Phillips, the saga of Didi Gregorius only highlights how lost this organization appears to be.
Jay Bruce was deemed too streaky and eventually too expensive. So he was traded to the New York Mets for two players who weren't household names, even in their own households. Dilson Herrera was the better of the two. He's at the Reds' "A" affiliate minor league team right now and not getting better.
Bruce bounced around some after leaving here, first the Mets, then Cleveland and now back with the Mets. Since leaving here in the middle of the 2016 season, Bruce has hit 82 home runs and driven in 233. From 2016 through now, Votto has hit 68 home runs and driven in 212. Adam Duvall, 68 and 217. Votto is regarded as the best hitter in modern-day Reds baseball. Duvall is as streaky as Bruce.
Though they play different corners in the outfield, it's an interesting comparison. Bruce, right now, is costing the Mets $14 million this season. He's under contract through 2020. For a home run-hitting corner outfielder, $14 million is not all that expensive in this day and age. Bruce averages a home run in every 18 plate appearances. Duvall, just about one in every 20. Duvall is making $645,000 this season.
Bruce is 31. Duvall will turn 30 in September. Are the Reds the same team with Duvall as their power-slugging outfielder as they were with Bruce? Was economics the only reason why Bruce was sent packing? Did the Reds (and admit it, did you?) grow tired of his streaky hitting?
Then there's Todd Frazier to the White Sox, Aroldis Chapman to the Yankees and Zach Cozart to the Angels. Jose Peraza has played decent baseball lately. But he's not the same defensive shortstop as Cozart. Scott Schebler, when he's been healthy, has been a real threat.
Todd Frazier of the New York Yankees hits a solo home run in the seventh inning against the Cincinnati Reds on July 26, 2017 at Yankee Stadium in New York.
Frazier is making $8 million this year playing for the Mets. He made over $20 million the last two seasons, split between the White Sox and Yankees. Schebler is making $580,000 this season; Peraza, $570,000. Cozart, of course, is making millions, allowed to simply walk, without immediate compensation, to free agency. And Chapman? Find a player that came to the Reds in that deal who looks like a major league player.
Dollars have driven the Reds the last six seasons. Fear of affording star players and not being savvy enough to trade them at peak value has caused a lack of return. "What if" is a tough game to play for Reds fans these days, particularly when the past makes it so hard to see the future.
Might not be a bad time to wish the lead singer of this group a happy 68th birthday.
Lou Gramm turned 68 on Wednesday.
Gramm was born in New York and in his early 20s happened to catch Mick Taylor in concert at Rochester. Taylor had heard of Gramm and the bands he was fronting during his late teens and early 20s. Spooky Tooth, Gramm's band at the time, was breaking up and he was looking to form a new band. Taylor invited Gramm to audition for the lead singer's spot. Two days later, Gramm was in New York City for that tryout. He passed it with flying colors.
Eighty million record sales later, plus eight top 20 hits and this song, which went to No. 1 just about everywhere in the world, Gramm tours to this day. He and his wife, Robyn, have five kids. And 68 years ago Wednesday, in Rochester, New York, Louis Grammatico came upon this earth ... You know him as Lou Gramm, one of the best "front men" in rock history.
