Posts tagged JayBruce at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

When Dusty Baker announced his impending reign of terror, he did so with great authority. He mandated that Joey Votto stop looking at so many pitches (even if they were bad) and he immediately sent top prospect and future of the organization Jay Bruce back down to Triple-A. Understandable, certainly, because Dusty had Corey Patterson on his roster.

Yes, by "understandable", I do in fact mean "certifiably and irrationally stupid". Bruce was the consensus number one prospect in all of baseball in 2007 and seemed nearly assured of the starting centerfield job in Cincy. Anyway, I hate to be overtly optimistic, much less to trust the mad (cow disease ridden?) brain of Mr. Baker, but I think there's a pretty good chance we see Bruce back in a Reds uniform within the next few weeks.

Why? Because Corey Patterson stinks, that's why. Yes, he started off hot, but as my good friend Mr. Greber pointed out in a new series of articles today, so did Chris Shelton. Now, he's batting .183 and not clogging up the bases to the tune of a .254 OBP. Congratulations, everyone. (The insane thing is that he has four home runs. Just weird.)

Bruce, meanwhile, is putting up numbers (.333/.348/.561) with three home runs and four stolen bases in just 16 games at Louisville. The best part, Dusty? Only two walks. That's right. You don't even have to tell him to swing more! Look, the point of all this Dusty-dogging and Patterson-bashing isn't to point out how silly the Reds organization was for signing him to coach the team (not entirely anyway).

The point is to tell you, the fantasy owner, what a steal you could be getting on Jay Bruce right now. The kid is a masher, he's ready for the majors and sooner or later, Dusty is going to have to cave and let him on the field at the major league level. You either need to a) pick him up and stash him now or b) make a play for him from another owner before it's too late. Bruce is the future, and if there's anything the Reds should learn from the way Votto, Johnny Cueto and Edison Volquez are currently playing, it's that the future is now.

You will probably not hear as much about the first three pitches that Edwin Encarnacion saw last night. You will hear a lot about the last one though. That's because Encarnacion, with two men on base, facing a 1-2 count against Arizona closer Brandon Lyon, turned on a ball and launched it over the left field wall for a walk off home run. Yay! Reds celebrate! Woo!

Well, here's the problem. Encarnacion actually failed to do his job and got partially booed by the Cincinnati crowd. How could he fail when he hit a game winning home run, you ask? Well, Dusty Baker sent him to home plate and told him to bunt. Yes, that's right. With runners on first and second, Dusty wanted a player who had never successfully laid down a sacrifice bunt in his entire career to do so in the bottom of the ninth inning instead of taking a swing and trying to score some runs.

'It doesn't matter how you win 'em,' Baker said. 'That first one always seems like the toughest one.'

As pointed out in the 'Haus discussion of the would-be-debacle turned walk-off-win, if Dusty would do any sort of due diligence he would find out that his team is more likely to score with runners on first and second and no one out than second and third with one out. And clearly, it does matter how you "win 'em", because if you're not being smart in your attempt to win, or giving yourself the best possible competitive advantage, you will win less.

But clearly, Dusty doesn't believe in that type of "math stuff"had no interest in having Encarnacion clog up the bases. And in doubly super unhappy news, Corey Patterson hit a home run, meaning, clearly, that Jay Bruce just isn't needed at the major league level right now.

I am no fan of Dusty Baker. You can click that picture of the sexy guy in sunglasses and the posts that come up as a result will tell you that (or just go here). In fact, there have probably been 100 Gmail chats and MLB 'Haus e-mail threads in the past month that have begun with, "OMG!! CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT DUSTY'S DOING NOW?!?" and I've certainly contributed more than my share of them. Accordingly, my reaction yesterday afternoon at the news of Jay Bruce's demotion was pretty similar to Eamonn's.

Then, I sat back and thought about it for a while. It's really not fair at all to blame Dusty for Bruce's demotion, because GM Wayne Krivsky has the final say. Baker may have influenced Krivksy's decision making, but Krivsky's the one that lowers the axe when it comes to demotions and if Bruce is going to AAA, it's because Krivsky wants him there and not because Dusty Baker does.

Insanely, I have found several ways to honestly justify sending Bruce down in my head. I am not a Reds' fan trying to make myself feel better, but rather a baseball fan trying to make sense of why the Reds would not want what is possibly the league's most exciting young player on their roster. Follow along after the jump and please help me decide if I'm crazy.

When you've got the best prospect in baseball, as the Reds have in centerfield raker Jay Bruce, and he's consistently beaten all scouts' expectations to the point where he is considered, almost unequivocally, to be the best prospect in baseball, and he's, you know, THE BEST FREAKING PROSPECT IN BASEBALL, what do you do? Do you:

A.) Put him in the five hole and let him crank 25 home runs at nearly no cost to your team.
B.) Sign Corey Patterson to his position and send him back to the minors.

If you're anyone but the Reds, you choose option A. If you're the team that hired Dusty Baker in the offseason, you choose option B, at which point you might as well just built a giant picture of a middle finger on the outside of the Great American Ballpark.

This is baffling enough on its own, considering Ryan Freel is a negligible contributer and Corey Patterson can't stop (won't stop) waving his bat everywhere, but it's even more so considering the Reds traded Josh Hamilton over the winter to open this spot up for Bruce. Why, Dusty? Why?

I think it's safe to say that lots of Reds' fans had nightmares of Corey Patterson starting in center in Cincy this year when Dusty Baker was hired over the winter ... and that was before the Reds even signed Patterson. While the center field debate, Patterson or Jay Bruce, has been the hot topic in Sarasota this spring, Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News gets some insight on what Dusty Baker's thinking from an unlikely source: Dick Vitale.

"Dusty Baker really likes Corey Patterson, doesn't he?" said Vitale, revealing why Patterson will start in center field for the Reds. "He said he needs speed, somebody quick, in center field to cover the gaps."

This explains why I can never penetrate Dusty's baseball logic. If it makes sense to Dick Vitale, it can't make much sense to anyone else in the world. That Corey Patterson! He's quick, baby! That Jay Bruce is one diaper dandy, but Corey Patterson isn't a base clogger, baby!

If Patterson puts up an OBP over .315, this will be a moral victory for the Reds. That's just awful.

Earlier today the blogger formerly known as Postman E touched a bit on Reds' fans' frustration with the Reds (and, most probably, Dusty Baker) signing Jerry Hairston Jr. and Corey Patterson to compete for the centerfield job, presumably with über prospect Jay Bruce. Given Baker's history with Patterson, it is a bit of a suspicious move, though given Bruce's young age it doesn't bother me that much.

What does bother me is the implication in this article that because Patterson failed as a young prospect with the Cubs, Bruce will have the same problem with the Reds. When Patterson was called up in 2000 at the age of 20, he was in the middle of hitting .261/.329/.491 in AA. That's a good, but it's not particularly great. He then struggled at AAA the next year at age 21 and never found his stride again. All-in-all, Patterson had one great year in the minors at the age of 19 in A ball. The Cubs simply never bothered to find out if that year was a fluke. Bruce, on the other hand, tore up three levels last year at the age of 20, culminating in a 50 game stretch in AAA in which he hit.305/.358/.567. He's hit for power, average, and shown good patience at every level he's played at. There's really no reason to believe he's not a superstar waiting to happen.

The Reds are absolutely justified if they start Bruce out in AAA this year. He doesn't even have 300 plate appearances above A ball and he's only 21. If they feel he's not ready, they should keep him in AAA and get him more plate appearances there. But they shouldn't keep him in AAA because Corey Patterson struggled. That's like comparing apples and corkscrews and it's not really fair to either player.

Things to watch for in 2008 is, well, FanHouse's attempt to keep track of what's worth keeping your eye on as we roll into the 2008 season, be it good, bad, or ugly.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that every good young player in baseball was a member of the Red Sox or Yankees. All of the hemming and hawing associated with the Johan Santana trade was about how the two teams didn't want to give up Joba Chamberlain, Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz, Phil Hughes or Ian Kennedy because of how bright a future they had ahead of them. Well, as the Mets package made clear, there are good young players on other teams. Here's a quick primer on potential Rookie of the Year winners.

Evan Longoria - It's fitting that Longoria will never play for a satanically associated club because his talent is a gift from the heavens. He's going to hit for average, power, draw walks and play sound defense that will be a cornerstone of the first Tampa team to ever reach .500, be it this year or in the next few. And no, he's not Tony Parker's brother-in-law.

Jay Bruce - The name most often associated with Bruce is Larry Walker. Since he plays for the Reds he'll be putting up those numbers at sea level, which should make him a strong candidate for awards as a rookie and well beyond.

When Dusty Baker took the Reds' managerial job, lots of Reds' fans were not pleased with the news. Dusty seems like a bad fit for the Reds because he's known to stick with veteran players for as long as he can and the Reds have a team full of young, promising players. That problem hasn't reared it's head yet, but rumors out of Cincinnati have started flying with the most veteran name of them all: Kenny Lofton.

For what it's worth, Wayne Krivsky is denying the rumors, but he's the GM. It's his job to deny the rumors. With days running out until pitchers and catchers report to camp in Florida and Arizona, Lofton's got to be close to signing somewhere. I suppose he could be retiring, but that seems unlikely.

I suppose the Reds could just be looking to add a left-handed bat in the outfield with Josh Hamilton gone, but signing a guy like Lofton (who's almost 41) just seems like asking for trouble in Cincy when Jay Bruce is ready to play with the big club sometime around the All-Star break (that's a conservative guess). Of course, Bruce isn't even 21 yet and who better to be a father figure for him on the Reds than someone actually old enough to be his father?