Fire Dusty Baker  Hal wrote "He (Dusty) avoids it studiously so the opposition can’t bring in a left-handed pitcher to face Bruce and Votto back-to-back." - man, that is one dumb Dusty. Charlie Manual bats three lefties in a row against a RH starter and makes it the other teams problem to deal with it. Dusty will flip r,l,r,l,r,l regardless of the better hitter (or their actual production against RH or LH pitchers) because he thinks it is smart, not because it does anything to produce runs. Is it 2011 yet?Two schools of thought for Dusty and the Reds - I want the Reds to do well but not well enough that they don't fire Dusty by August.  Year three of this slow burn of bad managing and bad teams.  If they contend, then they might want to keep him.  Kinda like Obama, I would like the country to succeed but not too much that he gets a second term - but if he fails horribly, we might end up with the ex-Gov of Alaska and her incredible stupidity.  That would be like going from Dusty back to Bob Boone.  Which leads me to thinking - I wonder if Bob Boone can see Alaska from his hot tub?  Hopefully Dusty doesn't have the entire pitching staff getting operated on by June.  Along with Dusty being fired, they need to fire pitching coach Dick Pole and all of the other coaches except Billy Hatcher.  We all can't get lucky like Alaska residents did and expect Baker to do a Sarah Palin and quit.  The Eskimos had to be happy.  Now - aside from the Reds being horrible - we have an added national security threat because Palin won't be keeping Vladimir Putin in check when she looks west each morning while drinking a cup of coffee.  So we need to fire Baker as there is a lot of baseball in August and September for the new coaches to figure out who to keep for 2010.  As usual, we'll start with the obvious thing to fix the reds which is to fire Dusty ... just like last year, Dusty wasted 25% of the season playing his favorites and not playing guys who are obviously better - last year, we watched him played Patterson (the little shit) and Hattenberg rather than Bruce and Votto ... this year, we got to watch the insanity of watching Dusty play McDonald - how can any manager watch McDonald have an At Bat and think McDonald's worthy of a roster spot.  He was awful every time he played.  Gomes is younger and has a track record of at least some level of success.  It's kind of like why Republicans still wheel Dick Cheney in front of the camera and let him talk.  Every time they do, they look even dumber than usual.  No way a Lou Piniella or a Cito Gaston would ever let McDonald on their team, let alone play him.  Dusty wants guys on the roster that simply are not any good - last year Patterson - and this year's version, McDonald.  Dusty sent down Gomes for this ass-clown McDonald.  Gomes is younger, more experienced, better hitter and a team leader.  McDonald is about 80% as good as Taveres and that is not saying much.  In fact Taveres is a little shaky -  too but he has had a couple good years and he plays hard so we'll give him some room.  McDonald, once released, will not get picked up by any of the other 29 teams but yet he starts sometimes for the Reds.

Play Rosales, not EE at 3B - Wow, we went from younger and lazy with EE to older and broken in Rolen.  Not a big fan of a guy who had LaRussa and Larry Bowa both wanting to kill him.  Rolen seems a little prickly like Jeff Kent did - and we're paying Rolen $6 million a year for the next three years or so.  He's 34 or 35 now and one could say that his best years are behind him.  He is certainly an upgrade to EE but the problem is that we have him for the next three years at $6 million a year (or about 10% of the payroll) so is a 34 year old guy with a long history of getting hurt worth 10% of your payroll?  I say doubtful to no.  The Reds don't have any good 3B so it doesn't matter who they play.  I suppose they stick EE there and worry about the kids sitting in rows 1-14 behind first base.  Actually they should play Hairston at 3B all the time.  Not sure Rosales is that good and I know I don't like EE.  I do not like EE's energy level, hustle, defense or the way he looks bored - he also didn't  produce many runs for 26 HR's in 2008 and he doesn't run hard to first on ground balls, Rosales plays like Rose/Sabo and - one of my personal favorites - Shawon Dunston who I once witnessed running to first base - in the 9th inning on a 95 degree day game in which the Cubs were winning 10-4 - and he ran to first like Game 7 of the World Series ... Rosales can also hit and play defense.  When EE comes back, Rosales plays 3B on the Clark Plan ...

McDonald really sucks - We're all waiting for the 2010 version of Dusty's mini-me.  In 2008, we had Patterson and in 2009 McDonald.  Who's next?  Perhaps Nefi Perez can show up and suck, or perhaps an ex-Cub with a limp can fly to Arizona in February and convince Dusty him he can still hit.  Amazingly he passed waivers so the Reds stuck him in AAA where he is hitting .310 - maybe the hitting coach in AAA actually coaches.  Now he really sucks in AAA ... See above in the Fire Dusty Baker section