Big deals and small time operators

Anyone who has followed the Reds for the last two seasons knows that they have have solid core of talent, and even a top flight ace in the rotation, but the bullpen has been horrible. Basically, GM Wayne Krivsky has a mandate to win from ownership, and spent all last season signing relievers. Few of them worked out. For the record, I don't blame him, a GM who tries to address the team's weaknesses gets a pass from me for a time. Once again, the Reds have ponied up in a BIG way, signing Francisco Cordero away from the division rival Brewers. This is potentially a GREAT move, and certainly gives the Reds hope for this next year. 46 million is a big number for a reliever, but the Reds were desperate. It ain't money ball, but live arms are hard to find, and were the main thing keeping this team out of contention. As one poster on a Reds message board wrote: Great pickup. If Jim Bowden was still running the team, he probably would have signed Joe Kennedy this morning. HA!

Eric Gordon is insane. I know it's waaaay early to say it, so don't stone me, but he just might become the best player ever to play at IU (ok, it'll be freaking impossible to be better than Zeke), but still he's pretty freaking amazing.

What a HUGE win for the blue and gold last night. I personally don't buy into the "blame JO for everything" school of thought, but it's undeniable that the offense ran better. Dunleavy is working out quite nicely, but I'm not sold on Troy Murphy. A win over Cleveland on Sunday would get the Pacers back to .500 and put them squarely in the conversation for being one of the 7 or 8 best teams in the East. Ugh, I hate that I have to write that sentence.

Several have mentioned hating the Gumbel/Collinsworth team on Thursday night. There are actually multiple things at work here, but the primary one is the intentional style that they use. NFL network has made a conscious choice to try and pioneer a new announcing style (they call it 'conversational') in all their games. The idea is for Gumbel not to narrate the game with play by play but rather to chair a discussion with Collinsworth. It doesn't help that Collinsworth has always been a major Manning critic, has two settings to his voice (drone and shrill), and generally ignores things that don't support his commentary (I nailed several of those in the game blog). Look, I'm biased. I've hated CC since he was on Sports Talk on WLW in the early 90s. He knew NOTHING about baseball and embarrassed himself nightly. All that being said, the crew is not working, and it practically put me to sleep. Everyone doesn't have to be Gus Johnson, but still. . . a little emotion wouldn't hurt anything.

Finally, I think I'm going to start calling Anthony Gonzalez "The Microwave."