In Case We Needed More Evidence that the Cincinnati Reds Are One Of The Stupidest Teams in Baseball

The much derided trade of Austin Kearns and Felipe Lopez to the Nationals for Val Majewski and Bill Bray was shown to be even stupider today.

A quick rundown.

The Reds bullpen sucks. They made one bad but fairly cost-free move by picking up Eddie Guardado from the Mariners for Travis Chick. Guardado sucks at this point and gives up tons of home runs, not a good trait for pitching in Cincinnati. But Travis Chick is a back of the bullpen guy at best. So not such a big deal.

Trading Kearns and Lopez, 2 cheap young players for 2 average bullpen guys was just incredibly stupid. Majewski and Bray might help the Reds bullpen but at that cost? Oh yeah, they picked up Royce Clayton as well. Great.

To put it all in perspective, on a day that Majewski takes the loss for the Reds the Atlanta Braves trade for Cleveland's closer Bob Wickman. What did they give up? Minor league catcher Max Ramirez. Ramirez is a nice catching prospect. The Indians are out of the race and Wickman is expendible. Victor Martinez can't actually catch or throw anyone out and Kelly Shoppach is probably not a long-term solution at catcher. So it's a nice guy to get back. But for the Braves, they just picked up a proven closer for very little. This is what you do when you're in the wildcard race (though whether the Braves are actually in that race is debatable, though considering it's the National League I guess they are). What you don't do is trade 2 young and proven hitters for 2 average relievers.

The Braves got a better reliever and gave up far less than the Reds. I guess that's why the Braves are the Braves and the Reds are the Reds.