First off, since I haven’t wrote in for a while, I have to point out that Adam Dunn hit his 40th homerun last week.  It’s his third straight season in which he’s hit 40 and he’s now two short of his 200th career homerun.  Another great season for Adam Dunn.  These guys are crazy if they don’t lock him up for a long, long time.

Now, let’s talk about those Padres.  The Padres took two games this week and that leaves the Reds with sort of an inverse magic number of 13.  So if the Padres go 8-9 in their last 17 games, the Reds have to go 12-4.  And that would be just to tie and it would assume the three other teams between the Reds and Padres drop off.  I’m not a math expert, but that’s a pretty tall task.  In fact, it might actually be easier to reach the Cardinals.  They only have to deal with one team but it’s just pretty tough when you’re six down in the loss column.  It also doesn’t help that the Reds are done with the Cardinals this year.

If there’s one piece of good news, the Reds have ten games against the Cubs and Pirates left.  So if they go 8-2 in those games, they only need to go 4-2 against the Marlins and Astros.  Yes, I’m reaching.

While I still hate that trade (you know, THAT one), this season did show that Edwin Encarnacion should be a very good third baseman.  And the Reds have some quality arms coming up through the system, so there’s light at the end of the tunnell.  And the Reds didn’t even have an ERA over 5.00 this year so things are looking up.

Permalink | Posted in 2006 Season