As I woke up this morning to a 52 degree house, I couldn't help but notice something was wrong. (Don't worry this story will be related to the Reds, I promise). Anyway, I was freezing. I checked the thermostat… nothing on the screen, hmm. I checked the furnace… not running. The breaker box was fine, the breaker on the furnace was fine. I pulled the little fuse box handle attached to the furnace to see what was in the little metal box I knew nothing about. A gritty sand material rained all over me…nice. The source of the grit was apparently a small 60 amp fuse that did its best impression of a 'dirty bomb'. I went to Lowe's, bought the fuse, replaced the panel, all was well. Yay. Being in a 'Mr. Fix-it' mood, I went ahead and changed the filter just so everything will run more efficiently. Now it's up to the furnace to do it's job.

Now here's the connection. I have a wonderful machine that keeps my house warm. If one small part doesn't do its job, the machine as a whole fails. The method I used in going down the line seeing what needs fixed, is the same method used by the Reds this off-season.

They knew they had a stellar offense, they have for a number of years. Obviously, pitching needed to be addressed. So breaking down the pitching staff, they noticed… 'hey, Arroyo had 22 quality starts last year, the most on the team, and yet he didn't get double-digit wins. That's odd'.

They heard Adam Dunn make comments like, 'I'm tired of having a 4 run lead late in a game and turning around to lose by 9″. With an ownership willing to spend, they ran out and grabbed Cordero to replace the fuse in the back of the bullpen. Now the bullpen should do it's job.

They also thought they could use a little more production out of the bottom 3 starters. Just as I changed my filter to make things more efficient, the Reds tweaked their starters to hopefully improve production. Read the full post at Bugs and Cranks

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