THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

Scott Rolen's head has more hits than he does. Ouch....when Jason Marquis's fastball hit the newest Red in the head, you could hear an entire city screaming. Good thing he's OK.

For the record, I’m a big Scott Rolen fan. Liked him a lot when he played for the Cardinals. Liked him a lot when he played in Philly. He’s a no nonsense baseball player. A good clubhouse guy, as they like to say in the game.. He’ll provide leadership this team hasn’t seen since the days of Greg Vaughn. And you have to go back to that era to find the last time the Reds made a mid season trade to bring in a player the magnitude of Scott Rolen. In ’99, it was Juan Guzman who was supposed to push the Reds over the top. Remember who the Reds traded to the Orioles to get Guzman? BJ Ryan, then just two innings into his major league career.

Turned out to be a much better deal for the Orioles than the Reds. Guzman was a rent a player. Ryan went on to be a solid closer for the O’s and later the Blue Jays, before he blew out his arm.

So to get Rolen, the Reds had to give up a couple of pitchers who might be like BJ Ryan. Josh Reonicke throws hard. Minor League pitcher Zach Stewart throws a lot of ground ball outs.

So what? If you can’t find guys like that every year in the player draft, you shouldn’t be working in professional baseball. Well, come to think of it, the group that ran the Reds front office up until the middle of the 2003 season couldn’t find pitchers like that. And most of them ARE out of major league baseball.

Protecting prospects is good. They are the backbone of any organization. They learn the game the way you want it played and they’re cost certain for a long, long time. But too often, the Reds have fallen in love with their prospects, refused to include them on any deals that would help the team at the big league level. And those prospects turned out to be suspects.

I heard a lot talk Friday about how Stewart and Roenicke might be players the Reds wished they had held onto to, how each could be solid additions to the Blue Jays major league roster right now.

Who cares? This is Cincinnati we’re talking about, the land of lost baseball. The last time this team won at the big league level, the world hadn’t heard of Bernie Madoff, hanging chads or corporate bailouts. The last time the Reds had a winning season, General Motors stock was considered a strong buy.

I hope Stewart and Roenicke have long and productive careers. But this was a good deal. Rolen won’t fix every problem this team has. The Reds still lack legitimate power in a power hitting ballpark. Their starting pitching has been either injured or grossly over-estimated. And we’re still waiting for this team to play the game fundamentally sound: hitting the cutoff man, executing the bunt, converting the routine double play ball consistently.

But the economy stinks, attendance is down and Bob Castellini promises were beginning to sound hollow. Nothing matters in your minor league system unless it helps the big league club. This is a good deal. It should have been made a month ago.