THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

You know, there are mercy rules all over the place. Mercy rules in softball. 10 run rules. Mercy rules in early knothole, every kid gets to play, even the kid who doesn’t know if a baseball is blown up or stuffed.

There are mercy rules in life. Guy wants to date a girl Girls says yes, but you got to get a date for my friend. Friend has a face like an anchor. Guy’s got to find her a date.

Mercy rules apply to women too. Yeah I’ll go out with you. My mom is friends with your mom and to get her off my back, I’ll go out with you Charlie. Just don’t call looking for a bonus round.

So how come there aren’t any mercy rules in major league baseball? Not for games,, for players. I’m watching Aaron Harang pitch the other night, multi tasking because the Bengals were on the other channel, playing their exhibition opener. Harang is working all sides of the plate, mixing pitches, confounding batters and doing everything you want a big league pitcher to do. He’s everything but perfect. And with this current group of players the Reds are running out there every night, if you’re not perfect, the chances of a Reds pitcher winning a game are about as good as getting Bernie Madoff to make reparations.

You can make an argument that the best trade the Reds have made in the last seven years was Jose Guillen to the Oakland A’s for Aaron Harang. Sure, Wily Mo Pena for Bronson Arroyo is right up there. So is the deal that got Brandon Phillips here. But when acting GM Brad Kuhlman pulled off Guillen for Harang, it was brilliance.

Too bad none of the current Reds got the memo.

The Reds are hitting .239 in games that Harang pitches. When anyone else not named Harang is on the mound, it jumps to a whopping .241. This team is constructed about as well as a condemned home. But I digress.

Harang has been everything you’d want a pitcher to be. He takes the ball every five days. He generally pitches deep into games. He has his stinkers. What pitcher doesn’t? But the dude never, as in ever, complains about his lack of run support. He’s a team guy. This is the same guy who Dusty sent out in relief at San Diego last season, pitched about four innings three days after a start and then took the ball three days later for his next start. Harang hasn’t been the same pitcher since. As a man named Stengel once said, you could look it up.

So there he was, on the mound Friday night trying to be what all of us can’t be: perfect. Harang allowed six hits, just two that hurt him, solo home runs. It was beyond a quality start. But, he got no runs from the everyday eight behind him. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch. It’s almost an every start ‘thing’ for Harang.

Aaron Harang needs the mercy rule.

The Reds should trade him to some team that actually has a pulse. Call it time off for good behavior. The Yankees would do. The Red Sox would be a good fit. The Dodgers would be the ultimate for the San Diego kid.

But it’s probably not going to happen. Harang is due $12.5 million next season and it jumps to $14.5 in 2011 if he’s traded before then. That’s a lot of loot for any pitcher, even more so for a guy who’s probably going to lead the league in losses for a second year in a row. As good as Harang could be with run support, how do you sell that to your fans?

I’ve always been a firm believer that a team never gets better by trading its best player. Losers do that. Winners find a way to build their team around their best player. Bad as his record is, Aaron Harang is the best starting pitcher the Reds have. Johnny Cueto throws too many pitches. Bronson Arroyo has eleven wins, but you never know from start to start what you’re going to get from him. And in day games, feg-gedda-boud-it. Edinson Volquez has an elbow with stitching that would make Frankenstein’s monster proud.

Harang has gone through his swoon. He’s back on his game. He takes the ball every five days, gets little run support, never moans about it and even gave you that above and beyond (and frankly stupid) relief game in San Diego last year. He deserves his own mercy rule.

Give the guy a break. Trade him. With the way the rest of your team plays when he’s on the mound, you don’t deserve him.