Which one's a keeper?
One man's opinion: Time is right to deal Dunn
Column by The Post's Lonnie Wheeler
All these years, we've wondered what the Reds could do if Ken Griffey Jr. were healthy and hitting like he can. Now, sadly, we know.
Apparently, it wouldn't make any difference in the National League standings if Griffey were sharing a batting order with Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. Or Babe the pig and Ted the Kennedy. Whatever.
For most of April, the Reds were pretty decent. Griffey wasn't. The hand he broke over the winter wasn't quite right yet, and then there was that digestive condition that nobody can spell, followed by pleurisy, which nobody can define. He finished the month with one home run, a creaky bat and a nation of doubters.
Once he had exhausted the medical dictionary, Junior began to hit well enough to be returned to the third spot in the Cincinnati lineup. Not that there was lively competition for it. But upon settling there, even as the Reds reeked increasingly until they were the only sixth-place team in the game, he began to hit well enough to remind everyone how great a figure is in our midst, and has been through all the ailing seasons.
Over the last six of them, the former Player of the Decade - that was the decade before he got to Cincinnati - has averaged but 92 games a schedule. If he had played a reasonable norm of 142 during those difficult years, an extra 50 a pop, it would have added 300 games, roughly two seasons' worth, to his resume. At 45 homers per - he averaged 49 over his last six healthy years in Seattle - that would raise Griffey's career total by 90, which would put him with 671 at this moment, which would render ridiculous all this speculation about trading him.
As it stands, his value probably hasn't been better since he arrived back in his hometown. The $12.5 million he makes annually, through next year (there's a club option for 2009 at $16.5 million), doesn't seem so weighty when you consider that he suddenly stands second in the league in home runs - or at least he did until Adam Dunn, his buddy and running mate in trade rumors, clubbed a couple Sunday. And when you consider not only the power of Griffey's game, but the power of Griffey's name.
Suppose, though, that the Reds could manage to find a generous taker for their right fielder. Could they spend $12.5 million in a more prudent fashion? Or finally, at 37, in his eighth Cincinnati season, with a slimmer midsection and friskier legs, with the move away from center field, has Griffey become more precious to the Reds than anyone they could get for him?
It's a quandary occasioned expressly by his impressive hitting over an extended stretch now. And by the acrid sentiment that we've seen enough of this season.
If there was any remaining doubt as to which side of the counter Wayne Krivsky should stand on for the next six weeks, it was dispelled in the latest, squandered, dispiriting homestand; more specifically, by the gruesome pounding the home team took Sunday from the dreadful Texas Rangers, with the series at stake. The Reds persist in doing a few things well - hitting home runs being foremost among them - but not nearly well enough to overcome that which they do miserably, such as hit and pitch in the clutch. Clearly, they're a team on which the reconfiguring remains eminently unfinished.
So who goes? Dunn's recent hot streak can only abet Krivsky's reported efforts to trade him to a contender in pursuit of big hitting, but his contract is large and problematic - larger, by next year, and more problematic than Griffey's.
And what if Griffey, who has the right to veto any trade he's involved in, should desire to leave Cincinnati? Don't forget that, four months ago, he told a Seattle columnist, "My home's in Florida. I work in Cincinnati. That 19-year-old kid who's now 37 has a whole different opinion of people. I work in Cincinnati. That's it."
If Griffey would rather play in Los Angeles or Atlanta, do the Reds owe it to him to make a deal happen, if it's reasonable? And on the flip side, does he owe it to them to do the same, if Krivsky finds a compatible buyer?
Sunday, all Griffey would say on the subject was, "I can't control what happens upstairs. I'm employee No. 3. That's the furthest thing from my mind right now."
It's likely not, however, the furthest thing from Krivsky's. The GM hasn't said as much, and he wouldn't, but could the Reds actually divest themselves of both their sluggers? Should they?
For Dunn, the time appears to be right, if not the circumstances.
For Griffey, it's the other way around. The way he's going, he could have his 600th home run before the Reds' awful season is over. If they should trade him now, who would there be to watch on the days Homer Bailey isn't pitching? At long last, Cincinnati is savoring a sweet glimpse of the superstar that Seattle saw before the turn of the century.
It's ironic, in that light, that Griffey will have found his old form just in time for the Reds' rare series this week in western Washington. He didn't want to talk about the celebrated revisit,
but when asked on Father's Day whether he would welcome a more permanent return to the site of his youthful glory, the illustrious outfielder did have one provocative remark.
"What's their record?" he asked.
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Re: Griffey would welcome a move to Chicago Cubs
Originally Posted by brewersfan19
