The Ultimate Insult
Forget the predicted last place finish in the NL Central. Forget the 27th overall ranking.
The real slight here is assigning none other than Jack-of-All-Sports, Thoughts, and Ideas Peter King to write the Reds preview for SI's MLB Preview feature. On an only slightly less insulting note, the entire article is about how the success of former BOSTON RED SOX guy Bronson "Used to Be a Red Sock" Arroyo of the Not-Boston-Red-Sox-Anymores will determine the Reds' fate this season.
Surprisingly, despite the enormous potential for making me angry, it's not a bad article (except if you want to nit-pick at the misspelling of Cincinnati ("Cincinatti") in Theo Epstein's quote (although it's possible that that is not a misquote at all, but that Theo actually verbalized "Cincinatti" and that Peter King (who frequently writes about the Bengals, and so must actually know the correct spelling) is actually poking fun at the silly child-GM) but probably 70% of those living in Cinci spell it that way too. So fuck it).
And I do kind of agree that the Reds are very likely effed if Arroyo doesn't perform close to how he did last year (or someone else- douse me with water, but I still have faith that Eric Milton might revert to 99-01 form; also there's Bailey and of course Kirk Saarloosoos(!!)).
Also, props for the interesting tidbit about the Reds ranking 9th last season in runs scored despite being 2nd in the NL in both homeruns and walks. Although I disagree with the explanation that it was due to low team BA. Au contraire, it was lack of heart. Don't dispute it.
You win this time, Peter King. But someday you're going to write something brainless about baseball again...probably next week, in fact. Then I'll get you. Grrrr.
