Waiting for the game...

A few notes on Reds Roster moves today as I'm waiting for the Reds game to start up:

• The Reds released Jacob Cruz, Frank Menechino, and John Castellano. It's a shame to see Cruz go in particular, as he's always seemed like a good guy. I hope he's able to find another job somewhere. But from a baseball perspective, none of these guys seem like they'd be able to help us this year.
• Quinton McCracken, 36, was promoted from AAA after a brief rehab assignment for his hurt foot. Andy Abad was sent down. Stats on Quinton:

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	SB/%	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA	EqA
2003/ARI	221	2.27	5/83%	0.276	0.271	0.547	0.192	0.195
2004/ARI-AAA	61	1.67	2/50%	0.361	0.500	0.861	0.287	---
2004/SEA	22	2.00	1/50%	0.227	0.150	0.377	0.140	0.124
2004/ARI	170	1.77	2/33%	0.341	0.410	0.751	0.256	0.249
2005/ARI	240	1.52	4/40%	0.313	0.298	0.611	0.215	0.223

Not much to get excited about offensively. At his best, the switch-hitting McCracken can be a guy who gets on base with enough speed to go first to third on a single. His only good moderately-recent season was with Arizona in 2002 when he hit 0.309/0.367/0.458/0.825 in 349 AB's. Unfortunately, he did that at age 32. He's 36 now, and has been lucky to get an OBP over 0.300 lately.

He is a decent fielder though, rated at +3 bases saved in 306 innings in center field last year by the Fielding Bible. Likewise, 51.6% of runners advanced on him last year vs. the league average for centerfielders of 58.1%, indicating that his arm is above average. So there's that. Aside from Freel, we previously had no other option in centerfield with Griffey injured. According to Narron (just now with Marty), this latter point was apparently the primary reason for McCracken's promotion today.

• Did you know?: According to ESPN's stats page, Eric Milton has never made a balk in his major league career. Zambrano's yesterday was the fourth of his career.
• Update: One last thing: The Onion reports that a feat almost as impressive as Rollins' hit streak just ended.

I won't be able to listen to this entire game, but hopefully Harang can have a good game and the Reds can somehow get Carpenter out of the game relatively early.