Woo Phillips! Woo Coffey!

I got home just in time to watch the thrilling 9th inning of tonight's game vs. the Mets. Just wanted to say WOO! Phillips comes through again, and Coffey closes the deal. Heck of a comeback, especially after Hammond gave up the big inning (again). Standridge seemingly had a good inning, though I didn't get to see it.

Speaking of Standridge, Christina Kahrl at Baseball Prospectus had this to say about his promotion, as well as Krivsky's roster manipulations in gneeral:

The Reds’ reconfiguration takes another permutation, making this probably my favorite team to follow where transactions are concerned. This isn’t a case where Wayne Krivsky is watching his new charges win games and leaving the team that Dan O’Brien built alone. Instead, Krivsky’s operating with a pleasant amount of freedom, ditching mediocrities who can’t reach even that high and doing whatever it takes to keep the team’s slender bid at contention in play. Maybe I’m too much the transactions junkie, but where most teams are reshuffling because of an injury or to extend their roster to 27 or 28 players over a week’s time, the Reds are honestly cutting bait. True, guys like Dave Williams and Tony Womack and White are among the definitions of cutability, but rather than sit back and take stock, Krivsky’s working the margins of the talent pool instead of getting overly attached. If I’m Kent Mercker or Chris Hammond, I’d start thinking about going month-to-month on my apartment, or start looking around for subletting candidates.

Standridge is a recovering Devil Ray (the MLBPA may well have to sponsor DRAY-Anon to help clean up), and did solid enough work in a middle relief role with the Reds last season. In Louisville, he was pitching well, striking out 33 in 34.1 IP while allowing 28 hits and 13 walks, posting a 2.62 ERA while generating more than twice as many groundball outs than on flyballs. He was also particularly tough on right-handers, and in a pen that needs some of everything, he should prove handy.

I don't always agree with Kahrl, and in this case, I think she's basing her opinion on 34 Louisville innings in isolation, rather than in context of his last three years in professional ball. But obviously, I hope she's right, and I hope he does well with us. His high-ground ball:fly-ball ratio explains the low HR-totals he's shown in AAA the last three years. That's definitely a good sign for Great American Ballpark, which is kind to fly balls but very tough on ground balls.