Should Reds Make Big Trade Deadline Move

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The trade deadline is a little more than 6 weeks away and the big question is should the Reds make a move or moves? If so should it be a big splash or a small tweak? Also where should they address on the roster? These are all questions that will be answered in the next six weeks.

One option for them is to make zero trades and bring up some guys from Louisville. The Reds have to get more production at the plate from SS and LF. They have the hot hitting Zach Cozart batting almost .350 in AAA and he should provide more than what Janish and Renteria are giving them right now. For LF they could bring up Yonder Alonso, Hermida, or Sappelt.

Another option is to make the huge trade for Reyes. If they did this they could be gambling the future, but at the same time it would make them contenders to win the World Series this year. This time probably should win the Central as is, or at least with what they have in Louisville combined with the big league club. If they went out and got Reyes though they would probably have the best lineup in baseball and pretty good pitching to go with that. The Reds have the ammo to do this if they chose to. If they did their lineup would look like this:

1. Reyes, SS
2. Phillips, 2B
3. Votto, 1B
4. Bruce, RF
5. Rolen, 3B
6. Stubbs, CF
7. Heisey, LF
8. Hernandez/Janish, C

That is a sick lineup having a guy the quality of Stubbs who is one of the top leadoff guys in baseball batting 6th. His strikeouts wouldn't matter as much there and his power could pay off even more at that spot. To pull this trade off though you would probably be looking at giving up Alonso, Grandal the first round pick at Catcher a couple years ago, and Bailey or someone else that is a quality pitcher. That is a lot to give up, but I think Heisey is the future at LF and Alonso is going to have a hard time finding playing time on this team. Grandal is a good prospect and quality Catchers are hard to find, but they already have two good ones at the MLB level and Meseraco waiting in Louisville. They also currently have six quality starting pitchers for five spots. Now that is a great problem to have due to constant injuries of pitchers, but it would be worth it if they could land Reyes.

If this team is going to win it all they need to have the best everyday lineup and hope their pitching is just good enough to hang with a rotation like the Phillies and their offense can dominate compared to a weak Phillies offense. They could go after a bonafide ace, but they aren't going to get the talent to outduel the Phillies rotation so what they can do to beat them is to have an offense that is that much better than the Phillies. That's their best shot to get to the World Series and getting Reyes would give them enough to at least make things interesting.