[More Cowbell]

Not that this is exactly earth-shattering news, but the Reds did make a roster move today at the Winter Meetings by releasing 1B Jorge Cantu.

http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/news/arti...p&c_id=cin

This is a little bit surprising, since the team obviously thought highly enough of Cantu to trade one of their better pitching prospects for him last summer. Doesn't seem like he got much of a chance to show what he could do.

As was mentioned in the article, the move was made to get the Reds down to 39 players on the 40-man roster. This will allow them to make a selection in the Rule 5 draft, which is where they picked up Jared Burton last year, as well as trading for Josh Hamilton after the Cubs had selected him. Will be interesting to see who the Reds are planning to take.

[More Cowbell]

Well, the second half of the equation is that the Reds did select a player in the Rule 5 draft today. They took P Sergio Valenzuela, who pitched poorly in class A ball last year.

http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/red...uevara.asp

This move doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't see any way this guy sticks on the Opening Day roster. He has never pitched above class A before and didn't exactly dominate there, so how can they expect him to get out major-league hitters? They will likely end up offering him back to the Braves as per the rules of this draft.

Now the release of Cantu makes even less sense. Give up a guy who projected to at least be a strong RH bat off the bench, if not platooning with Joey Votto at 1B, so you can pick a guy who likely has no shot of even remaining with the team? Puzzling...

[Playboy5]

Ah, he didn't do anything to help them out anyways!