Reds - Signed Hatteberg

Cincinnati Reds - Signed 1B Scott Hatteberg to a 1-year contract worth $750,000.

Signing Timo was bad, but not important in the big picture; this signing reflects much worse on the new GM.  There’s little reason to give Hatteberg a major league contract or three-quarters of a million - Hatteberg is close enough to being done that there are scads of players in the minors that can hit as “well” as he’s likely to in 2006 and will do it for half the price and a minor-league deal.  This is a very bad sign - either Krivsky has no concept of replacement level (even if it’s not coined as such, knowing at what level talent is free is very important) or he thinks Hatteberg is good and simply can’t evaluate performance.

It’s also a terrible move from a roster construction standpoint - the Reds already have Valentin, Aurilia (hopefully), Womack, Cruz, and Denorfia on the bench.  So, either the Reds carry 11 pitchers instead of 12 in order to gain the benefit of having a bad hitter as a second lefty pinch-hitter or they cut someone better than Hatteberg.  They also have to make room on the 40-man roster and if they were going to cut that rare player worse than Hatteberg (I’m looking at you, Tony Womack), they probably would have done it before Luke Hudson.

Thumbs way down.  The Reds were the favorite for last-place anyway, but even in the small signings so far, Krivsky has demonstrated very poor GMing.

2006 ZiPS Projection - Scott Hatteberg
————————————————————————————-

 AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  BB  SO  SB    BA   OBP   SLG  
————————————————————————————-

491  57  121  22  0  11  59  60  49   0  .246  .332  .358