BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : No Question About Reds’ Aggressiveness

They had gone to the 1990 World Series as competitors, stunning the Oakland Athletics in four games.

In ‘91, however, Bob Quinn, general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and Lou Piniella, his field manager, could only sit, watch and analyze as they attended Games 3, 4 and 5 between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.

“It was frustrating,” Quinn said Friday. “We sat there and went over both teams and felt that, position-wise, we were as good as or better than both.

“But it was also self-evident that our pitching was not as good, and we had to respond to that promptly and aggressively. Now I think we’re totally competitive with every team in the National League and maybe better than most.”

Choosing not to wait until next week’s winter meetings, Quinn first stole Greg Swindell from the Cleveland Indians for Jack Armstrong and Scott Scudder, then made Wednesday’s blockbuster trade with the Dodgers, acquiring Tim Belcher and John Wetteland for Eric Davis and Kip Gross.

The Reds suddenly have four starting pitchers--Swindell, Belcher, Jose Rijo and Tom Browning--who averaged 221 innings last year, with Belcher posting the National League’s fourth-best earned-run average, 2.62 in 209 1/3 innings, and Swindell posting a 3.48 ERA in 238 innings for a team that was last in the American League in runs and defense.

On the first day of December, the Reds’ rotation seems superior to the Dodgers’ and competitive with the Braves’, or as Piniella said:

“Our staff compares very favorably with any in baseball. We can throw a quality starter out there every day. We had the good bullpen last year, but we couldn’t keep the other team from scoring early, and that took away some of the things we do well--like the steal and hit-and-run.”

Last winter, Quinn chose to play a pat hand, thinking that Scudder would live up to expectations and that Armstrong would regain his All-Star form of 1990’s first half.

Neither happened, leaving Quinn exposed to criticism from Piniella and players for a lack of aggressiveness. A summit meeting with owner Marge Schott at the end of the season resulted in Piniella’s gaining more input.

No one is complaining about a lack of aggressiveness now, and the Reds are not through. Randy Myers is expected to be traded for a left fielder this week, possibly to the San Diego Padres for Bip Roberts or to the Philadelphia Phillies for Von Hayes.

Quinn said he would not have made the Davis-Belcher trade if Wetteland had not been included as a potential fifth starter. He added that Wetteland may have more potential than either Armstrong or Scudder, and that he knows the Dodgers had been fielding inquiries from other clubs regarding Wetteland’s availability.

Quinn laughed and said, “Roland Hemond (the Baltimore Orioles’ general manager) called to congratulate me on the trade yesterday and said, ‘I now know why the Dodgers have been reluctant to talk to us about Wetteland.’ ”

Quinn said he recognized the risk in trading Davis, the often injured star, to a division rival but was restricted by contract provisions. Four of the six clubs Davis had said he would go to were in the National League West: the Dodgers, Braves, Padres and San Francisco Giants. The others were the Angels and Chicago Cubs.

“We traded an impact player for an impact pitcher, and I feel good about that, given the restrictive covenants in his contract,” Quinn said. “I look for Eric to have a banner year in Los Angeles, but I’m not sure he would have had that banner year here.

“It was just time to move on. The whole mind-set--his, the fans who expected so much every at-bat and maybe even the club’s--was going to make it difficult for him here again.

“I think he would have struggled to be as productive as he is likely to be in L.A. I mean, he’ll be much more relaxed, being home, being with (Darryl) Strawberry.

“He’s going through a strenuous off-season conditioning program and should be in great shape. It will also be the last year of his contract, and that’s a consideration (in predicting a banner year).”

The Reds will try to replace Davis in center field with highly regarded Reggie Sanders, who has had only 302 at-bats above Class A. Sanders is 24 and a converted shortstop, like Davis. There is one other similarity: He suffered a separated shoulder and hyper-extended knee during an 8-for-40 late season call-up by the Reds.

Two quality pitchers represented a stiff price for Davis, considering that he came out of the Dodgers’ back yard as a graduate of Fremont High and was worked out at Dodger Stadium prior to the June draft of 1980 by scout Mike Brito and then-scouting director Ben Wade.

“He was a skinny little shortstop then and did nothing that day to get us very excited,” recalled Wade, who is now retired. “I mean, it wasn’t that we missed him or bypassed him. We had him on our list, but it was about as high as everyone else did.”

Davis was selected on the eighth round by the Reds. The New York Mets made Strawberry, his buddy, the first player selected in that draft. Davis was switched to the outfield in his first pro season by Greg Riddoch, now manager of the Padres.

It was an act of desperation. Davis batted .219 and made 11 errors in 70 chances at shortstop. In Baseball America’s history of the draft, Chief Bender, the Reds’ farm director then, said of Davis at that point:

“He couldn’t play and didn’t show us he really wanted to play. His first love was basketball, and I think he looked at baseball as something to do in the summer. You had to question the future of the guy.”

Coming off a season in which he appeared in only 89 games, Davis’ future is being questioned again, though not by the hometown team that saw nothing in him to get excited about 11 years ago.

A mound of trouble is what Belcher considered it last September, when he strained a groin muscle and strongly criticized the mound at Riverfront Stadium, off which he will pitch regularly.

“I don’t want to walk in and demand changes that would be disruptive to the pitchers on that staff, but I think there’s room for change and compromise,” Belcher said from his Ohio home. “I think it can be fixed to my satisfaction without creating problems for anyone else.”

Groundskeepers often manicure mounds to the individual desires of their pitchers. Belcher said his basic argument is with the specifications outlined in the rules. He sent National League President Bill White diagrams of his recommended changes on the day after he was hurt at Riverfront and will continue to lobby the commissioner’s office for a change.

It is technical stuff, but basically Belcher wants the slope to begin at the rubber, rather than after six inches of flat surface, as now required. Every mound is different--”The umpires only seem interested in the height,” Belcher said--but the mounds that meet the specifications to the letter seem to cause Belcher and other pitchers the most trouble.

The combination of flat and slope, he said, often leads to pitchers doing an acrobatic but potentially disastrous split.

“And I’m not a cheerleader and don’t want to be,” Belcher said.

The Mets have told Dave Magadan that they will try to trade him in the wake of their signing first baseman Eddie Murray.

Magadan, 29, is seven years younger than Murray and batted .328 in 1990. He could be a valuable No. 2 hitter in the right lineup, but may be tough to deal, because he slipped to .258 this year, had arthroscopic surgery on both shoulders Sept. 13 and will be eligible for free agency next winter.

“You couldn’t ask to have a better guy at the plate with a runner on second in the ninth inning of a tie game,” a member of the Mets’ organization said of Magadan. “But he doesn’t have any power to speak of, doesn’t run well and isn’t a particularly good fielder.”

Thus, the $7.5-million gamble on Murray, stimulated in part by the long-term relationship between Murray and Met executives Frank Cashen and Al Harazin, all formerly with the Baltimore organization.

“That had a lot to do with it,” the Met source said of Murray’s signing. “But production-wise and defensively, he’s also better than anything we have (at first base). He drove in 96 runs last year and was never really 100% physically. He had a bad ankle coming out of spring training and then hurt his ribs.

“You never know with a guy who’s 36, but the strongest thing in our favor is the remarks some of the Dodger players made about the loss of his impact in the clubhouse and infield.

“Unfortunately, he’s kind of a quiet leader and we haven’t had much fire since (Len) Dykstra, (Mookie) Wilson and (Wally) Backman left.”