We Maintain, Aaron Harang is Not an Ace

By TheNaturalMevs on June 9, 2008

Reds fans have defended long and hard that Aaron Harang is not only an ace, but one of the finest pitchers the Reds have had in the modern day era of baseball. He is forever immune from criticism and if indeed he does pitch poorly; it must be due to an outside factor of some type.

We have no problem being objective and telling the truth. Despite the fact that we like Harang, we don’t think he’s been throwing poorly because he’s hurt or because of the relief outing in the 18-inning San Diego fiasco. We just don’t think he’s an ace.

Harang is more suitable as a high end #2 starting pitcher in a rotation. We had all better hope that Edison Volquez is truly an ace because if he’s not, we still don’t have a true stopper or ace. Harang is now 2-9 on the season with a 4.31 ERA. Yesterday in the South Florida sun he gave up 11 hits and 7 earned runs in 5 and 1/3 innings. This included two rocket home runs to who else, Hanley Ramirez.

The Reds managed only 3 hits yesterday (none belonged to Jay Bruce and one actually came via a Corey Patterson home run). Ken Griffey Jr. is still stuck on 599 home runs. If he doesn’t homer tonight in Florida, Griffey will return home for the Reds longest homestand of the season so he can hit the 600th homer in front of the Cincinnati fans that could honestly care less about this milestone right now.

We’ll probably be at one game per series on the upcoming homestand, and while we’d like to see 600 for sentimental reasons, we’d like to see Griffey dressed in a different uniform much more for the health of the current ballclub.