It’s Monday! That’s a day!
For much of the decade-plus I have spent writing about the Cincinnati Reds here at Red Reporter, I’ve been able to a) choose an interesting picture and b) immediately begin writing about said picture at the outset of an article. Within the last year, though, SB Nation made the decision to pull header photos from article pages, so if you found this article from anywhere other than the Red Reporter homepage you have not yet seen Pokey Reese riding in a car in the Findlay Market Parade from Opening Day 2024.
Here’s that photo again, for more than posterity:
Photo by Emilee Chinn/Cincinnati Reds/Getty Images
Hey there, Pokey!
Reese, now 51 years of age, was at one point the next great Cincinnati Reds shortstop prospect. A 1st round pick back in ‘91, he landed within Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects for a five-year run before finally making his debut with the Reds in 1997.
You’ll recall that future Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin was still plying his trade for the Reds in ‘97 (when healthy). As a result, Pokey spent a lot of time playing 2B over the next few years of his career in Cincinnati before the club ultimately shipped him to Colorado in 2001 (before the Rockies dealt him to Boston the very next day for future Red Scott Hatteberg).
Pokey won Gold Glove Awards in both 1999 and 2000, his bat playing well enough in ‘99 to fuel a 4.0 bWAR season. For his Reds career, he hit .250, swatted 15 triples, and clubbed 36 dingers.
You may also recall that the title of this particular article is The Elly De La Cruz Statistic of the Day, so I should probably scoot my ramble on over to Elly. The current next great Cincinnati Reds shortstop is in the midst of a 5+ bWAR, potentially 7 fWAR campaign in his first full season with the big league club, but those aren’t the stats that brought Pokey to mind and this article to fruition. A quick glance at Elly’s current career tallies did that.
For his Reds career, to date, Elly owns a .250 average, has swatted 15 triples, and has clubbed 36 dingers, too. While those numbers will obviously change as early as this afternoon against Atlanta, methinks he may find a way to match Pokey’s pair of Gold Glove Awards at some point along the way, too.