From 2001 to 2004, Pedro Martinez allowed 51 home runs in 719 2/3 innings. If the Cincinnati Reds’ Eric Milton keeps up his current pace, he will give up 55 home runs in 188 2/3 innings this year. That is, in a nutshell, the difference between a great free-agent signing and an awful one, and the difference between a team like the Mets – which pays for the best talent it can afford – and one like the Reds, which doesn’t.

This isn’t a criticism made with the benefit of hindsight. Previewing the National League this April, I wrote of the Reds’ giving Milton a preposterous three-year, $25.5 million contract that “the most interesting home run chase in baseball this year may be [Ramon] Ortiz and Milton vying for Bert Blyleven’s 1986 record of 50 long balls.”

I was hardly alone in this analysis, and the reasoning was simple. Ortiz gave up 40 homers with the Angels in 2002, Milton gave up 43 with the Phillies last year, and the Reds’ home field inflates home runs by about 10%.As things turn out, Ortiz will not be making a run at Blyleven’s mark, but that’s mainly due to a lack of durability. After signing a one-year, $3.5 million deal with Cincinnati, Ortiz has made only 10 starts and pitched 55 2/3 innings this year, but he has managed to give up 10 home runs, contributing to his 6.10 ERA. Project that out to a 200-inning workload, and you have a pitcher who could indeed be making a run at the home run record.

These two off-season acquisitions have combined for a 7.21 ERA and are taking up about a sixth of the Reds’ payroll. Add in Paul Wilson – a holdover whom the Reds signed to a two-year, $8.2 million deal over the winter and who ran up a 7.77 ERA in nine starts before going on the disabled list last month – and you have the makings of a disaster. The only team in the league with a worse ERA is the Colorado Rockies, whose home park inflates run scoring by about 30%. Making this even worse than it seems is that the Reds’ park, despite being homer-friendly, is actually something of a pitcher’s park.

The shame of it all is that the only team in the league with a clearly superior offense is Florida (after adjusting for park effects). The Reds are second in the league in runs and are enjoying monster seasons from left fielder Adam Dunn (.244 AVG/.404 OBA/.550 SLG) and shortstop Felipe Lopez, who’s quietly leading all NL shortstops in OPS, home runs, and RBI. Ken Griffey Jr. has returned to relevance, missing only four games and hitting for an .824 OPS with 11 homers. Outfielder Wily Mo Pena is following up on last year’s breakout by slugging .714 in limited time. With first baseman Sean Casey, third baseman Joe Randa, supersub Ryan Freel, and catcher Jason LaRue all contributing at the plate, the lineup doesn’t really have any holes.

With even a league-average pitching staff, this team would be a contender. And that was clearly the idea behind paying so much money for Milton, Ortiz, and Wilson. If the Reds could get 600 average innings from them and supplement that with a bullpen that looked good on paper, it would go a long way toward getting decent performance from the staff as a whole. As is often the case in baseball, the Reds should be faulted not for their plan, but for their execution of it.

Simply put, it was a dumb idea to count on three mediocre flyball pitchers to succeed with a weak outfield defense in a park in which the worst thing you can do is give up flyballs. Observers who were paying attention said so at the time these deals were made, and they’ve proved to be right.

Unfortunately for the Reds, rather than working toward a solution to the problem, the organizational response has been to deepen and worsen the team’s miseries. Closer Danny Graves and second baseman/alleged clubhouse cancer D’Angelo Jimenez were released and sent down to the minors, respectively, after being placed on waivers and eating up about $10 million in salary. Both were performing abysmally, but without real replacements on hand, the main effect was to alienate players and highlight the front office’s incompetence. It was management, after all, that ruined Graves’s arm by trying to turn him into a starter two years ago, and management that signed Jimenez to a $2.6 million contract despite his long history of underperforming.

Perhaps worst of all, rather than turning their surplus of outfielders into a pitcher or middle infielder over the winter, the Reds turned down all offers for right fielder Austin Kearns, who two years ago was considered a better player than Dunn. Kearns hit .315/.407/.500 as a 22-year-old in 2002, but since then he’s lost parts of several seasons to injury. He started out the 2005 season hitting .224, and been sent to the minors to get his career back on track. His value will never be lower, and the team will probably trade him only to watch him blossom elsewhere.

In all, though, this team has the record it deserves. The offense’s success is probably a bit fluky, and the pitching probably isn’t really as bad as it’s been so far this year. On balance, those should cancel each other out. This is a team that’s comfortable with mediocrity and has spent years taking the safe course. That they couldn’t see something so obvious as the fact that Eric Milton would be a disaster in their park is no surprise. When you aim to be average, you rarely get even that.