No fewer than four times in this thread alone, I alluded to how much fun it has been to follow this team lately and how much I’m enjoying the wins. Of course, Dallas conveniently ignored that.

Sometimes I wonder why I’ve wasted so much money on this site over the years.

Doesn’t mean we can’t hope for the Reds to play better, does it? And if we can’t analyze this team and what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong, then what’s the point?

Or maybe we should all just say YAY and ignore anything about the team that isn’t peaches and cream! Personally, I prefer discussing the team in all its aspects, warts and all. Feel free to ignore that stuff if you want, but don’t come here and criticizing people for not putting their heads in the sand like you.

Sorry. Just sick of people criticizing others for discussing the team in anything less than glowing terms.

Others see a 7-3 road trip and say “But they aren’t winning BY ENOUGH!”

Come on, just enjoy the wins already!

Me too, I live in Orange County and always go to a few Reds/Dodgers games. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the Reds win live and in person.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=319&position=OF#fielding

I don’t remember a disproportionate number of “lazy fly balls” falling in front, or beside Adam Dunn. Which is why we can’t rely on what we observe, alone. (I also suspect that the inclusion of “lazy” into the description says more about your view of Dunn than it does the fly balls.)

But let’s look at the actual numbers:

First, his fielding pct is actually where some of his problems lied: .969 career, vs. .981 for average LFs.

Range factor/9: Dunn 1.97 vs. 1.93 for average LFs.

Zone Rating I can’t get good numbers for right now. Same with +/-. That stuff may give us more depth, but based on the two most readily-available numbers, I’d say that Dunn got to plenty of balls . . . then screwed up once he was there.

* A couple teams in history made the playoffs with a negative run differential. “A couple.” And both in horrible divisions.

* Yes, BP and EE are likely to improve, but Votto isn’t going to hit like Lou Gehrig all year. And who knows about Willy.

* We assume that Gonzalez and Hernandez can’t hit this bad all season – or that they’d lose their job. But then: Corey Patterson.

* I swear I read somewhere reputable yesterday that the Reds are only 7/18 in Steals. B-R says 8/10. I think the writer used the Reds’ ranks in each category (7th and 11th), rather than their numbers. I still thought they’d be running more, though.

The beating up on Dickerson’s D is certainly unfair. He had a bad couple of days in a notoriously tough LF with cold and the wind blowing in for the entire series. Maybe he should start doing Soriono’s bunny hop. Counting the number of errors thus far and comparing to Dunn is just silly.

after the Reds started the season 1-3, they’ve gone 8-3 their last 11 games. They’ve outscored their opponents during this stretch 40-37.

They’ve also won 4 of their last 5, outscoring the opponent 20-13.

I think the question could be applied to the pitching as a whole. How consistent will the starters be?

While the pythag works “on average” the team hasn’t had an “average” pitching performance yet. They’ve allowed an average of 4.3 runs per game, but they either allow very little runs (2 or fewer runs 7 times) or a lot of runs (6 or more runs 7 times.)

They’ve been more consistent offensively, scoring 2-4 runs 8 times.

By the way Joey Votto is a stud and the stupid cubs suck. Nothing is better than beating the crap out of the cubs.

The pythag formula gives a better projection on average than the current record. “Better” doesn’t mean you can predict the future with it and “on average” speaks for itself. Teams with good bullpens win most of their close games and overachieve wrt pythag.

The big question about the close ones is: How well will this bullpen hold up ?