Loading ...A quick trip around the internets:
–If you haven’t been following Doug Gray’s “State of the Farm” series, you are really missing something (and we’ve been seriously remiss in not linking this earlier). Here are the latest installments: third base and centerfield. Good stuff, as always.
–Post-season reviews from Mark Sheldon and John Fay. As expected, they are good reads, if you want to re-live this disaster of a season.
–Sheldon also looks forward to 2010, and concludes that the answers to the Reds’ problems are going to have to be found within the organization. That’s not very promising.
–It’s so hard to say goodbye, according to Chris Sabo’s Goggles.
–The Saulton says goodbye to George Grande.
The reds should come out around .500 next year. I think Dusty’s goal should be to end the streak of losing seasons. This team needs a big year to try and bring fans back to the ballpark. If even half of the young players come through, this team will have alot to look foward to in the next five years. But that is a big IF.
Sultan summed up Grande perfectly. I really hope Kelch is involved in some capacity full-time. He is simply the best pairing with Marty, by far, and him and Welch would make a great combo as well. I have a feeling that Thom will do most of the TV with Welch, but they will continue to rotate people around.
I wish they would stick with pairings and leave them alone. I hate turning on a game, TV or Radio, and not know who is going to be on there for that game, it is frustrating.
I think the Reds have already the necessary to perform much better next season: a) Rolen, Gomes and Stubbs from the beginning, b) a well balanced and solid infield with Votto, Philips, Rolen & Janish, c) Bruce and Harang will do much better.
I’m a huge Gomes fan, but I do want to point out one thing about him:
Gomes (career) as a starter – .245/.334/.480
Gomes (career) off the bench – .160/.250/.293
I think he’d be worth the money ($2M or so?) if he’s going to start more often than not. But if we want him to just be a slugger off the bench, I think we should probably look elsewhere.
We all hope that Harang returns to his old form. It would be nice if Janish could hit .250 but thats most likely out of the question. The defense this team has should be amazing. The offense should be very hard hitting. The problem is that those shoulds are probably going to stay shoulds.
OBP vs. RBI
As the Reds start making decisions regarding the 2010 roster, one of the most crucial factors is their willingness to evaluate players based on their OBP not on the RBI’s.
This is where Baker is an incredible LIABILITY for the organization – as he is old-school in this regard. He has said numerous times that the Reds need to go out and get an “RBI guy.”
Instead, the Reds need to take a page out of the playbook of a successful organization, the Boston Red Sox (among others).
Recently, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein was asked on a radio show how he evaluated JD Drew, who has a high OBP but tends to have low RBI. Here is what Epstein said:
“Sometimes you get stuck in the world of evaluating players through home runs and RBIs. And it’s not the way that I think most clubs do it these days. And if you look at underlying performance of a lot of our guys, they bring more to the table than just the counting stats. And J.D.’s certainly having another good year for us. He’s up around a .900 OPS right now, and he’s playing really good defense in right field, he deserves an awful lot of credit for that, he’s been pretty darned good for the three years that he’s been here if you look at the underlying performance.
Based on his skill set, he’s always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn’t care less. When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn’t put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he’s not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.
“And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that’s NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn’t make outs. He’s always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he’s a really good base runner. So when he doesn’t make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs — and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It’s outstanding.
“You guys can talk about RBIs if you want, I just … we ignore them in the front office … and I think we’ve built some pretty good offensive clubs. If you want to talk about RBIs at all, talk about it as a percentage of opportunity but it’s just simply not a way or something we use to evaluate offensive players.”
My greatest wish for the Reds is that they move toward Epstein’s evaluation metrics, and away from Baker’s.
Nice post Steve. Theo’s right–RBIs are a crime of opportunity, if they’re there you take ‘em. Does anyone believe Phillips is a 100 rbi guy anywhere else but the 4 hole? Me neither. For my money, turning the lineup over and not making outs is way more important. We certainly found that out the hard way when for most of the season we had automatic outs in the 9,1, and 2 holes.
[wistful sigh]… It must be nice to be a fan of a team that gets it…
Unrelated note… I’m not sure what the best place is to post this so I’ll just put it here…
The Rockies seem to be down on Chris Iannetta. They’ve been playing Yorvit Torrealba over him in September and it seems they’re planning to keep doing that.
Iannetta (career) – .242/.361/.446
Torrealba (career) – .255/.315/.390
Torrealba is a free agent, and he’s coming off a good year and a $3.5M contract, so he does not interest me.
But Iannetta is cheaper and younger (age 25 vs. age 31), and a FAR better offensive player. If Colorado has soured on him for some reason, I’d be VERY interested in making them an offer.
(It’s too bad Torrealba is a free agent – this would work out a lot better if the Rockies still had him under contract for another year.)
I’d definitely take a look at a guy like Ianetta.
Anyone have an interest in kicking the tires on Miguel Tejada? We’d be looking at $8mil per. I’d think hard about it if we could do a one year deal w/ an option. Of course trading Harang or Arroyo might preclude such a signing. You’d have to have a lot of faith in Wood and Maloney for that to happen.
Not sure if anyone has seen this yet but this is a good story on the sad and tragic situation that Alex Gonzalez has been going through the past few years
http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/columns/story?columnist=nelson_amy&id=4537575
p.s. Chad, I tried to email this to you but it kept bouncing back.
this is what baseball is all about
a different way to look at these guys
Torrealba career 80 OPS+, going to be 31 plays OK defense
Iannetta career 104 OPS+ (high OBP), will be 27 plays OK defense
Hanigan caeer 84 OPS+ (high OBP), will be 28 is among the best defenders in the game
Hernandez caeer 95 OPS+ hasn’t gotten near that 3 years straight, OK defense
The Reds should go with Dickerson/Stubbs CF, Philips 2B, Votto 1B, Gomes/Nix LF, Rolen 3B, Bruce RF, TBA C, Janish SS. It’s not feasible they’ll execute on Hernandez, so it’s critical to find a good catcher elsewhere. None of the others (Hanigan, Tatum or Miller) are to be regulars, being Hanigan a back-up and Tatum still AAA level. The other two position spots should go to Francisco and Rosales/Sutton.
@Dan: I’m not so sure they will give him up (Iannetta), he still has a chance to turn it around, I think they are riding Torealba as much as they can until he is gone. Remember when he was on the trading block last winter and NOBODY wanted a sniff of him because he was that bad and was paid 3.5 mil? Torealba will be gone from COL and he is a type “B” FA, so he will not be highly desired by anyone. Iannetta is still seen as the future at that position for them. They are not the type of organization that gives away cheap guys.
I am with Dan on looking for some nice buy low trades out there, I really think that is the only way this team can improve (from outside the organization) due to the financial restraints.
The real question is if the Reds can continue the September success without making any additions or subtractions. I don’t see the Reds making any moves until next winter. Maybe, maybe, they add a shortstop, but I seriously doubt the Brewers trade Hardy in the division and he’s really the only guy I’m interested in acquiring at SS.
By winter we will know what we have and can either add pieces or dump Arroyo and Harang’s salary. Personally, I don’t want to lose either of them. Harang, Cueto, Arroyo, Bailey, Lehr/Thompson/Maloney is still a formidable rotation. I recently read that the Reds expect Volquez back by the All Star game. If that is an accurate projection, you can move somebody at that time.
@David: I read that too about Volquez, he could end up much like Tim Hudson did this year. Brewers are looking for pitching but I’m not sure the Reds have enough (at least what they want to give up) to get Hardy. I wouldn’t want to give up a Wood type player, but would give up Maloney or a couple of others, but I don’t think that would be enough.
On a REALLY unrelated note: Minnesota is the #2 team at our house, and trying to survive last night’s 12-inning roller coaster ride without y’all was crazy! I’d click on the Nation, ready to fire off some comment…
I about burst into flames at my computer by the time it was over.
Isn’t “buy low” how we got Willy T.?
No, someone was definately high when we bought into him.
@preach:
Oh, yeah..
Actually, yes. If you sign someone after he had a crappy season and he’s non-tendered, that’s “buy low.”
For some moronic reason, we signed him to a 2-year, $6.25 million contract (including a built-in guaranteed 75% raise for year 2) anyway. Who else would’ve offered him anything ANYWHERE NEAR this?
Compare Willy to Scott Podsednik. Both were free agents last offseason:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/podsesc01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/taverwi01.shtml
Taveras got a 2-year, $6.25M contract. Podsednik got a minor-league deal only, and wound up making the team, and making $800,000 this year. WHY?? Look at their stats. What about Willy makes him worthy of a bigger deal? This is our braintrust at work…
But anyway, yes, he should’ve been buy-low. He was coming off a .251/.308/.296 year and had been non-tendered.
Phillips cannot back second…he’s an absolute double play machine.
He needs to bat in the 6 hole…Rolen would be a better choice for second.
Now, if Phillips moves to SS (ahem—not going to happen), and Frazier played 2b…Frazier is the # 2 guy….also, move Bruce to 5th…with Phillips 6th…
given our “success” in last year’s free agent market, i’m all for standing pat, including offering arbitration to gomes whom we can platoon in left with cdick. then, if we are anywhere near competitive at the trade deadline we can trade alonso and a couple of low-level “prospects” for what we need to bring it home.
or perhaps we don’t offer arbitration to gomes because i have a sneaky feeling juan francisco is going to be the leftfielder at some point next year, maybe on opening day.
He would have been a buy low type of guy, but they decided instead of buying low, to bid against themselves way too high. If he was signed to a minor league deal or a 1 year 1 mil contract it would have been understandable, but to throw 6+ mil at him was ridiculous and not buying low.
Well, I think the whole Phillips-hitting-2nd deal is based on him modifying his approach at the plate – not trying so hard to hit homers and such. I’m not particularly in favor of it, though if BP was into it, it could work. But I don’t think he’d be into it.
But isn’t any hitter who puts the ball in play a lot going to be a “double play machine” to some extent?
I agree, any hitter that hits the ball very hard and has guys on base in front of him is going to hit into DP’s. Personally if you think he is a “DP machine” then he shouldn’t be hitting 4th because he is more likely to kill a rally there than hitting into one in the 2 hole.
I don’t think anyone here has wanted him to be batting 4th
With that said, I still think Phillips is a 6 hitter.
CF Stubbs/Dickerson
3B Rolen
1B Votto
LF Gomes
RF Bruce
2B Phillips
C Hanigan
SS Janish
Then if Dickerson is playing LF for Gomes, Rolen to 4th and Dickerson/Stubbs batting 1-2. If Dickerson plays for Bruce, Rolen to 5th and Dickerson/Stubbs batting 1-2.
BTW, I think Phillips would have more RBI chances in this lineup than he had this year in the 4th spot. Plus I like surrounding Bruce with two guys who crush LH pitching. Plus Bruce will see better pitches with Phillips hitting behind him rather than Hanigan or Janish which would make his average increase, I think.