1. What would happen if an acid and a base were mixed up?
The Bullpen has failed to throw strikes, 50 walks to 66 K’s in 102 innings is not going to get it done. Weathers and Weber the Vet pickups have combined for a total of 20, add Joe Valentine in there and it goes up to 30 in 40 innings pitched. That’s 60% of the walks in only 40% of the relief appearances.
2. Hits hurt too.
Eric Milton - 1.3 Hits an Inning Paul Wilson - 1.3 Hits an Inning Brandon Claussen - 1.45 Hits an Inning Ramon Ortiz - 1.65 Hits an Inning Matt Belise - 1.1 Hits an Inning Aaron Harang - - .95 Hits an Inning
3. The Red pitchers have the worst BA against in the MLB .298 (the Yankees are at .297, who do you think will improve first?)
4. Jason LaRue has struck out once every 2.39 ab’s. The worst ratio for a qualifier was Rob Deer in 1987 with a K every 2.53 ab, before that the record was held by the legendary Dave Nicholson with one every 2.56 ab. Dunn averaged one every 2.9 last year.
5. 21.2% of Sean Caseys hits are of the extra base variety, Dunn 73%, Griffey 50%, Pena 80%, Lopez 50%, Freel 30%, Aurilia 47% and Kearns 44%.
So why is Casey batting 3rd every night?
6. Team Batting Splits
.245/.330/.428/.758 - Reds vs. RH's .264/.345/.423/.767 - Reds vs. LH's
7. The power of the walk and batting average.
Joe Randa’s Walks have dropped since May began but his BA has gone up, yet still his OB% has dropped 2 points!
In April Randa averaged a walk once every 5.44 ab’ (his career rate was 1/12.6)
In May he has one walk in 20 AB’s.
Joe Randa on May 1st – .268/.400/.476/.876
Joe Randa on May 8th – .286/.398/.480/.878
8. Milton’s HR last night was the first one from a Reds Pitcher since Graves in 2001.
In fact only 6 Reds pitchers have had HR’s since 1995 hand here they are.
HOMERUNS YEAR HR T1 John Smiley 1995 2 T1 Dave Burba 1996 2 T3 David Weathers 1998 1 T3 Pete Schourek 1997 1 T3 Pete Harnisch 2000 1 T3 Pete Harnisch 1999 1 T3 Danny Graves 2001 1 T3 Danny Graves 2000 1
9. Last night on ESPN Jon Miller said that Dunn hadn’t done anything yet this year.
.277/.424/.660/1.083 6th in MLB in OPS, 14th in OB%, 3rd in SLG%, 4th in HR, 3rd in 2b.
Yep he hasn’t done squat.
10. The 1982 team won 61 games and lost 101 games. After 30 games they were 13-17 – 7.0 games back and had scored 116 runs and gave up 115 runs. This years team after 30 games (18.25% of the season) is 11-19 – 8 games back and have scored 138 runs and gave up 178 run.
Scary eh?
1. Bullpen’s K/IP ratio is bad, but the BB/K ratio is even worse.
2. Pitching to contact works if your pitches have a lot of movement. Otherwise, well, we all saw what happens to Milton’s straight-as-an-arrow fastball last night.
3. And you can see it in the Opponent BA too.
4. Larue’s value at the plate right now is largely comprised of his HBP totals. Besides being a ghastly hitting performance, that doesn’t bode well for the health and reliability of an everyday catcher.
5. XBH% for Casey last year was 37.8%. For his career it is 32.5%. By itself this stat means precious little – I wouldn’t say Aurilia is a better hitter, despite his XBH% being twice that of Casey so far this year. Not to mention small samples. That said, Casey’s atrocious speed and GIDP tendencies mean he’s better suited to hit lower in the order, so I fully endorse the move out of the 3-spot for him.
6. Hits are more valuable than walks. It’s to his credit that he’s increased the BA and SLG during this short period, despite the lack of walks…but a drop in plate discipline often portends a batting slump on the horizon (swinging at more bad pitches resulting in popouts and weak grounders – which we saw last night with the bases loaded). That’s what I’m concerned about.
7. That’s rather curious. Who are the main factors in those splits?
8. Reds’ pitchers seem to have been really bad at the plate for the past several years, as a group. I’d say that the reason was because they were concentrating on the discipline of pitching, but…and by the way, Milton has now gotten the GABP experience from both sides – hitting HRs and giving them up. Remember back when he said that GABP couldn’t possibly be as bad as the Phillies’ new park as far as giving up home runs?
9. Jon Miller is such a great broadcaster – but this little aside shocked me. However, what he said was along the lines of, none of these guys have ‘come close’ to hitting up to their potential (including Dunn on the list). It’s still not true for Dunn, by any measure I’ve looked at, but it’s not quite as bad a statement. There’s no way he should have lumped Dunn in with Casey, Griffey, Jimenez, Kearns, et al. when talking about slumps.
10. Wow, that ’82 team started off hot, didn’t they? Little did they know at the time that a 13-17 record would be considered a hot start…Despite the rampant pessimism that has accompanied this miserable stretch of losses for the 2005 edition, I think talk of 100 losses is premature. The offense has too much firepower; the pitching would have to continue to be historically horrific in order to even have a shot at 100 losses. We’ll see if I have to eat my words, but I don’t see it. Meanwhile, the “Postseason Odds” report over at Baseball Prospectus currently simulates an average of about 91 losses for this team. We’ll see if they can turn it around.
Brian Erts – do not take this personally, but I am reminded by the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is inundated with Linus’ statistical analysis of their baseball team. At the end, Charlie looks at Linus and says “Tell your statistics to shut up”. Also derived from the Appendix in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.
Brian – as usual – very entertaining and somewhat controversial….thanks for your work.
The Reds walk against LH’s once every 8 ab’s vs a RH 1 every 9 ab’s. They K against LH’s 1 every 4.9 ab’ and RH’s every 3.7.
From what I surmise they do more against LH’s, as far as getting on base, but hit RH’s harder.
Heath.. I can’t help myself sometimes and I know it’s all gobblygook oozing out all over the place. But have to catch some of it in a bucket to look at.
I appreciate your work Brian – statistics some times tell a deeper story…or just cement what is already happened.
Just thought of the Charlie Brown line and what the 2005 Cincinnati Redlegs hace in common.