Overachievers and Proud of It

Despite recent events, the Reds are going to win the NL Central.  Rather than talk about that slow, inexorable backward stumble into October, I thought we could use the time to look at how we got here.  How did the club generally (though not unanimously) expected to finish fourth in the six-team Central end up with the biggest lead in the NL?

Joey Votto is the NL MVP.  That’s obviously a nice place to start.  But a team with a $76M payroll needs everything to go right.  They need their young stars to break out, their journeymen to have career years, and a couple of aging vets to rebound (one last time).  The Reds got all three.

We compared the Reds 2010 numbers (through Saturday) with the 2010 ZiPS projections.  Today, the offense, ranked by how much their wOBA surpassed expectations:

We’ve known this all year, but it’s still stunning to see in black and white.  Other than a couple bit players and the twin anchors dragging on the offense all summer (Gomes and Cabrera), everyone’s been playing better than expected.

Votto was clearly going to be the Reds’ best hitter, but few projection systems shout “potential triple crown” in March.  Drew Stubbs also exceeded expectations by a big factor.  Consider those your breakout young hitters.  Scott Rolen and Ramon Hernandez are the “one last time” vets, and all the role players have been exceptional, particularly Ryan Hanigan, Miguel Cairo, and Paul Janish.

(I have NO idea what ZiPS was thinking about Corky Miller.  His actual 634 OPS is 70 points over his career number.  Nobody is considering his 2010 performance a disappointment, especially the 12 starts he gave them in late June/early July, when he hit 727.)

I also compared 2010 BABIP numbers to career numbers, to get an idea how much luck may have been involved.

In some cases (Ramon, Nix, Janish, Corky), it appears that luck played a big part.  (I’m also curious whether Jay Bruce’s good-but-not-breakout season has been lucky, or whether the drop in HRs somehow caused the BABIP spike).

The fact that 3-4 players are having lucky/good years shouldn’t be surprising.  What is unusual is that nobody has been significantly unlucky.  That’s how you win divisions, especially with a small budget.

Tomorrow, the pitchers.