The Reds’ disappointing 2000 season

Last week, Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with a record 99.3% of the vote.

Griffey accumulated most of his Hall of Fame credentials in Seattle from 1989-1999. He was 1997 AL MVP, a 10-time All Star, hit 398 HR and was arguably on pace to break Hank Aaron’s career mark, and won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves (despite hints of declining defense).

The best player in the game was traded to the Reds in February of 2000, where he played until being traded to the White Sox in the summer of 2008.

Even before acquiring Griffey, the Reds were a team on the rise. In 1999, Barry Larkin and MVP candidate Greg Vaughn led a 96-win season, which ended with a heartbreaking loss to the Mets in a wildcard playoff game. The team’s rising stars included Sean Casey, Pokey Reese, and Aaron Boone. The two-headed monster of Danny Graves and NL Rookie of the Year Scott Williamson headlined a dominant bullpen.

Adding the best player in baseball to the team’s young core should have taken this team to the next level. The Reds were widely predicted to win the NL Central in 2000, and remain among the division’s elite for years to come.

However, despite a strong season by Junior (he hit 40 HRs and accounted for 5.5 WAR), the team managed only 85 wins. The Reds finished 10 games back of St. Louis, and were out of playoff contention by July. After 1999, Jack McKeon was named NL manager of the year. After 2000, he was fired.

With Griffey’s good play, what explains this sizable year-over-year falloff? Why were the 2000 Reds not the juggernaut many expected going into the season?

Where was the shortcoming? Looking at batter vs. pitcher WAR provides a good starting point. In 1999, Reds hitters accounted for 29 WAR, and the pitchers 14.7. In 2000, the hitters slumped to 21.7 WAR, while the pitchers improved slightly, to 15.9.

This is not a notably strong year of pitching—the 2012 Reds’ pitchers had 26.9 WAR—but the Reds were able to overcome mediocre pitching in 1999. Declining position player performance was responsible for the Reds decline from 1999 to 2000.

Dante the Terrible. With 1999 MVP candidate Greg Vaughn expected to leave via free agency, the Reds brought in 4-time All Star Dante Bichette.

Greg Vaughn was a key cog in the Reds’ 1999 team. He belted 45 HR and accumulated 3.3 WAR. However, coming off a 34 HR, 133 RBI season in Colorado, Bichette seemed a good candidate to replace his production.

Unfortunately, despite these impressive stats, Bichette was worth -2.3 WAR in 1999, the season before he joined the Reds. Yes, that’s a negative.

This negative WAR count is attributable to hitting in the offense-inflating thin air of Coors Field and, more importantly, Bichette’s horrendous defense. He was worth -3.9 WAR playing left field for the Rockies in 1999—easily the worst rating in all of baseball.

Bichette’s defense improved with the Reds, but he still only put up .4 WAR over 125 games. The Reds traded him to the Red Sox in August of 2000.

This 3 WAR year-over-year decline cost the Reds dearly, and in retrospect it does not appear to be much of a surprise. Bichette was worth a cumulative 1.6 WAR from 1994 through 1999—and that includes a 1995 season where he finished second in MVP voting. It was unrealistic to expect much production from a player with this history entering his age-36 season.

Mike Cameron’s Better Glove. Fortunately, the Reds didn’t need to count too much on Bichette, since they were getting a massive upgrade in CF—right?

Not so fast. Mike Cameron, the center fielder traded for Griffey, was worth 5.5 WAR in 1999—identical to Griffey’s 2000 value.

Defense accounts for the unexpected similarity. While Griffey was a better hitter in 2000 than Cameron had been in 1999 (4.5 vs. 3.2 offensive WAR), Cameron’s defense was twice as valuable (2.6 vs. 1.3 defensive WAR).

Like Dante Bichette’s mediocre season, it was unrealistic to expect Griffey to be a defensive ace. In his last two seasons in Seattle—when he won his 9^th and 10^th Gold Gloves—his defense was worth 0 and -.9 WAR, respectively. Although he did not reach Cameron’s dWAR total, Griffey’s 2000 defensive season actually was a nice bounce-back. Cameron went on to win two Gold Gloves in the American League. Griffey didn’t win one for the Reds.

Performance Declines and Injury. With personnel turnover cumulating to a drop-off in the outfield, the Reds needed strong seasons from their infield in order to contend. Unfortunately, the infield declined even more steeply.

2B Pokey Reese was a breakout star in 1999. He won his first Gold Glove and accumulated 4 WAR. In 2000, he regressed to 1.9 WAR. Despite winning a second Gold Glove, his defense accounted for the lion’s share of the downturn, as Pokey followed his fantastic 3.2 defensive WAR in 1999 with a good-but-not-fantastic 1.7 defensive WAR in 2000.

Reds catchers regressed even further. Eddie Taubensee put up a solid season with 1.5 WAR in 1999, but the platoon of Taubensee and Benito Santiago combined to produce an offsetting -1.4 WAR in 2000. Taubensee was particularly disappointing, as his negative hitting and fielding resulted in -1.2 WAR over 81 games.

Compounding these difficulties, the left side of the infield struggled with injury. After combining to play all but 24 games in 1999, Aaron Boone and Barry Larkin missed a combined 138 games in 2000. Their collective 7.3 WAR in 1999 became just 4.5 WAR in 2000.

While Boone’s replacement—Chris Stynes—played well, securing 2.5 WAR—Larkin’s replacement—Juan Castro—was worth -0.4 WAR.

The cumulative effect was that the Reds’ 2000 infield was worth 6.4 WAR less than it had been in 1999—roughly the value of Joey Votto’s MVP season in 2010.

Conclusion

Over-valuing Dante Bichette, under-appreciating Mike Cameron and an ugly drop-off in infield production were to blame for the Reds disappointing 2000.

Sadly, the Reds performance went from mediocre to worse. The team followed up its 85 wins in 2000 with 9 consecutive seasons of sub-.500 baseball, including the remaining 7.5 years before Griffey was traded to the White Sox.

It was an extremely difficult run after a magical 1999 season and an offseason filled with hope and high expectations.