There isn’t much baseball left, in 2019. The Reds will not play past September so let’s enjoy the remaining games of the year. Break out your coffee and your breakfast and lets think about some Reds baseball.
Signs of a turnaround
Momentum is not a thing the baseball gods tend to pay attention to (Just ask Jose Peraza). Ending a season on a high note is all well and good but not something to give too much credence to. That being said, Reds fans have been looking for just about ANY sign that Joey Votto is breaking out of the cocoon of a slump he’s been in for most of the season. We may have something here, folks.
In his last 10 games, Votto has hit .361 with a pair of dingers. He’s also had three doubles and has amassed eight walks while striking out three times. If you expand it a few games to include the month of September, his OPS is 1.034. That’s more like it.
Something interesting to keep an eye on with Votto, from here on, is how the Reds manage his personal slate of games. “Load management” is a popular term in professional sports, nowadays. It’s usage is prevalent in the NBA, but I think it could apply to the Reds veteran leader. Joey should not be playing 162 games in a season, anymore. Keeping his total number of games down to 140-145 games should keep his performance at a high level as the on-base machine that is a catalyst for the offense.
The most useless pitching stat
Raisel Iglesias notched his 30th save of the season last night. It is the second year in a row that Iggy has gotten to 30 and figures to top that in the remaining games. David Bell has said that he wants to pitch his best guys in the most important situations of a game, but he has also acknowledged Iglesias’ profuse insistence on pitching in save opportunities. I hate this.
The save statistic is based on whether a pitcher enters the game when his team has the lead. Also, not just any lead, it’s got to be close. Or the pitcher coming into relieve the starter could pitch the final three innings of the game and get a save (less common). Most of you understand all this.
The annoying thing is the insistence on managers remaining focused on whether they pitch their closer in “save situations,” or not. It will probably take a few years, but managers and front offices need to fade the importance of relief pitchers accumulating saves. Thy were turned into a reason to pay certain bullpen arms more than others. I would hope, with the analytical advancements this year that teams can fully understand a relief pitcher’s value and maybe we can start to erase this idea of a “save.”
Top possible free agents for the Reds
MLB.com released a list of the top-20 possible free agents. The Reds were sparsely mentioned, if at all, on most of these players. The Front Office needs almost to take this as a challenge. If 2020 will be as great as we all hope, they have to be aggressive. Chad Dotson and Bill Lack discuss this on the most recent Redleg Nation Radio podcast, but I firmly believe the Front Office will pull out all the stops this offseason.
Finishing is the key term, the Reds needed him to start strong, or at least get it going before August….
Or September….
@doc
The last five years are this for ops. By the way guys I posted a link that has all this data.
876
831
1058
863
772
A great player, aging in sports terms, hitting well. All to the good.
Can anyone tell me how the 2019 first 3 reds draft picks did this year ?
Nice to see an old-fashioned Joey Votto pop-up HR to left center. But I don’t think there’s many of those left. It’ll be interesting to see how he adjusts. At one point (2010) hitting like Albert Pujols, Albert Pujols he’s not. If he can hit .280 or above (not sure how many season-long .300s he has left either), 20ish HRs, with lots of doubles, I’d take that the rest of the way.
@klugo,
Data points say differently. Ill break it down below. He has a 985 ops with 2 outs and runners in scoring positions in his career with 669 Plate Appearances. Late and close is 890, tie game is 941, 1 run down is 936.
Some day this narrative that Joey does not perform on any level with go away… or maybe it wont.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=vottojo01&year=Career&t=b
Also in his career
@klugo
I provided stats to counter your point. You have provided Conjecture with nothing to back it up. Its not hard to find the data. Find the data points to prove your point
He has 37 PA in the playoffs, i guess you could use that as a data point to prove your point. The rest of the data points to him being at his best in high leverage situations.
I think you’d have to break out the stats for the types of games you mention–all of them. I, too, remember noting players failing(or succeeding) in an important spot, and sub-consciously(maybe not sub) edged toward the conclusion that this defined the sort of player they are. Great hitters fail over half of the time, and playoff games and games against contenders are apt to feature good pitchers.
What are his statistical splits between the first half of the season and the second half, especially over the past five years? The first half is when it counts; the second half is when it doesn’t matter, during the past five years.
Votto is the least of the Reds concerns.
You know what, when I first started following Redlegnation, I wasn’t aware of this NL”new” movement called analytics and/or sabremetrics. I had been “raised” so to say, on all the old school stats that were used to measure a player’s performance and/or worth.
What caught me off guard is the absolute disdain by a lot of the writers here for all these old school stats. In some cases it seemed like downright vitriol being spewed (hatred?) for these old school stats. Bcuz of all this, I bucked up against these new age stats bcuz it felt like I was being attacked personally.
One other thing that kinda caught me by surprise was my own insistence of adhering to these old school stats even though the reasoning behind these new age stats made sense. I even started to get excited by some if them and actually look for them in stat lines.
I think another part of the reason I bucked up against these new age stats were that the math behind them can be quite complicated sometimes…..and I hate complicated. I like simple, easy to figure stuff. One time I was telling one of the writers here (can’t remember who exactly) that I like to calculate baseball stats on my own sometimes but these new formulas take in so many factors that are just impossible for the average Joe to calculate. Somebody responded to my statement with this smart a** response (paraphrasing). The basic gist of it was this: It’s not your job to figure these up, it’s ours. So, just trust what we are telling you! That was a slap in the face that still stings a little to this day. But, I’ve got no choice but to trust whoever bcuz, like I said, some of these formulas take things into consideration that are just impossible for the average fan to calculate unless you live and breath baseball and pay attention to almost every game wether they be Reds games or not. It’s their job that they hopefully love to do.
BUT!…….. Stubbornness is something else. In realizing that SOME of these new age stats actually make sense but wanting to hold on to the old school stuff…. I’ve tried to find a 50/50 balance…whether it makes sense or not. So, I’ve developed this belief system that the old school stats are still relevant today but so are the new stats.
I say all this bcuz of this article and the part of this article that mentioned wanting to abolish the save statistic. Look, I ain’t got a convincing argument for wanting to keep the save stat around (mainly because I’ve got a pounding headache right now that is taking my will to live….just kidding about the wanting to die part). So, can ppl just leave some of the old school stats alone, plz!
I hear you, Sandman.
I don’t recall Hamilton playing the wall poorly. He made lots of great catches at and over the wall. Walls are hard. Running into a wall at speed is very likely to cause injury, hopefully minor but possibly major. If by playing the wall well you mean avoiding running into it, you’ve got a point, but that results in catchable balls turning into hits, and a certain number of us would have none of that. I have my doubts about Suarez as a shortstop.
Looking at the list of free agents next year I dont really see many game changers. I honestly would invest the money instead in making gabp a more competitive playing field this off season. I would like to see larger dimensions and the new artificial turf like in Arizona. Give free agent pitchers a reason to want to come to the reds in the future. Also it would bring a little more excitement to the game. Last night’s Suarez first inning triple ( should have been an inside the park HR) will probably go down as one of the most exciting plays of the year. At gabp that would be over the cf fence by 20 feet
It would evidently be difficult to expand the dimensions signifcantly, but I agree that I’d like to see it because I prefer the sort of game that would encourage. I’m not sure about attracting pitchers, though. I suspect that what brings free-agents is money, with the competitiveness of the team being a factor, but a lesser one. It might discourage free-agent power hitters, too, and the Reds, temporarily, are fairly rich in pitching and paupers on offense.
After seventeen seasons at GABP, I see little chance the Reds will spend money for dimension change. Except for the relatively short porch from right center to the foul line, the dimensions are not bad and compare with other ML playing fields. All parks have some negatives. If the Reds had wanted a bigger playing field, they would have gone to Broadway Commons where the Casino is now and Mt. Adams would have been in the background.
soon as i saw suarez to SS i stopped reading and you liked hamilton as a CF. i stopped reading.
Hamilton was a great cf. But he was a bad hitter. Steve was talking about fielding in his post.