“And all this science, I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week”—Bernie Taupin, Rocket Man
“In our baseball world today, it is not about pitching and defense. It is about finding hitters than can hit—Jeff “Cowboy” Brantley, June 19th, Cinicnnati Reds at New York Yankees
It was breathtakingly backwards, so much so that I had to rewind the broadcast to make sure he was actually saying what I was hearing. You get the feeling Brantley thinks hitters are scarce the way the bird flu made eggs scarce. Perhaps he believes there’s a slew of hitters denied entry to the batter’s box because of tariffs. Or maybe he just thinks hitters are stupid today.
If the men holding the lumber today do have the bird flu, the disease almost certainly arrives courtesy of infected carriers such as Paul Skenes, Jacob Misiorowski, and yes—Chase Burns.
Whatever his thought process, while wildly inaccurate, it’s nothing new. For years, Marty Brennaman railed against the process of hitting employed by Joey Votto. The Reds’ first baseman was making New York money in a conservative, working class town that valued chili over chateaubriand. And Marty hated it.
Joe Morgan, once ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball commentator, was taking regular jabs at analytics, specifically Michael Lewis’s book MoneyBall, leading Michael Schur, a TV series creator, a writer, and producer known for his work on series such as The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine to start a seminal blog he named “Fire Joe Morgan” that regularly hoisted the petards of “player-turned-expert” talking heads like John Kruk, Tim McCarver, and Harold Reynolds:
REYNOLDS: “It’s not on-base percentage. If you don’t score runs, it doesn’t matter.”
FJM: Fantastic. Reynolds naturally cites Rickey Henderson as the greatest lead-off hitter of all time, saying that he holds the all-time record for runs scored in a career. Apparently, it has not occurred to Reynolds, who is a former professional player, that Henderson couldn’t have possibly scored that many runs if he did not first get on base. (He is second all-time in walks with 2190.)
The crazy thing about Morgan’s disdain for MoneyBall and all it stood for was that little Joe was everything that advanced analytics celebrated: power, defense, knowledge of the strike zone and the value of on base percentage. The cognitive dissonance was staggering.
A founding member of Baseball Prospectus, Joe Sheehan is a national baseball contributor for The Athletic, who publishes his own very popular daily newsletter. He has written for Sports Illustrated back when SI employed great writers and was worth the read. He appears on radio broadcasts around the country. My frustration with what the Reds are preaching in an article I wrote here, contrary to the approach most of the league has grudgingly adopted to counteract the breathtaking velocity and movement that pitchers up and down the roster possess to keep batters off base led me to email Sheehan:
Reds fan here. Local media is driving me crazy. Terry Francona has transformed the team’s philosophy into what they call “The Art of Hitting,” essentially eschewing pulling the ball into the air, instead encouraging players to hit the ball the other way. Sacrifice bunting in now in vogue. They refer to it as situational hitting. Playing to the scoreboard. The Reds seem to be drifting away from analytics for what they see as a more holistic approach. This seems to be a function of ownership’s refusal to spend big money. What say you? — Richard F.
SHEEHAN: I actually had not heard tell of this. I went and looked, and the Reds are middle of the pack in sac bunts with a bottom-five OBP, indicative of a high rate of use. They’re 23rd in pulled fly balls, eighth in hitting to the opposite field. Last year, they were 12th in pulled fly balls and 26th in oppo rate. So the numbers back up your story that this is an intentional thing.
Here’s the rest of the story: The Reds are 24th in wOBA, 29th in wRC+, 23rd in runs scored, all worse than they were a year ago. By Clay Davenport’s estimates, they’re scoring eight fewer runs than you’d expect from their run elements, so it’s not like these approaches are finding more runs than they might otherwise score.
I can understand why this is driving you crazy. The Reds are preaching a style of play that will produce fewer runs. There’s real passion in many quarters of baseball to disprove what is true: That hitting the ball hard and up is the way to win, that pulled fly balls are the most productive batted balls, that you can’t string singles and bunts together to win a championship. The Reds, and disappointingly Francona, seem more concerned about making a point than winning games. This could well explain why so many of their young hitters have gone backward in recent years.
I don’t know what more you can do than point to the results. It’s not working.
That passion to disprove what is true that Joe cites is evident in Brantley’s almost daily diatribe dismissing analytics, a homily that has become personal for him:
“You know what, John, I’m not about that expected batting average or expected anything. What I’m about is results. And I don’t care if you hit it off the end or off the handle. If you get a hit and you get the run home, you’ve done the job.”
“You can hit a ton of fly balls that are warning track power and have a 95 MPH exit velocity and that’s your expected exit velocity. And you know what? You’re going to be hitting zero… this league is about results. I don’t care how hard you throw it or how hard you hit it.”
It’s a theme Jeff hits over and over again, perhaps channeling his inner Harold Reynolds. Results. Results without any acknowledgment of process, specifically the process of putting the barrel on the ball, not just the end of the bat or the handle, the very hallmarks of a hitter who just got fooled.
Putting the barrel on the ball was the very essence of Joey Votto’s philosophy. It’s why he made nearly 7,000 plate appearances before popping out to first base. Marty Brennaman once said that if Votto didn’t change his approach at the plate, the Reds were in trouble. Clearly, this line of thinking resonates with Brantley. Meanwhile, Joey would go on to finish second in the MVP voting soon after in 2017.
And while John Sadak would interject, suggesting there was a place for analytics, forcing Brantley to grudgingly agree, the Cowboy would then go right back to attacking that process with all the glee of a high school senior shoving a freshman nerd into a locker:
[Elly De La Cruz slaps a hit through the right side of the infield for a hit [exit velocity 59 via Statcast]
“If you draw up this hit on the computer, you’d immediately hit delete. This is about a 45 hopper through the right side of the infield and it and guess what, the Reds have runners on first and third and they just kicked their second pitcher out of the ball ballgame.”
[Another soft contact to right field]
“Put that in your analytics’ pipe and smoke it. Find the hole, baby.”
I once loved listening to Jeff Brantley. He’s a colorful character with considerable insight into the mechanics of pitching, expertise us average fans can appreciate and learn from. However, I’m beginning to view the Cowboy with the same disappointment I came to view Marty—not unlike an aging edifice slowly taken over by time and neglect. Time being the pastoral nature of the game Ken Burns eloquently documented, but no longer exists. Neglect being the inability or unwillingness to let go of shopworn traditions that defined the game in the 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond, and have been exposed by the sabermetric revolution as often inefficient and counterintuitive, yet still promulgated by players of those eras like John Smoltz.
Back when Johnny Cueto debuted with the Reds, there were barely 200 pitches thrown at 100 mph or more in major league baseball. Last year, there were nearly 4,000 thrown. Nearly 12,000 fewer balls were put in play last year than in 2008. It’s not just velocity. It’s hellish spin. Voodoo movement. It’s training facilities like Driveline which have leveraged science to build arms that have the skills to fool hitters like a three card monte street hustler in Times Square.
The talk around the Reds these days revolves around situational hitting, or what Valaika calls “playing to the scoreboard.” That involves moving runners into scoring position, sometimes giving up an out in the process. I’ve spoken before of how we instinctively value runs put on the scoreboard via offense much more than good defense that keeps runs off the scoreboard, runs that otherwise would have crossed home plate for the bad guys.
Human nature also does something similar with the tension that evolves with getting runners into scoring position—that is, runners on second and third—and the profound disappointment we experience when those runners never make it home. We fail to acknowledge the cost of this process, the outs surrendered, the compromised swings taken to move runners along, and the big innings that are lost to get a single run home.
What we forget is detailed in an article Russel Carleton wrote titled, “All Runners Are In Scoring Position.” In it, Carleton points out a few incontrovertible facts. The modern game has seen fewer runs scored from what’s typically thought of as “scoring position,” and more from other places—first base and home plate.
“Visit a local cloud and you’ll hear many things. There’s the one about the death of batting average and the constant swinging for the fences, but if you listen closely, you’ll probably hear the one about the lack of “situational hitting.” It’s a term that can be bent into many shapes, but usually ends up referring back to driving in those all important runners in scoring position. And kids these days don’t do it anymore.
The modern approach to hitting leaves a greater proportion of runners stranded on second and third base. Those runners are only there 20% and 10% of the time, respectively. And runners in scoring position, of any configuration, happen 25.6% of the time.
The majority of plate appearances (56.2%) took place with no runners at all, and an additional 18.3% took place with a runner only at first. And there is always a batter. Skills that drive in runners from first base and the batter’s box are going to be more useful more of the time. The number of runs gained from the extra home runs over the past two decades outweighs the number of extra runs left on second and third. And by a lot.
All runners are in scoring position. If you only look at the ones at second and third and don’t consider what a strategy does to the batter and runner at first, then you miss the point entirely.”
It’s been said that Mark Twain once wrote: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always 20 years behind the times.”
That feels oddly relevant when discussing a local media that views Reds success through the lens of the Big Red Machine some 50 years ago. Sparky Anderson was a dugout deity, so it’s no wonder Tommy Thrall proclaimed the hire of Francona worth 10 wins. How’s that working out?
Pete Rose was a winner. It was his defining trait according to many. Spencer Steer is a winner. Brantley told us. These bromides persist to this very day. After Bregman hit the two-run blast that decided the July 11 game in favor of the Cubs, Sam LeCure said this:
“He’s a winning player. When situations arise he seems to rise with them.”
Does he, though? I looked up his batting average with RISP in 2026. It was a decidedly un-winning-like .189.
The more we ignore the realities of the game today in favor of our precious past, the more we delude ourselves.
It’s pretty clear that people that work for the Reds have been tasked with the job of selling the new “Art of Hitting” philosophy employed by Francona, Valaika, Krall and Co. I’ll leave it to others to assess blame. Was Nick Krall always heading in this direction? Did the change come with the arrival of Terry Francona and Chris Valaika? Or has Phil Castellini’s determination to build a winner with nothing more than the draft and development while keeping dollar bills on the bench the determining factor in a strategy that moves in opposition to what most of the rest of baseball is doing to combat the obscene advantage pitching and defense command?
In the end, I can’t help coming back to Joe Sheehan’s indictment of the old school edict that the game hasn’t changed:
There’s real passion in many quarters of baseball to disprove what is true: That hitting the ball hard and up is the way to win, that pulled fly balls are the most productive batted balls, that you can’t string singles and bunts together to win a championship.
Argue against this at your own risk. For some, it’s their job five days a week.
I got confused by some of the analytics. I understand OPS+ and ERA+ and also WAR.
The two highest career WAR totals by any player who wore a Reds uniform are by Frank Robinson and Tom Seaver. Yet more people might say Johnny Bench or Joe Morgan before them. Seaver was only a Red for 6 years but Morgan only for 8 years.
Looking at the list of all-time WAR leaders, you see a reassuring list of greats that should be there. That tells me WAR is doing a pretty good job of identifying value.
Seaver is 22nd on the list and Robinson tied for 24th. Johnny Bench once said Morgan was the best player on the team and I refused to believe it. But WAR has Joe at 31st all-time with over 100 WAR. Bench comes in at 83rd with 75 WAR.
So, Johnny knew what he was talking about.
I’ve always thought analytics has a tough time accurately evaluating catchers. The skill set is so complicated. It’s also why Reds fans don’t appreciate Stephenson and Trevino today. What they bring to the diamond every day goes far beyond the box score.
I had the Seaver debate with Marty B (via his wife on Facebook). It was friendly but you always lose any debate with Marty B.
I think Seaver (only pitcher in last 100 years with 300 W, 3000K, and sub 3.00 ERA; Walter Johnson is the other one ever) and Robinson are way undervalued by many fans and baseball gurus.
Agree on Tyler S and Trevino. Two MLB caliber C is a luxury many teams don’t have.
@richardfinch. Now that is some great reading material. You put it all out there. Thanks Richard
we have a ballpark built for home run hitters and the Reds have tried to build the lineup with scrappy athletic players instead of beer league softball type hitters who could stake our pitchers like Hunter and Chase etc to early leads right off the bat. the results might not be better but the games would be more fun to watch.
That’s not something I talked about because the piece was already a couple of thousand words long.
But, yeah. It’s not Chase field where balls can easily find the outfield grass punching it the other way.
That’s great in theory but you’d literally be giving up that Chase Burns to draft a Nick Kurtz , right ?? Sooooo
i was thinking sign free agent big ol’ softball players and everytime they hit a home run have the coach hand them a frosty mug of beer as they rounded third.
@Chris, sign me up! Except I don’t have much power to earn those frosty mugs of beer.
Big ol’ softball players wouldn’t get much beer, Chris. Noted without further (for now) comment: our Reds are 10th in baseball in homers. The Brewers are 28th. Before anybody decides that I’m dismissing the value of homers, I’m not.
To carry this a bit further: The Brewers have the 3rd highest OBP in the league. The Reds are 24th. The Brewers, 28th in homers, are 4th in runs. The Reds, 10th in homers, are 22nd in runs.
Brewers also seem to hit the other way a fair amount.
We should note, before we start talking about nothing but homers, that Richard documented the importance of getting on base. It’s not, ideally, either/or: 3-run homers are 3 times as valuable as solo shots. The Reds recently scored 3 runs with 3 solo homers and lost. Preventing the other team from getting men on base and hitting 3-run homers is as valuable as scoring 3 runs yourself. Good teams are multi-dimensional.
Think we tried that with Dunn and Griffy crew but had terrible pitching. Balance is a real thing.
Agree wholeheartedly.
I tend to take a nuanced view of analytics in baseball. It isn’t the ultimate solution, but it’s certainly not something to ignore—numbers have always been the backbone of the sport. It actually mirrors my feelings toward Artificial Intelligence. Working in IT as a middle-aged professional means I am constantly balancing a love for innovation with a bit of “grumpy old man” skepticism. But looking at the Reds, whatever organizational philosophy they are deploying simply isn’t working. When a strategy fails this consistently, the accountability has to start at the very top.
Disturbing but enlightening details vis a vis 2025 vs 2026 results. Helps explain some of the current offensive disappointment. Takes time to get enough data to understand results but recent expectations for CES and Hinds were high and lots of frustration for their failures in our organization. If they light up for their new teams that will really dump on our apparent approach. But if you’re not a power hitter OBP is the priority and “using the whole field” as a hitter makes sense. The 100 mph pitch # helps focus on how much tougher it is to hit today.
I’ve said it before but I will say it again – it’s not just the velocity and the spin. I mean that is a big part of it, but it’s also how many pitchers guys see and how infrequently the hitters see guys over and over.
Ted Williams faced fewer pitchers in his entire career than James Wood has. Wood played his first full season of MLB in 2025. He has played in 333 career games. But he’s already seen more pitchers than Ted Williams did, who played in 2292 games.
I will have to say that I hadn’t really thought about that fact of having to face so many different pitchers until I read you pointing it out a few weeks ago (could be days because I’m forgetful). I think that makes total sense. Probably at least part of the reason that batting averages are down across MLB.
The days when Williams and Ruth and that “ilk” played 22 games a season against pitchers who threw 9 innings every game they pitched, more or less. For sure, there is a lot of truth in this.
That’s an astute observation. So, what is an effective countermeasure for hitters to employ to handle this problem a little better than their competition?
I don’t know that there is one that they can utilize. They just need to see pitchers more often, which isn’t going to happen with how the game is run today. Interleague. Fewer divisional games. How teams use bullpens earlier and also use the last 2-3 spots as a “shuttle” between AAA and MLB guys who all throw 97 (though some ineffectively at times).
Has simulation technology been developed for batting practice to help the hitters see the opposing pitchers they are most likely to face? That might help, especially if you are one of the first teams to employ it.
Yes and no. There’s the Trajekt thing that can replicate the pitch movements fairly close. And it does project a pitcher onto a screen. But it’s not the pitcher you’re going to face. The arm angle isn’t going to be perfect/right. That means a guy that hides the ball wall isn’t something it’s going to help you with. It’s certainly better than just a typical pitching machine and all that, but it’s still limited.
For those who haven’t seen the Trajekt machine, here’s a good video on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCSI3PYrQk4
Conversely, today’s pitchers see more hitters than did the pitchers in Williams’ era. Presumably the point is greater familiarity because of more exposure, but that cuts both ways.
But it really doesn’t. The data shows us that the more often hitters see pitchers the better they hit. That works both for in the same game and within the same season.
Thanks again, Doug. Always enjoy learning something new from you. I know you’ve made this point before, but it’s fleshed out nicely in the comments today.
Recently the Reds hit back-to-back-to back solo home runs. Dramatic? Yes. Exciting? Yes. Winning? No. Our heroes lost that game 5-3, as I recall. A home run with nobody on base is like a bombastic speaker who ultimately says very little. So here’s the thing: Anyone who is slavishly devoted to analytics is no less a lazy thinker who uses absolutism as a crutch than one who utterly dismisses analytics. The truth, as it is wont, lies somewhere in between.
Well, what you’re doing here is selecting a very anecdotal example to prove a specious point. What advanced analytics is doing is looking at the big picture, what happens in all situations and coming to a conclusion, not just cherry picked examples you believe prove a point.
Barry Larkin has been rightly criticized and even laughed at for the following:
“John Sadak: “Home runs do win games.”
Barry Larkin: “They also stop rallies.”
Barry Larkin killed 198 rallies in his career.
I absolutely hate when someone says that. Possibly the dumbest take ever on baseball.
By saying that “homers stop rallies”, the implication is that you would actually prefer something lesser than a home run. That a single or double that scores fewer runs but “keeps the rally going” is somehow better than the homer that scores more runs but leaves the bases empty.
I mean, seriously? In no universe does that make any sense.
Says someone who clearly no idea of what analytics says.
So if they had hit 2 opposite field singles and scored zero runs they would be much better off?
Maybe the reds during batting practice should change to the batting pitching throw from the mound. What could it hurt?
I think as fans, metrics is quite nerdworthy, something we don’t really “””need””” to know as the season progresses. But after it’s all said and evaluated, we probably will discover that the guys “who really helped” the Reds have better metrics. There are some examples where players outperformed their baseball card, which tends to show up the next year when he’s re-signed. I see a lot of that with this franchise.
As fans, we can choose to follow or ignore metrics–that’s our right. But organizationally, that’s unacceptable (see my comments below).
That said, you hit on something I believe is relevant to the current labor debate — baseball tends to reward past performance, not actual performance. To some extent, that’s true in every sport, but MLB’s 6-year bar to reaching free agency makes it a little more true in baseball. Given that production is trending more towards younger players, this is another metric suggesting now is a good time to make a structural change in how players are paid — perhaps this is a topic that could help the union and owners find a bridge to a better way forward.
BK, I’m not clear on the difference between “past” and “actual,” unless actual is current. Current makes some sense, but represents a very small sample size and is easily affected by temporary factors such as injury. Always enjoy your comments.
Yes, “current” would have been a better word choice in my post than “actual.”
Another excellent piece, Richard. Thank you for the time you invested in putting this together. I always enjoy having my thinking challenged.
One of the things I learned in my working career is that good processes generally lead to good results. On the other hand, bad processes rarely deliver good results. So, having a good plan, or what most would call a good organizational strategy, matters a lot. Metrics (statistics) are incredibly useful in shaping a good strategy.
You’ve identified a potential flaw in the Red’s strategy. I suspect that there are likely others. One of the things I dislike most about fan sites is the persistent and reflexive mantra to fire the responsible party, whoever that might be. It’s almost like an “easy button” that will somehow resolve a complex problem in the snap of one’s fingers.
That said, your analysis is just another piece of the puzzle that says the Reds have a poor strategy. I believe their greatest problem is that they have become too insular, with so many of their leaders having enjoyed long careers within the organization. Continuity is a double-edged sword, and one of the best things the Reds could do is bring in a handful of experienced and currently on sabbatical baseball front office leaders and examine ALL of the organization’s processes over the final two months of the season. Being in last place with a division-worst farm team is a bad place to be. Replacing people simply to “hold them accountable” hasn’t worked in the dugout, and it may not be any more successful in the Front Office. But they badly need an outside evaluation of multiple processes to shape how to best move forward.
Alternatively, they can clean house starting in the Front Office. But a new regime would rightly expect a reasonable period of time to install its strategy, so that would likely mean a rebuild. After 20 years of failure, I don’t think the fanbase will stomach a rebuild where elite talents like EDLC and Hunter Greene are transformed into future value.
Well said BK. I am the same way in my industry. Put good processes in place, the right people to manage those processes and team members to execute the processes. Not every interaction will be successful but it will more will be when we follow them.
Saying all of this at least at this point we have some understanding on what the process is for the reds which feels like a step in the right direction with communication. We know Johnson and his philosophies are taught from the bottom up. My understanding is the same is true now for our hitting philosophy which does not give me the warm and fuzzies.
Thanks for reading and commenting BK. Always appreciated.
Interesting point, OTR, I read the other day with Verlander, currently at 266 wins, retiring after this season, we will likely never see another 300 winner in MLB.
I really enjoyed this article, Richard.
BK – I wish we could upvote on the board.
Great points, BK! Very well written.
BK, in support of your point about outside evaluation.
Last year (and this is not a Nick Krall critique though I certainly have issues with him), our POBO said something like We are going to run our evaluations throughout the organization. This occurred soon after being defeated handily by the Dodgers. My thought in response was, Who then evaluates the evaluators, especially given the limited results on the field? My second thought at that moment was, It sure would be good to bring in an outside source(s) to evaluate our strategies and systems. So, yes, closed systems, with all of their respective silos if not fiefdoms, run risks of poor self evaluation. Honest performance appraisals are hard enough as it is.
Excellent comment BK! One addition – effective business processes have feedback loops which is where metrics come in. You need to define and aggressively monitor success measures, then make adjustments on the fly to improve the processes and outcomes. Doesn’t sounds like the Reds.
I’m pretty sure I remember that particular game with Elly hitting and Brantley commentating. I agree, it sounded dumb then, and it still sounds dumb now.
I am always amazed at how many old-school baseball fans like to dismiss the impact of random variance (or luck, if you prefer). Yes, sometimes that 59 mph dribbler drives in a run. And sometimes the 110 mph screamer goes right into the outfielder’s glove. That’s random variance. But over time, which type of hit is going to lead to more hits, more runs, and more team wins? I think we all know the answer to that.
As far as I know, no hitter has ever mastered the ability to “hit it where they ain’t”. If someone did, then they would never make an out, since it would be foolish to not just avoid the defender every play. Make way for the first ever 1.000 hitter!
It turns out that batters have very little control over where the ball goes. Whether the ball is pulled or hit the other way, sure. But no hitter can simply avoid the opposing fielders. In order for hitters to give themselves the best chance for a batted ball to be a hit and not an out, is to hit it hard. The higher the exit velocity, the higher the chance of a hit.
Am I advocating for batters to simply “swing for the fences”? No. I want batters to strive to make good contact. That means hit it hard, preferably a line drive with some elevation. That’s what will lead to hits, runs, and wins.
Agree 100%. Thanks for the input. I think when baseball outlawed the shift, people thought batting averages would improve dramatically. Teams just leaned even more into hitters’ tendencies and used analytics to shift incrementally to foil them.
Batters cannot control where the ball goes after it leaves the bat any more than pitchers can control it. Hence, three true outcomes and the value of FIP.
I generally like the Cowboy and I think the context of him talking about warning track outs with a high exit velo was describing Hayes early in the season. In that sense he was right that no amount of analytics can tell you to ignore what your eyes are watching.
By even the most basic counting numbers the Reds offensive strategy is a failure. I would say the challenge is twofold. They need to be both trying to elevate the ball pull side early in the count (TySteve is the most frustrating example) AND more contact oriented with two strikes. That requires hitting skill that many on the roster don’t possess either from lack of coaching or lack of talent.
Absolutely the insular nature of the franchise is a driving factor in why the Reds are years behind the curve (not my words, many an opposing team broadcaster has echoed those sentiments).
Alas, we’ve got bigger fish to fry—there’s half a roster of players who need to be moved ASAP.
If we are so out of step and at a deficit with hitting style, where will you move these players exactly.
BK – I wish we could upvote on the board.
Great article Richard. Very thought and conversation provoking.
Thanks for reading it, DW.
@Richard, you did a good job with this article. It really has me thinking on the Reds’ organization as a whole and what some of the strategies they are using that are flawed. There are some nice comments here from others as well. Good work, Sir.
Thanks. Appreciated.
I think this comes down to hitters constantly swinging for the fences against 3-4 pitchers/game throwing maximum effort. I’ll bet on the pitcher every time.
I’m not a fan of advanced metrics for many reasons. Regardless, you still have to find ways to get on base, advance runners and score runs. This Reds team strikes out too much (#2 in NL) and the worst batting average in the league. No baseball fan will complain about winning baseball no matter what it looks like.
We only have 4 players that could legitimately start on other clubs (Elly, Sal, Stewart and Stevenson). The rest:
– McClain, Hayes, Friedl should not be on any MLB roster,
– Marte, Bleday and Suarez are all bench players.
This roster was not constructed to succeed under any scenario.
Think you should look at more rosters there are a lot of pathetic hitters in this league.
My definition of “situational hitting” differs wildly from Valaika’s. For example, I get physically ill from Reds hitters taking hittable pitches (ESPECIALLY with runners on base and one or two outs), and then striking out (often even on a called third). Total lack of baseball IQ, IMO.
I think all of us share that particular frustration, Paleblue I suspect, but do not know, that a good deal of the trouble is that few of the Reds are good hitters.
Very thought-provoking article, Richard, followed by an outstanding discussion–as your articles often are.
Analytics tell us that McLain (among others) is struggling mightily, but I wish it could tell us more about WHY he is struggling mightily. He swings at too many bad pitches, especially high ones, but we pretty much know that without advanced metrics.
Billy Hamilton was a very light hitter primarily because he wasn’t very strong, and his low bat speed had the practical effect of making the sweet spot on his bat very small. With McLain, it seems more qualitative than quantitative as to why on earth he’s seemingly always in a pitcher’s count.
I don’t know how they solve problems that arise between the hitters’ ears, and it’s pretty apparent that Chris Valaika doesn’t, either.
McLain cannot judge the strike zone very well (is he guessing?).
Billy Hamilton would not adjust and hit DOWN on the ball….Keep it in play. As a light hitter, he hit too many routine flyballs. With his speed, he might have had more infield hits if he had, and also learning to bunt. These are fundamental things he should have learned in the Reds’ organization as a minor-leaguer.
Does this go exactly against hit balls in air and pull scenario that was put forth in article?
I think that hitters should adjust the things from analytics to their own ability. Billy Hamilton (and whether you thought the Reds should have even drafted him, based on this, is probably a key question), should have tailored his approach commensurate with his physical ability. He was not as big as Joey Votto, but he could have, in many ways, adapted his approach to be similar to Votto’s.
In a slightly contrarian opinion, that while the meta- version of advanced analytics could be very true and valuable, the micro – version (in the case of individual players) may be misleading.
Not every player is Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan or Johnny Bench.
Not every pitcher is Tom Seaver, or Justin Verlander.
I am not trying to be obtuse here, stating the obvious, but players have to play according to their talent.
1) get players with real hitting talent. The Reds seem to focus on getting “great tool athletes” (ie, Justin Lebron) but it remains to be seen if he can learn better hitting habits.
2) understand what your limitations are as a player. Not every player can generate 110 mph exit velocity with a launch angle to exit the park. Again, not trying to be obtuse here, as this is obvious. But you couldn’t make Pete Rose into Johnny Bench as a hitter, and vice-versa.
Pete once said the he could probably hit 40 HR in a season like Johnny, but he would bat .220. He would have to radically change his swing, change approach, and probably not be as valuable a player. We have a guy that probably will hit .220 and hit 40 HR with the Reds this year (Geno Suarez, if he stays the season) and a lot of the fans are pretty unhappy with him.
Sometimes it is hard, as truly great player that Joe Morgan was, to see the forest for the trees. He did everything right. High OBP, high slugging %, stolen bases, good defensive 2nd baseman. He worked at everything to get better. A lot of players are not so talented or motivated. I don’t think he saw what he did as a player as the ideal kind of “analytics” player that he can be seen as, in retrospect.
Joey Votto understood what he was doing. Marty had seen a lot of great players with the BRM, and did not see Votto in the mold….and Joey wasn’t. But Joey did his best to make the Reds win. Drive in runs, score runs, get on base, hit for a high average. It was not his fault that for a lot of years, he was not surrounded by like – minded and talented players. And some poor pitching.
Joey was unusual, as that he understood analytics, and tailored his hitting to be that kind of player. Pete Rose, on the other hand (compared to Marty), repeatedly said that Joey was an elite hitter. Pete, in part, understood what Joey was doing.
What this means it that a team either acquires players with the requisite talent, or tries to make players into that kind of “analytics” hitter. Dusty Baker eschewed base-on-balls (walks) as “clogging up the bases”. So this didn’t start yesterday. But Dusty probably respected what Votto did while he was his manager.
The Francona-Valaika approach, if I understand it, will work in some games, depending on who they are facing. But is it the optimal hitting strategy for a season? Probably not. A smart guy at the plate understands who he is facing (does he, with seeing pitchers less and less?), and should adjust accordingly. If a pitcher will not throw a fastball on the inside part of the plate, it makes it hard to pull the ball for power. Sal Stewart seems to understand that, as he hits for power the other way. But he has the strength and talent to do that. It remains to be see if say, Noelvi Marte can learn to do that. If the coaches cannot understand the value of analytics in the approach to hitting (which seems to be in evidence with the Reds), then regardless of the talent, they are stuck in this rut.
I will also say that Craig Counsell has said in the past that he really likes the analytics approach. He seems to understand. That may be related to his success in Milwaukee and his (limited) success with the Cubs….they have pitching problems too.
I think that generally, the Reds organization either does not understand Analytics, or deliberately ignores them, as they show a real problem with evaluating their own talent, and the talent that they sometimes trade for. I wonder if they even look at the back of a players baseball card, sometimes (Ke’Bryan Hayes..THEY CAN FIX HIM!).
There’s an embedded assumption in the first part of your comment that teams are trying to turn players into a typecast model. I’m not sure that is a valid assumption.
On the other hand, there’s at least a pretty good list of 4-tool athletes that the Reds couldn’t teach to hit that makes the Lebron Philon pick concerning to many of us. In this case, we’re very much questioning a process that seems to ignore illuminating metrics that evoke our skepticism. One’s ability to apply data is critically important.
I appreciate your comment, because that was kind of my observation about “analytics”. I think you can teach hitters a kind of goal, and it is up to them to try to fit it into their ability.
1) Know the strike zone (well, yes, of course)
2) protect the plate against strikes (especially with 2 strikes) that you can’t hit. That was a particular Joey Votto skill.
3) know what you can handle (as a pitch) and be ready to swing at the pitch that you can handle.
4) be aware of the pitcher, and how he pitches. And this is where the above comments about hitters seeing pitchers fewer times is very insightful and meaningful. If you have a lot of “muscle memory”, for want of a better term, for particular pitchers you have seen repeatedly, that helps. Seeing pitchers very infrequently (less divisional play), may be a bigger factor in the decline of offense than a lot of observers think.
I dunno. Analytics certainly can tell coaches, players and management something of value. Discarding them because “that’s not the way we played the game!” is a pretty poor response.
I think analytics just puts a lot more numbers on things that the smarter managers and management people kind of knew intuitively, as it were. Joe Morgan and Pete Rose certainly knew the value of OBP, they just approached it differently. Joe would work walks. Pete wanted to be the first $100,000 singles hitter (and doubles, etc.).
Minor bone to pick in your post – based on the first part of the season, there is no way Suarez is getting to 40 homers. Looks more likely he ends up with half that.
It is true that fans are unhappy with his play this year, but it is mainly because the power has largely been missing. I would gladly take that .220 average if it came with 40 homers.
Besides that – great post, David.
I quit watching all/most of the Reds games over a month ago, but does Tito ever hit-n-run? Thats actually been known to get defenders out of position and open up holes. All I see lately is rally killing double plays. I don’t know how you get 8 hits and 3 walks or whatever without any runs (3 solo HR loss) without being completely passive on the bases and hitting into double-plays.
I don’t see many, if any, hit and runs, Indy, but I think it’s possible that few of the Reds handle the bat well enough to execute it.
Excellent post. Just gonna leave this here re situational hitting and the bountiful harvest of runs that refined approach has brought us:
Bases empty
MLB .235/.308/.391, 95 wRC+
Reds .239/.317/.400, 95 wRC+, 15th out of 30
Runners on
MLB .255/.332/.416, 106 wRC+
Reds .218/.301/.385, 83 wRC+, 30th
Runners in scoring position
MLB .251/.335/.410, 104 wRC+
Reds .220/.315/.398, 90 wRC+, 27th
“High leverage” as defined by Fangraphs (far as I can tell this means Leverage Index > 2 which is exactly what it sounds like)
MLB .248/.332/.394, 98 wRC+
Reds .200/.280/.354, 68 wRC+, 28th (in 333 plate appearances)
If they’re doing something different in those situations, maybe they should stop. This wasn’t a problem in 2023.
Interesting stats. It appears that while most of the MLB teams become better hitters with men on base, the Reds actually become worse. That’s a huge part of why we have struggled to score runs.
Normally I would’ve just assumed that it was due to random variation again. But, if the Reds are actually changing their approach to hitting when runners are on – clearly it is backfiring. Go back to the same approach as they do with the bases empty.
Doc, I agree. For a month or so, I think the random variation explanation is the best one. But for 3.5 to 4 months? What could possibly explain that?
1.Reds have the same guys getting on over and over again, with the same guys behind them who consistently fail? I think we’ve seen enough lineup shakeups to know that’s not it.
2. Opposing pitchers aren’t even really trying until a Red gets on base, at which point they’re able to execute at will against such a feeble offense? Opposing use of analytics could also explain this; they just really dive into finely tuned strategies against individual hitters in these scenarios.
3. Combination or other?
Either way, interesting questions.
Yeah, you’re generally facing easier pitching with runners on – worse pitchers, teetering, and in some cases affected by pitching from the stretch. If you don’t hit any better, something is wrong. If you hit worse against the softer competition… over a large enough sample… something is very wrong.
It really does look to me like they’re trying to cut down, and they don’t have the personnel to make that approach sing. Stewart can do it because he’s a hitting savant, and perhaps he should. Trevino and Friedl might as well do it. No one else.
Even as a bit of a statistics troglodyte, I can appreciate the article and the perspective. As a practicing project manager for over 30 years of my 40+ year career, I view the stats as cumulative reflections of historical performance and that history is almost always the best predictor of what will come. Sure, there will always be outliers and times where an individual player catches the proverbial “lightening in a bottle”. But if you take the longer view, the variations are going to be pretty small.
Thanks for helping to keep us grounded, Richard. We don’t all have to agree in order to discuss in a civil manner.
Replaying Cowboy’s comments, I do hear at least some of what you are saying. I still love his game analysis and I think he’s venting some frustration. But that doesn’t mean his word is gospel.
I’m a little old school on stats…I still mainly look at Average, OBP. And then of course HRs and RBIs. ERA, Wins, and innings pitched for Pitchers is still what I focus on.
I think the one sort of newer stat I like is WAR as it gives me some metric to measure a player’s abilities as a total player, whether it’s always fair or not is another question, but it’s a start.
I honestly still don’t really know what OPS means lol. I feel a little dumb because of that.
I like Brantley as an announcer overall. I don’t think I did back in the day as much when he started. I feel like he’s still one of the few announcers to kind of criticize in a good way players when needed. He’s not as harsh as Marty could be from the times I’ve listened though. As far as him not being big on the analytics, I could see how that rubs people the wrong way.
I see a little bit of a cultural divide between Richard and Brantley…North East kind of intellectual based mindset, vs. a Southern laid back, maybe more feelings based mindset. Both mindsets have their pros and cons I think.
OPS is not all that hard to follow. You said you already follow OBP, which tracks how well a player gets on base. You are probably also familiar with Slugging % (SLG), which measures a player’s power output. OPS is simply adding the OBP plus the SLG.
As for what’s good… I believe the average MLB OPS is around .720, and obviously certain positions will have higher OPS than others. Take for instance, Tyler Stephenson. His OPS of .680 looks bad, but then the average MLB OPS for catchers is just .676. So based on that, TySteve is actually an above average hitting catcher.
doc I realize I still don’t understand slugging too well either, I need to brush up on understanding that too!
I hear you on Stephenson, but I think he’s just reached that number due to being hot a few weeks recently for the most part.
I think that is another interesting thing to consider with stats, is when the player produced, what parts of the season, parts of the game. I think that was a bit of the criticism of Adam Dunn at times is some of his Homer’s were when the game was out of reach and not really important to the particular game.
This is the worst hitting team I have ever seen in my 70 years of Reds baseball. Hitting is a lost art because they are selfish,taught to swing to hit homers and to be on sport center highlights. I was taught to get the runner in from second and third at all costs. You choke down, you make contact, you don’t strike out you make contact right or left side to get the runner home. That is situational hitting and however you do that is what matters. Because all of your analytics mean nothing unless you score more runs than your opponent. The Reds do not teach this in the minors or the major league teams. Milwaukee does and they kicked our butts for years. Tony Perez used to say you see the ball you hit the ball. This organization will never win until we get new ownership and smart baseball Mgt to run the entire minor and major league organization. Hitting talent is watered down in both leagues. Hit to win as a team not as a selfish individual. I don’t watch the Reds much anymore because they can’t get runners across the plate and don’t know
how to play the game we love.
Thanks Richard, for your interesting article. A lot of work and well done. I’m from the Tony Perez school of hitting and the Lou Pinella school of the eye test. The Red’s pitching is coming together so maybe they can make a run for 2nd. place in the NLC. We’ll see.
I simply don’t see enough hitting the opposite way with runners in scoring positions. They actually are trying to pull the ball nearly every time. This really frustrates me. However at the same time I deplore bunting sacrifice to move a player from 2nd to 3rd. I see the good teams hitting the other way when the situation calls for it. I believe it was the Brewers recently hit about 5 consecutive at bats the other way. Most of the the clincher decision point about going the other way is the fact the pitcher is constantly pitching on the outside. Barry Larkin made the HOF because of this ability in my opinion.
Here are some actual YTD statistics:
#1 in hitting the other way (Oppo%) is MIL at 26.1%. CIN is 10th at 24.3%.
CIN hits the 7th most fly balls in baseball with a FB% of 40.3%. MIL hits the least with a FB% of 34.2%. Conversely, MIL has the highest GB% at 47.7% while the Reds are at 24th at 39.8%.
CIN has the 2nd worst K% in baseball at 25.0% (its actually tied with LAA for the worst but I think CIN is listed 2nd because of rounding).
Lesson? Play like MIL.
Exit velo is garbage as is launch angle. Ask any former great hitter and they all say the same thing. Be on the same plane as the ball.
When the art retakes the science, we will see good hitters again. It starts by not striking out 25.0% of the time.
Re: “Exit velo is garbage as is launch angle.”
Anyone who would like to choose to not be ignorant of some basic baseball analytics is encouraged to explore the following two links and maybe learn something.
BA and wOBA for exit velocities:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_hit_probability
Various charts relating EV and LA to BA, ISO, and wRC+:
https://www.bluebirdbanter.com/2021/12/20/22837811/effective-exit-velocity-background-data-and-charts
“Any former great hitter”
This was worth a chuckle. It’s like he didn’t even read the article.
The evidence is right there but some insist the earth is flat.
Anybody who says “exit velo is garbage” has likely never played the game. I would also doubt that any great hitter would ever suggest such nonsense.
If someone has ever played or just watched baseball, they would know that hitting the ball hard is almost always better. Just look at the statistics for exit velocity, it is blatantly obvious that hitting the ball harder results in more hits as well as more power. I honestly can’t believe anyone would try to argue otherwise.
Launch angle, while maybe not as obvious as exit velo, is also important. Why? Because line drives are better. Compared to fly balls, liners do sacrifice a little bit of power, but gain a lot more base hits. Compared to grounders, line drives also result in more hits, not to mention a massive difference in power.
Being exactly on the same plane as the ball, as you suggested, will actually result in a ground ball. Statcast defines a line drive as being between 10 and 25 degree launch angle, so for the best outcome, hitters should strive to achieve at least some lift on the ball.
I absolutely played the game. My point is that exit velo does not matter to a good leadoff hitter and, when the game returns to normal, a #2 hitter. Exit velo matters to 3/4/5 hitters but it should not matter if it is to the detriment of someone’s K rate.
And yes, I read the article. However, I reserve the right to agree in part, and disagree in part.
One of my degrees is in Statistics and I’m pleading with many of you that it is ruining the game. Correction. It not the statistics/analytics, but some of its applications.
I have a ton of fellow baseball fans – that all played the game – that are turned off by:
1. Starting pitchers getting pulled way too soon.
2. A pitching injury epidemic.
3. The Jack Clark result for all 9 hitters in the lineup (if you don’t know what that is, YOU don’t know the game).
4. A lack of fundamentals.
5. Way too many timeouts for replays and challenges.
6. Managers micro-managing their teams based on science not the art of the game.
7. The inability to move runners around with bunts, stolen bases, hit and run activity, or just simple ground outs (news flash: strike outs and fly outs do not advance the runner (well deep fly balls do).
8. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T-cgd7SDciU
This is Will Clark talking about hitting on plane. If anyone of you are/were a better hitter, you’re in the HOF and have better things to do than argue in this thread.
The great hitters of all time all know this; Hit the ball hard over their heads. That’s called exit velo and launch angle.
TJ Fridl’s increased exit velocity and launch angle got him sent to AAA this year and crippled our team for 2+ months.
Not everyone is Kyle Schwarber. That’s what’s missing in this philosophy.
Bret Butler was a great player. Thank God he did not buy into this. Plenty of other examples. This works for sluggers. It produces way more Eugenio Suarez outcomes than John Olerud numbers.
All this discussion is fun or allows fans to vent but could it just be that Reds hitters are bad? Sometimes stats are the result of good performance, not the cause. Players with low exit velocity can’t just swing harder to be successful. Their exit velocity is low because they don’t recognize pitches properly to make hard contact . Swing harder and they miss more. If you were the Brewers, which Reds position players would you want? If it is just team philosophy, what former Reds (from the last 5 years) are thriving on other teams? India? Farley? Senzel? Fairchild? Luxury? Not excusing management because they drafted/traded for the players.
None of those players turned into great hitters after they left the Reds. India has OPS’d .669 and .623 during his 2 years in KC. Fraley OPS’d .681 after joining the Rays last year, and has been at .690 this year. Fairchild put up .606 and .565 since leaving. And after OPS’ing .614 in 2024, Senzel is now out of the majors.
All of these players had their best seasons as a Red, and have been worse after leaving. It appears that it’s not just a team philosophy, those guys just aren’t all that good.
The defining characteristic of 21st-century baseball has been identifying inefficiencies and exploiting them before everyone else catches on. During the Moneyball era, it was all about on-base percentage. Over the past decade, it has evolved into advanced analytics—using mountains of data to optimize everything from player evaluation to in-game decision-making.
The best-run organizations don’t just adopt these ideas; they lead the way. More importantly, they’re willing to abandon yesterday’s advantage and pivot to the next one once the rest of the league catches up.
I have no idea what that next frontier looks like over the next 20 years, or how teams eventually move beyond today’s obsession with exit velocity, spin rate, launch angle, and every other measurable metric. But I’m convinced there will be a next thing. Whether it’s a renewed/different valuation for traditional stats like batting average, RBIs, and pitcher wins, or an entirely new wave of metrics that uncovers the next market inefficiency, the cycle will continue.
This isn’t meant as an endorsement of the Reds’ current approach. But I do think there’s value in zigging while everyone else zags—provided you have the right people throughout the organization to identify the opportunity and execute it. That’s the part the Reds haven’t shown they can do.
I think you can zig and before you get ready to zag, the Dodgers find another $200M and add still another H of F guy to their lineup. It’s one thing to say you got to play them and if you play them often enough, you might find the acorn. You won’t find the acorn often enough to sustain the optimism.
As we know baseball is a game of adjustments. I see that in the next tree years the move will be away from analytics.Just like Moneyball everyone wasn’t on board at the beginning, but it and analytics came along over three or four years. Now the trend is moving the other way slowly.
In the Midwest league I’ve seen more sacrifice bunts than has happened in years. Like the move to an analytics approach, the reverse isn’t being universally embraced. There is a player on one team that has more sacrifice bunts than bunts than a whole team.
But, the adjustments are coming.
The genie is out of the bottle on analytics. Fans probably never cared and if you ask 17,038 of the 17,093 fans at the ballpark, they will ask if that includes RBIs. Because fans don’t give 2 nickels about that when they are watching a game. FO’s care about it and pundits care. Lots of people use it. But the counting stats — avg., HR, SB, RBIs — are what show up on the scoreboard. Fans are slowly accepting OPS as a stat without actually grasping why they need to know that while watching a game at the stadium.
Bold prediction, MK. I’m doubtful that MLB will abandon analytics which are, after all, information. What will happen–and has been happening right along–is that the information will be refined, both in what is measured and how it is applied.
I love this site and read pretty much all articles posted, but I’ve been behind lately and getting caught up.
This was a fantastic article and follow-up discussion with all the posts and replies.
I can’t imagine fans of most other teams are as lucky as we are with this site. Thanks to all involved!
Agree. Great discussion.
Thoughtful article – thx Richard.
The 70’s Reds, Cardinals, Royals were built around speed – which matched the artificial turf & dimensions of their stadiums. The current Reds and their hitting philosophy aren’t built for the GABP band-box dimensions.
Even though Francona gets the credit, I’m not sure how much development
/philosophy influence he had in Boston. Theo Epstein & Bill James helped build a winner. TF pulled the day-to-day strings, which while important, is only part of the effort.
The Reds are building around pitching. If the defense is passable and the offense can find ways to manufacture runs, then this may work. Unfortunately, the pitching has health issues, the defensive depth is shallow & the offense hasn’t figured out how to produce in a substantial way (either by FA signings, trades or hitter development).
I think you’re giving way too much credit to Bill James for what happened in Boston. When he got himself in trouble for saying things he shouldn’t have the Red Sox made sure to note that he was more of a consultant than a full-time employee.