Fitting

[JohnU]

 

[Hit-n-Run]

I'd opted for cremation, the 2015 season went up in flames early.

 

[JohnU]

One foot in the morgue on Opening Day, even though they won their first 4 games.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

I'd suggest they keep that one foot in the morgue and hold the door open because the 2016 season will follow the same path.

The innings limit on the rotation will be a issue again next season. Other than a healthy Desclafani nobody else projects to log 200+ innings. Home Bailey will pitch the 2nd half.....maybe....which will help after the All Star break, but it stands to reason the Reds will add a veteran or two SP 's from the scrap heap to try and eat some early season innings....again. Didn't work out too well this season with Marquis and Maholm being brought into camp.

Hard to sustain positive momentum when your SP regularly goes 5 or less innings resulting in a beleaguered bullpen. I'd consider tandem starts for a couple of the rotation slots. Two SP's scheduled the same day, one starts and the other guy relieves alternating roles attempting to get at least 8 innings before going to your closer if needed. Essentially a seven man rotation, but keeping all of them on a 5 day cycle.

 

[ckhokie]

Anyone even believe 2016 will be any better?

Yeesh.

 

[JohnU]

Tandem starts ... yeah, it makes sense, which means Price won't consider it.
But he will keep Hamilton in the 9 hole just to give the Reds ... um, speed.
Alleging Cozart is back, and can hit marginally OK (a little lower than he was hitting) ... they can shove Suarez to LF ... even though, perish the thought! ... he was never used in left field.
If Mesoraco can't catch, we have still another left fielder.
Not sure how many left fielders we need but Bourgeois can play LF, and so can ... well, crap ... Jason Marquis.
Getting zero home runs from the catcher is always a place to start.
Skippy hit one, so that's a positive sign.

Pitching: I would say Descalfani, Iglesias and Lamb are in the rotation. All of them can approach 200 innings if they can average more than 4 per start, but the pitching coaches (and we have 3 or 4 of them) can't seem to impart the notion that a hanging slider on a hitter's count is not good pitch selection.

Not sure if Moscot is the real deal or if Stephenson is ready. I can see a deal for a scrap heap arm but I'd rather get a real left fielder -- which somehow seems to be a riddle that even Batman can't solve. St. Louis just goes out and gets one. The Reds ... yeah, whatever.

Finnegan and Lorenzen to the bullpen seems probable.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

Lamb could possibly get in the neighborhood of 200 innings if allowed to stay in the rotation, but I see him as more of a Sean Marshall type loogy. Iglesias logged around 125 innings this season and I don't think the Reds will let him exceed 160 next year.

The way so many of the rookies went 5 or less innings, it'd take them 40+ starts to reach 200 innings. A far cry from the 300+ inning pitchers of yesteryears.

Without Mesoraco behind the plate the Reds back stops had a descent BA and OBP, but the power numbers were dreadful. Moving Mesoraco to LF doesn't bolster the offense, it's just a reallocation of the production to a different defensive position while remaining status quo overall. To vamp up the offense they need Mesoraco behind the plate and a few additional AB's filling in elsewhere and a outfield that hits better than the back up catchers on most teams.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

I guess Price would say Suarez didn't get reps in LF because he needed him at SS. But with his less than stellar SS play it's a poor excuse. To my knowledge De Jesus had never played LF and got 14 starts, those innings would have been better served playing Suarez who needs to find another position with the pending return of Cozart. The same could be said for giving Schumaker starts in LF, does he fit into next year's plan? I wouldn't think so. This team was in no way competitive, even if De Jesus made a few more errors at SS, was it really going to matter in the bigger picture?

If you're going to lose 98 games you better be coaching the team to get better moving forward. I don't think the team got that with Price at the helm.

 

[JohnU]

I agree on the Suarez thing. Even if Cozart can't recover and play decent, he's still a lifetime .230 hitter with a bit of pop. If he can't play SS, a competitive team can't win with Suarez playing that position, unless the guy can get better with the glove. How bad was he? Bad enough.
Either way, the Reds need to find a SS who can play defense and it. Hard to find in MLB. Always was.
We keep telling ourselves this team is only a left fielder away from contending but we have 29 left fielders ... what I don't see is a way to convince them that they can win.
That's really not up to the players.

 

[Redsfan1507]

All the talk is about the rookie pitching....but it's the same old anemic offense that lost the majority of games in the last 2 months of the season.

It's NOT just a LF this team is missing. The people making Reds decisions need a fucking guide dog and a cane.

This team hasn't found an everyday outfielder in 25-30 years that can hit a paltry .260 for 2 full seasons back to back. They know NOTHING about hitting, apparently not even the fact they don't have any real hitters the ycan count on, except Votto, and they're always trying to change him (into a non-hitter I suppose).

NO ONE on this team other than Joey Votto can hit a bull in the ass with a base fiddle more than just occasionally.

Frazier hit 35 mistakes to Newport, but had twice that many one handed, one footed swings at 55 ft. breaking balls off the plate..and hit .255....and he's the next best hitter on this team.

I don't list Brandon Phillips that highly, because he's a lot worse than his stats show. The 100 RBI year two years ago is a good example of his stats utterly lying...even though BP's BA was nearly .300 this year, he's the ONLY frequent 4 hitter I know of with only 27 walks and 12 HR in a full season...he consistently has hit into more DP's than he hits HR in a season... and he hits 3rd and 4th a LOT on this team.

We all think Billy Hamilton was a total failure at the plate, right ? Hamilton had about 200 fewer PA than Phillips, and hit some 70 points lower on the BA (only 50 point lower on the OBP), but still walked 1 more time than Phillips, and only hit 8 fewer HR. He also "only" struck out 7 more times than Phillips, and easily stole twice as many bases, in one of BP's best SB years.

Jay Bruce...and Billy Hamilton both hit .226. Hamilton struck out about half as much as Bruce's 145 times. Bruce did have 35 doubles and 26 HR and 87 RBI... Unfortunately, as bad as Hamilton was, he outhit Bruce by 40 BA points after the All-Star game, and most of Bruce's XBH and RBI were after the Reds were locked in or near the cellar. Those otherwise impressive Bruce metrics, weren't used in helping the Reds win much, at all.

Here's the punchline: If THOSE few numbers separate your worst and some of your "best" hitters, it might be a clue your lineup sucks, because your "better" hitters, aren't really much "better" than your bad hitters.

Mesoraco can help, but if he isn't playing a position other than C, you are left repeating sad history above in the cleanup spot about half the season. Meso's injury is ANOTHER ignored CLUE...another lightning bolt from Baseball God, these blind Reds can never translate. They can't see anyone but Chapman as a closer, or The Missile as a SP, Phillips as a tablesetter, or Mesoraco as a LF for 50 games a year. Good thing God chose Moses instead of the Reds manager, or the Giza Plateau might look like Orange County now, wall to wall pyramids...

 

[JohnU]

Good stuff, 1507 ... I pay some passive attention to the over-discussed "hitting with runners in scoring position" that has become the understandable metric for announcers who are told to make it more interesting than technical (for which I am eternally grateful.)

What I do see LESS from the Reds than the Cardinals or the Cubs, and even the Parrots ... is that a man on third base should eventually cross home plate.

Exactly what the coaching staff can do about that seems pretty vague, but the teams that won 100, 98 and 97 games this year were doing something that the teams losing 98 and 95 were not doing.

If they don't have the benefit of the in-game video, they could do like I did ... buy a subscription to MLB.tv ... and actually watch how the games are being played.

 

[Redsfan1507]

I read an interesting think in SI today. Reds finished last for 1st time since 1983. In that time frame EVERY team in MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL had finished last at least once. I guess we were due ?

and...Dusty Baker FINALLY gets an interview- for the Nats job. Maybe that one is a match made in Washington D.C. Taking a team with a veteran rotation that never want to exit a game, that SHOULD have walked away with a weak division this year...in a town that is used to spending too much and doing absolutely nothing POSITIVE with it....should be tailor made for Dusty Baker, shouldn't it ?

 

[JohnU]

Dusty belongs in baseball but probably not in a dugout.
I am ambivalent toward the Nats. Kinda wanted to see them succeed but generally I am OK seeing the Mets make a run at it. As well, the Cubs. Keeps the league on its toes when you see teams come out of the sewer to the top of the chart.
Maybe the Reds will do the same thing. We're a little jaded, seeing how badly this team played the last 2 years.
Seeing the competition, I can see a 4th place finish! So we're due to move up.

 

[Redsfan1507]

Honestly, I think the Reds have some "good young arms" ...meaning barring injury, they have 4-5 guys that would be passable back of the rotation guys if they had an offense that could score 4 runs every game. Iglasias is the only guy I saw that looks like he could be a top of the rotation guy, other than Aroldis Chapman, who is the invisible elephant in the room, I guess. I like the lefty KC boys, just not all in the rotation.

It wasn't the rookie pitching that beat the Reds most last year, it was that same old clueless "veteran" lineup that can't seem to figure out how to score a guy from 2b with no outs, or even advance him without a homer, or a balk, wild pitch, error or other opposition gift. The Reds haven't "developed" a single OF that could hit above .260 in back to back seasons in about a quarter century...so, this is a systemic problem...not just a recent anomaly, or a result of the GM not noticing he had the same expiration date on his entire starting rotation's contracts. Oddly, the organization that developed the BRM, has lost the recipe for a quality At Bat.

It isn't rocket science, but you can't keep ignoring the obvious and expect to win. Changing coaches isn't addressing causal factors of last year's embarrassment.

Hamilton has to bunt a LOT more, because no one is EVER going to walk him, and he isn't going to hit enough in the air to keep his job as a position player.

You gotta do better than a 12 HR or a .228 "hitter" in the lineup behind Joey Votto, because no one is ever going to throw him strikes otherwise. Todd Frazier is that guy, isn't he ? Brandon Phillips doesn't strike fear of walking Votto into pitchers... he hits into DP's more often than he hits HR, every year...HE'S a TABLESETTER. Jay Bruce has the plate focus of a gnat, and the strikezone the size of Jumbo Diaz. This, IMO, is a worsening condition that isn't going to get better with a knee surgery or more money- he needs a platoon, or a trade to a team with 6 better hitters that doesn't need him to show up before the team is mathematically eliminated.

...On the other hand, Devin Mesoraco makes this lineup a LOT better...but probably has to play LF for at least 40 games / 160 PA a year, or he is almost as wasted as a hitter as Chapman is as a pitcher (waiting on 40 save situations on a team that may not have more than 60 leads all year). IMO, The Reds have more viable options to catch and close than they have in anyone else that is going to get those AB and IP instead of Meso and the Missile. ....Suarez hit, and fielded... like an OF... didn't he ?

Not that this team can win 90 games with those changes...but they would appear to have thought about a logical improvement plan, unlike the one that included Jason Marquis and Kevin Gregg last spring.

 

[JohnU]

Basically, what's wrong with the Reds is a lack of lineup churn. There are 4 outs in the batting order every game and there is little evidence this team can drive a starter from the game until the 7th inning, which shortens the game a lot against teams with quality bullpens.

I can't see how that problem is going to be addressed. The owner doesn't want to trade Bruce and the GM seems content in signing guys like Skip Schumaker to play 90 games a year until it gets down to the point of the season when there's nobody ELSE to play in Skippy's spot.

I guess we just wait to see if a bunch of wannabe starters can actually get 5 innings in before they hit the pitch limit.