Playing stupid

[Hit-n-Run]

On the Phil Gosselin steal against Chapman the other night... Gosselin isn't a big steal guy, but Chapman checked him both pitches prior to the steal. The first pitch Chapman checked him and as soon as he turned away he went straight into his delivery. The second pitch he did the exact same thing and Gosselin broke for 3b as soon as Chapman turned his head. Either Gosselin or more likely advance scouting picked up on Chapman's tendancy to look once and go to the plate.

Todd Frazier swings at the ball off the plate because he can't tell that the pitch is a slider. That's why it's such a effective pitch......very few players can tell the difference between a hard slider and a fastball. It doesn't help when a hitter is always hunting fastballs. Todd swings at sliders in the dirt because he's guessing fastball when ahead in the count and protecting with two strikes on what might be a fastball. Without pitch recognition a hitter is guessing.

 

[Redsfan1507]

Thats true...but. most .270 plus hitters can tell it's a bouncer...not Frazier. Most good sliders with depth that get good hitters tipb out are swung at knee high, missing by the break a few inches below swing path, and maybe 5 mph in front of the slightly slower slider. Frazier swings at a at apparent ankle high pitch, breaking to the dirt about 59.5 feet. He's had enough accidental success lunging one handed off his front foot that it isn't a deterrent for him. One attempt on a tee 6" high and at the front black of the plate would show him, it isn't a viable hit location.

The simplest professional hitting instruction I ever heard was, this is your pitch in this location ( showing you -the size of a shoebox, you hit the first one you see there, a mile...until you have 2 strikes, then you try to hit anything close, back up the middle.

I think a lot of these guys just swing hard and hope they hit something.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

I agree....good hard sliders break less and break later. The breaking balls we see thrown to Frazier are buried by design....why throw a strike if Todd is going to help you get himself out.

A true tight hard slider is as 1507 describes...5-6 MPH slower than your fastball. Pitchers that struggle to release it off their index finger or try to help it with downward wrist flexion generally throw it 10+ MPH slower with early and increased break.....commonly referred to as a slurve.

Homer Bailey, Jon Broxton, and Mat Latos all have pretty good hard sliders. They also share another common characteristic of good hard slider pitchers.....a shredded elbow.

 

[JohnU]

I'd say a guy with 19 hits all season and a .162 BA ... he needs to ask himself some real tough questions. The deal a year ago was that he was embarrassed at his game. What does that translate to now?

Reds' Jay Bruce gets an off day

Bruce has shown some power, but is off to a slow start at the plate this season. He is hitting .162 (19 for 117) with a double, two triples, five homers and 16 RBI in 34 games. He is a .206 hitter this season against left-handed pitching.

 

[JohnU]

It's 10 to fucking 2 and Votto is up there leading off the 8th inning trying to draw a damned walk. Is his god-all-fucking' mighty OBP that important? Maybe he could learn to run the bases better.

 

[Redsfan1507]

I left when it was 7-2 and the stacks caught on fire. Figured that might be a sign it was time to go home.

I'm no savant, but I told my wife on the way there, Reds were going to get their ass handed to them- Because Marquis was pitching...and against Bumgarner. Marquis was consistently at 86 mph. So was Badenhop. The highlight of Price's game was allowing pitchers to hit for other pitchers. Cute.

Marquis blows, folks. There just is no way to put good spin on a guy with 6 starts and an ERA of 6.00, or relievers with 7.11, 10.00 and 11.00 ERA's. A one run lead is impossible to hold, no matter which reliever is pitching, usually. These guys flat can't pitch. Well, technically they can; but not on a winning team. They walk the leadoff hitter all the time, and give up a LOT of homers. I don't believe Gregg or Marquis should have ever been signed in the first place. Look at the back of their fucking baseball card for recent history...Badenhop had decent stats, so I'd chalk that one up as a legitimate mistake. Jumbo and Cingrani were worth a cheap try, and may still be worth salvaging....Hoover should have been DFA last year, but has pitched better lately. Mattheus ? We'll see. He WAS DFA.... and is 31 years old with 37 MLB appearances in 5 seasons. He cannot be worse than Kevin Gregg, however.

 

[JohnU]

Best-case scenario is to designate certain games as automatic losses. Those would be Marquis-Badenhop-Whoever games ... meaning, going in, the other team already knows it can do whatever it wants. BUT ... as in last night's game, the Giants essentially wasted their ace in a game that Petit and Machi could have won.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

After watching the Giants open back to back cans of whopp-ass on the boys....not much to discuss.

 

[JohnU]

The problem here was that the bullpen is so fucking lousy that Price had to leave Leake in there to get shelled. No rap on Leake. Some days you don't have it and he's a guy who really gets mustard-faced when he doesn't have it.

Badenhop has become the joke of the National League.

 

[JohnU]

Price is also consistently being out-managed. Here he was using Cingrani the other night to close out the deal when Cingrani is supposed to be his long man. Then when he needs a long man, all he has is Badenhop, who is a guy who should not have been signed in the first place ... and dispatched to Buckfuck, Idaho, last month.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

IMO, JJ Hoover is best suited to be the long man. Doesn't have a true plus pitch..but has four good pitches..four seamer, slider, curve, change. He was a starter most of his minor league career with descent success. Guys like Hoover benefit from more innings to allow them to work their pitches in. Cingrani types you never want to see a hitter get a second AB....they see everything he's got to offer in the first one. The best thing Cingrani has going for him is a quirky delivery that makes it hard to pick the ball up out of his hand.

 

[JohnU]

While we may agree, the Pitching Coach Guru of All Time has concluded that Cingrani is indeed his long man.
I suppose the definition is floating. Once through the order (2 innings) today would seem to mean "long" relief.
Looks like they are going to either set up Lorenzen or Iglesias for that role.
It still looks like this dugout staff is clueless and has been since November.
I do know that Leake should not have come out for the 4th inning and after Price decided to toss the game in the trash for the 2nd straight day, insulted the entire team by shoving Badenhop out there again.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

The Reds roster is swiss cheese and Price's idea of fixing it is a blender. Jocketty shares in the blame, but the more I hear from Price the more I think Marquis, Gregg, were his call. There was no open tryouts....Price already had his guys. His choice of pitching coach leaves a lot to be desired as well.

 

[JohnU]

I suppose it is heresy to claim this, but is Joey Votto the most overrated .300 hitter in Reds history?

 

[Cali Steel]

Thinking Pence's return to the lineup lit a fire in the Giants.
Reds are trying to pull one out here though.

 

[JohnU]

If the Brewers play semi-decent ball through June, the Reds are dead fuckin' last.
This team is an insult.

 

[Redsfan1507]

Pence is a fastball hitter, but it seems that's all the Reds throw him. He has a rag arm in RF, at least the Reds exposed that...once...the problem is, they don't have many guys that hit the ball that direction for hits that don't land in the moon deck.

The Brewers have worse pitching than the Reds, and the Pirates are beat up, and those are the reasons the Reds aren't in last place in the NLC. Sad.

 

[JohnU]

Runs differential tells me about all I need to know.

 

[Hit-n-Run]

The Reds are 4-8 in blowout games. The 8 blowout losses is a lot for the 20 games they've loss...40%. To put it in perspective the Cardinals have one blowout loss and the Cubs have three. Even the Brewers have less blowout losses.

When a team squanders a high % of scoring opportunities and has a bullpen unable to hold a lead or maintain the deficit.... they aren't going to win enough close games. Combine that with a high rate of blowout losses and you have the definition of a bad team.

 

[Redsfan1507]

I think that's a valid analysis, although most teams are strictly judged on the overall W-L. Stats can be deceiving, if you let them.

The Reds lost like, 21 one run games last year...so an optimist might ponder where the Reds would have been with 15-20 more wins, without considering the probability the 90 win teams might easily have lost 20 of their 72 losses by 1 run, too. Baseball is supposed to be close- runners have been thrown out at 1b by a half step with bases at 90 feet, for a century, regardless of sizes and shapes of parks and players, and 3-2 and 4-3 have been common scores. So, I wouldn't suggest the Reds could make up half the 1 run losses with 3 different SP, a couple different relievers, and a new LF, but it sounded logical in January.

Blowouts are usually just part of the law of averages coming into play, all else equal...but of course all else is rarely equal. The Reds play good D, but no one except the pitcher can defense a walk or a homer, so D is really just reaction to the results of pitching. If a team gets 15 hits or 3 HR, I'd say the opposing pitching sucked. If a team only scores 1 run on 3 hits, and 1 walk, I'd say the pitching was pretty good...if a team left 9 on base and only scored 1 run, I'd blame the offense, although the pitching (and resultant D) had to perform well to get all those pressured outs.

IMO, You never have enough pitching...and this team is no exception.