Archive for Cincinnati Reds

Andrew Miller has an undeniably nasty slider. As a Red Sox fan, I remember it far too well from the 2016 postseason. Big Papi’s farewell tour didn’t seem all that fair when you consider the way the Red Sox ran into the buzz-saw that was Miller and the Cleveland Indians. Sure, I’m grateful for Miller helping the 2013 version of the Red Sox win a third world title since 2004, but come on Andrew, you had to ruin Papi’s goodbye?

With Miller’s recent signing with the St. Louis Cardinals, I found myself exploring his FanGraphs page. I stumbled upon this article, Andrew Miller on the Evolution of his Slider, and I instantly began to wonder if pitchers had similar experiences developing their sliders in the 2018 season. The first step in this analysis was to evaluate the evolution of Miller’s slider.

What jumps off the page is the change in velocity. Miller saw a 4.6 mph increase in his slider from 2011 to 2012, then another 3 mph added from 2012 to 2013. This in large part had to do with Miller moving from a starting role to a relief role during his time with the Red Sox. Given that information, however, an increase in velocity that drastic not only shows a pitcher’s willingness to adapt, but also a pitcher’s ability to adapt. By observing Miller’s slider splits, we see that ability to adapt almost immediately.

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Reshaping a team core comes with reshaping team analytics – or, at least the goal is to craft players within a certain subset of principles. Each player will have natural talent they are inclined to favor (power, getting on base, choice of stat here), and in that nature, the team principles taught might be best thought of as a way to control the random chaos of baseball. Creating an orderly lineup within a game of disorderly results.

Thus, one of the underlying theories of evaluating a team reshaping the core is to analyze those players they are shaping; players who have the talent to subtly manage their own game. The Reds are one of those teams rebuilding with a split between stark promise and those who, bluntly, are roster spots. In some regards, Cincinnati is a universe revolving around the Joey Votto-style of baseball – low rate of outside swings, high contact, the simplicity of getting on base. Overall, they have the fourth lowest swinging-strike percentage in the MLB (9.6 percent), are tied for the fifth lowest outside-swing percentage (29.1 percent) and are tied for the second highest-contact rate (79.5 percent) with the Boston Red Sox.

There is sensibility of principled baseball despite their slight record. Effectively, however, the main separating point between teams such as the Red Sox and Reds is visualized in their spray chart on base hits; Boston with a wide range, Cincinnati lacking viability of power. There is something to be said about Cincinnati having the MLB’s fifth-best batting average (.259), but that average is held back by a .144 ISO and a .401 SLG mark (bottom third of the MLB). Cincinnati’s range of contact is quaint, more akin to a peaceful breeze than a bombastic wind.

Philosophically, the peaceful wind of contact is bound to the style of pitches attacked, their underlying method of creating order. Further defining that order (and leading with summation), they have a knack to lead pitchers into throwing them a favorable pitch with foul-balls and an inclination for avoiding weak contact. And while Votto might be the veteran tangentially modeling an established career, the success of Scooter Gennett, Jesse Winker, Curt Casali, and Jose Peraza reflect effectiveness seasons from now.

To note, if any player can be removed from this group, it would be Gennett, who has intrinsic power and might be termed the most natural player. However, he still falls into the binding theme of an academic plate-approach under the adage of leading pitchers into contact and lowering swinging-strike percentage. Between all four players, they have only 724 swings outside of the zone. Not surprisingly, the aberration pitches far outside are mostly Gennett swinging – remove his partiality to power, and the chart loses wild swings and the knuckle curve.

Moving inside the zone, the Cincinnati four have only 10.3 percent whiffs, with 39.1 percent fouls, 32.6 percent balls batted into plays, and 18 percent hits. One of the most impressive aspects of the inside contact has been the lack of weak contact opposed to the flare, solid, or barrel contact. Hence, within their categorized principles, Cincinnati has shaped the type of pitches which need to be attacked inside the zone. Again, that point of avoiding handing a pitcher a quick-out, instead creating foul balls and probability in launch-angle. Although they overwhelmingly have better contact than average, their lack of deep power (exit velocity) is seen in the classic moon-shot of under contact.

Principled swinging might be best reflected in the evolved in-game attack. As the game progresses, these players make contact in a tighter range with higher exit velocity. The results in innings one through three have been a method to create more power contact, albeit, at the risk of weaker contact. Hence, a method of sorting through how to attack during the remainder of the game while taking a risk on some intrinsic fastballs. From innings four through six, the contact group becomes smaller, and thus the spray chart also becomes more oriented toward singles with less power. They become more principled to find the average rate of success. Even though power is lost, they are becoming better at capitalizing on simplicity.

Inning seven through nine are the most evident of how Cincinnati is shaping their players to hit for the average rate of success. Regard, this is a team which overwhelmingly has found a way to chip away late in games. (The Cincinnati four have combined for a .304 AVG; 128 wRC+ split in high leverage, .289 AVG; 111 wRC+ in innings seven through nine).

Their attack becomes tuned for breaking pitches (or finding the breaking pitches which do not break) and thus into making less powerful contact but creating more functional contact on average. They remove the risk from themselves by avoiding wild swings, and thus force pitchers to throw breaking balls into the zone. 28.7 percent of their swings in the late innings have gone into play, while another 37.8 percent have gone for fouls. That punctual ability to create foul balls and chip away at pitchers creates long-at bats to reveal weak-points, wears down relievers, and eventually lead to a swing-worthy breaking ball.

Cincinnati may not be the most successful or powerful team within the moment. But, this is only the moment of crafting. The Joey Votto way of baseball might be a grinding and dying way of baseball. The Votto way of baseball might even be a misnomer for power-hitters such as Gennett. Yet, in the end, the underlying philosophy of Cincinnati’s baseball is to remove intrinsic risk in swinging and create order by forcing the pitcher to make the first risk.

Disclaimer: I started writing this post prior to Duvall’s on Friday night, right about the time he decided he was going to make me look silly. Stats do not include games on Monday 4/15.

A quick glance at the Reds offensive production so far in 2018 provides some context for a horrendous start.  Jumping down towards the bottom of stat sheet, we find 2016 All-Star Adam Duvall, who has been off to a terrible start at the plate. He leads the team in both home-runs and RBI (not saying much at this point) but has struggled to get much going other than that and currently owns a 59 wRC+. And that follows two strong performances since I started writing this, when he had a 29 wRC+. He is not the only reason the Reds offense is struggling , but he is among the biggest culprits.

Duvall’s calling card is no secret; he is a slugger. Over the 2016 and 2017 seasons, he ranks 15^th in the MLB with an ISO of .244. He hits the ball harder than average and pulls the ball more than average. So while a high pull rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is interesting that he is currently well above his own normal.

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League average is just under 40% while Duvall’s career average is just under 48%. So far in 2018 he is pulling almost 63% of balls, highest in the league among qualified hitters. Even for power hitters, there is an optimal amount of pulling the ball, and Duvall is way above it. Presumably, this is not something he is trying to do, but rather has been influenced in part by pitch location.

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Not surprisingly, the highest concentration of pitches Duvall saw in 2017 (left) were on the outside part of the plate as pitchers try to avoid playing to Duvall’s strength. In 2018 (right), he has seen a more even distribution of pitches across the strike zone. So if more balls are coming closer to where he can pull them, why is he not having success?

The easiest answer is that is has not been catching any breaks. While his BABIP as of Sunday night was a .156, it had been down to a .091 just a couple days earlier. The small sample of the young season shows how quickly a couple balls here or there can change things. Still though, a low BABIP indicates that there are better days ahead.

However, in addition to the high pull rate, other components of Duvall’s batted ball profile are not ideal. He is creating more soft contact than normal and is also hitting more groundballs than normal. It is not to a level he has not been before, but his soft contact was increasing in the latter half of 2017 and could be a larger trend. And the increase in ground balls has been accompanied by an all-time low line drive rate, which is generally the result of weak contact.

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Duvall has always gotten the ball in the air, as his career average 20.1-degree launch angle and 47% fly ball rate will attest to. So far this year, it has pretty much either been in the air or on the ground. And of the balls in play to the left side of the field this year, his launch angle is 4.6 degrees, compared to 9.8 degrees last year. Even though he has gotten pitches to the inside of the plate, he has not been able to drive them as he has in the past.

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Even with a high concentration of balls hit to 3B in 2017 (left), Duvall still made good use of left and center field. 2018 (right) has been way more concentrated to the infield, with very few balls going anywhere besides 3B or LF.

On top of his batted ball profile, plate discipline metrics also tell an interesting story.

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So far this year, 42% of pitches to Duvall have been in the strike zone, just below is career average of 43.4%. While that number may be a bit low, it is nothing compared to the drop off in Swing% which is 41.8% and well below his career average of 49%. Improving selectivity is something that players are always striving to do, so this makes sense, especially at the start of a new season. And while his BB% is slightly up, so is his K%, even despite a lower SwStrike%. Dvuall is taking too many pitches in the zone, most likely as he is not yet comfortable with his new approach. However, it could be an effect of not seeing the ball well out of the gate, which could also explain the weaker contact.

It is not like pitchers have figured out a magical way to always get Adam Duvall out. There is some variance at the pitch type level, specifically more sinkers and less four-seamers, but the overall breakout between hard, breaking and offspeed pitches is very much in line with what Duvall saw in 2016 and 2017. The only variation is with how Duvall has performed against the pitches.

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Higher whiffs per swing on breaking and offspeed pitches could be another indication that he is just not seeing the ball well at this point in the year. Even though he is swinging less and swinging and missing less overall, he is really struggling with non-fastballs.

Add it all up and Duvall is getting decent pitches to hit, but he is either taking them more so than before, swinging and missing on breaking/offspeed stuff, or swinging and not making solid, hard contact, leading to a lot of grounders to third base. Time will tell if he maintains and improves upon his newfound patience and starts connecting with and driving good pitches, utilizing the power that got him here.

No, you shouldn’t. Well, that was easy. I’ll be moving on to my “Why Haven’t You Bought Jeff Samardzija Yet?” article now.

OK, so it’s not quite that simple and I suppose you want some things like facts, charts, numbers, etc, etc.  You FanGraphs readers are all the same.

Zack Cozart has been a bit of a fantasy darling early this year. Writers have pointed out his 13%+ walk rate to begin the year. His improved .230+ ISO. His .340+ batting average (I hope this is still valid by the time we go live, because it probably won’t be). Because you’re FanGraphs readers, I also know you’ve already looked at his .400 BABIP and processed the fact that he’ll likely regress, but how far? To what level? Will he be 12-team mixed relevant? 10-team? I’d like to take a shot at answering those questions.

First of all, it’s not all bad news with Cozart. As Travis Sawchik would say, Cozart has joined the merry band of fly-ball revolutionaries, as evidenced by his increased fly-ball rate from 2013 to 2016, and he was on my list of possible value picks coming into auction season. His overall value in home-run leagues is capped by his HR/FB%, but I play in quite a few TB leagues so I wanted to keep an eye on him.

I have a tool I like I built in Excel years ago to monitor BABIP-inflated statistics, and to regress the triple slash lines based on expected normalish-BABIP for ROS.

While Cozart is currently sporting a triple slash line of .348/.428/.585, his .394 BABIP says that he should have approximately 10-13 fewer hits than he’s accumulated this far. It’s ~10 hits if you assume a league-average BABIP and ~13 hits if you assume his career .281 BABIP. What this means for you is that Cozart’s talent level right now is only supporting a .251/.331/.528 triple slash, or .274/.354/.541 if you believe he’ll overachieve his career BABIP.

You may be thinking, okay, that’s great, sign me up, but there’s just one more outlier caveat on Cozart’s amazing start to this season. Did you spot it?  He has four triples already! Unless you’re an extremely speedy player, and Cozart is not, triples basically come down to batted-ball or fielding luck. Hit it in just the right spot, or have a fielder take a bad run at a ball, and voila, you’ve got a triple (when you’re not fast).

If we were forecasting Cozart’s triples for the rest of the season, based on his lifetime triples output, he might accumulate three more triples over the course of the final ~125 games, and we should probably have expected him to have only one or two thus far this season. If we correct for this we can adjust his SLG to somewhere between .485-.495, or another way to look at it is via his ISO which I’d forecast to be somewhere around .170-.185.

Overall, if we’re projecting Cozart out over the rest of the season, I think it would be safe to bank on something in the range of .260/.340/.490, which isn’t a bad player and allows for some of his HR/FB% luck to stick in his projection. For those of you playing in OBP leagues, you can monitor the walk rate and perhaps you’ll get some new-found value there this year. With the growth we’ve seen in Cozart’s fly-ball rate, along with his corresponding doubles and home-run output over the past three years, he should safely set career highs in SLG and WAR.

Brandon Phillips was a great baserunner this past season. He stole 23 bases and was only caught stealing three times. It wasn’t an all-time great season in terms of stolen bases or baserunning runs overall, and his baserunning is overshadowed by the baserunning greatness of teammate Billy Hamilton, but we can all agree that Phillips put together a very nice season on the basepaths.

Now let’s make things interesting. In contrast to his great 2015, Brandon Phillips was very bad at stealing bases the last few years. In 2013 and 2014 he combined for a grand total of seven stolen bases and six times caught stealing (Phillips in fact had negative net stolen bases in 2014, being caught stealing three times and stealing just two bases), being worth negative runs on the basepaths both years. We now have a rare situation on our hands, where a player was a prolific base-stealer after doing nothing the year before.

Let’s quantify Phillips’ improvement to find some historical comparisons. Here’s the complete list of players that increased their stolen-base total by at least 20 a year after having negative net stolen bases (stolen bases -t imes caught stealing):

I know it can be difficult to read through that entire list, so let me summarize it for you: Before Brandon Phillips in 2015, no player had ever, following a season with negative net stolen bases, increased their stolen-base total by over 20 in the following season!

Pretty cool, right? It gets even better!

Here’s what makes Brandon Phillips’ 2015 season on the basepaths even more unique. Brandon Phillips was also very old this season, turning 34 in the middle of the summer. While it’s not unheard of for old guys to steal lots of bases (Lou Brock stole 118 at 35), it is a lot rarer than players in their primes stealing lots of bases. What is very rare is for old guys to suddenly make a leap in their stolen-base totals.

Let’s go back to the numbers again to find some historical comparisons. Here is the complete list of players who had a 20-stolen-base increase at Brandon Phillips’ age or older since baseball became integrated:

Only five other players since integration have had a 20-stolen-base jump at Brandon Phillips’ age or older. And these aren’t any random players — with Brock, Henderson, Wills, and Campaneris on the list, you have the 1st, 2nd, 14th, and 20th career leaders in stolen bases. The 5th is Jose Canseco, which just confirms what we already knew: Jose Canseco is weird. Canseco’s performance late in his career was also famously PED-boosted to defy normal aging curves, but I decided to just present the stats to you and you could make your own judgment on which performances you consider legitimate.

Even compared to the four all-time great base-thieves and Canseco, Phillips’ 2015 season is still unique. Since integration, Brandon Phillips is the only player his age to ever have an increase of 21 in stolen bases while matching his success rate!

If you had predicted before the season that Brandon Phillips would steal less than 23 bases, no one would have doubted you. After all, 18,845 players have played major-league baseball before and not a single one had accomplished what Brandon Phillips needed to do.

However, as the saying goes, baseball is played on the field and not on a computer. Against all odds there was old Brandon Phillips, chugging along on the basepaths and making his mark in history while doing it.

Notes:

(1) I used a cutoff of 200 at-bats in each consecutive season for players to qualify for the stolen-base-increase list. This was because I wanted the increases in stolen bases to be due to the player’s actions, and not just more playing time. A season where a rookie is called up and steals two bases in five games, and then steals 50 bases in a full season the next year is obviously against the spirit of seeing which players increased their stolen bases the most. I generously made the cutoff to qualify very low to include as many players as possible and so I couldn’t be accused of cherrypicking an at-bat limit to help Brandon Phillips stand out.

(2) A lot of players in the 1890s and 1900s qualified for the 20+ stolen-base increase at 34 years old or later, but since the game was so different back then I decided to just compare Phillips against players from the modern era.

(3) Dave Roberts came close to making the second cutoff, but was just a bit younger than Brandon Phillips.

1. The Pirates finished the year with a 98-64 record, the second best in all of baseball. That ties them with the 1979 and 1908 clubs for the third most wins in franchise history. (The 1909 Pirates won 110 and the 1902 club won 103.) The Pirates’ record, however, included a losing record against two of the worst teams in the game, the Cincinnati Reds (8-11) and the Milwaukee Brewers (9-10).

Let’s break that down. In games in which the Reds didn’t play the Pirates, they were 53-90. In games in which the Brewers didn’t play the Pirates, they were 58-85. So in their non-Pirates games, the two clubs combined for a 111-175 record, a .388 winning percentage. Had they played at that pace in their 38 games against the Pirates, they would have won .388 x 38 games = 15 games, losing 23. Turned around, the Pirates would have gone 23-15 against the Reds and Brewers.

The Pirates were 81-43 in their games that weren’t against Cincinnati or Milwaukee. Had they gone 23-15 against the two clubs–that, is had they been as successful as the rest of the teams in the majors were–their record would have been 104-58. That would have given the Pirates the best record in baseball. They would be enjoying four off days, looking forward to Wednesday’s wild-card game between the Cardinals and Cubs to see whom they’d face at home to kick off the Division Series on Friday.

2. The Pirates had four relief pitchers who pitched at least 60 innings: Mark Melancon, Tony Watson, Jared Hughes, and Arquimedes Caminero. Of the four, the pitcher with the lowest average leverage index when entering a game was Caminero, wasting his namesake’s leverage expertise.

The loss to the Pirates, the recent removal of Dusty Baker, and the upcoming free agency of Shin-Soo Choo has overshadowed Bronson Arroyo and his status with the Reds. It seems that if there is one player who never receives enough attention, it is him. But while the baseball world may not seem to realize that he is a free agent, there is no doubt that Walt Jocketty and his staff are very much aware of the 36 year-old starter’s expired contract.

Bronson Arroyo, with the exception of 2011, has been not only one of the Reds best starters, but one of the most consistent pitchers in baseball. He has not been a Cy Young candidate and he is not the ace of the Reds by any means. But the one thing that cannot be denied is his innings pitched per year. Since joining the Reds, he has thrown over 1600 innings and has averaged about 211.1 innings pitched per year. They have started to dip recently but throwing 202 innings each year of the past two seasons shows that despite the age, he still has his durability. He has managed to avoid the DL in his career which is something to be marveled at. Every year that he has pitched with the Reds, he has started at least 32 games and averaged 6-7 innings per start. This kind of reliability is something to be desired out of a starter in this day and age where there is at least one Tommy John surgery or one pitcher who is on a strict innings limit.

One of the things that allow Arroyo to be so durable is the fact that he does not waste his time out of the zone with his pitches. His goal is to go right at the hitters. This season, he was fifth in the majors in walks per nine with 1.51. During his tenure with the Reds (2006-2013), he has averaged 2.31 BB/9 which is good for 14th among pitchers who have thrown at least 1000 IP during that time frame. He seems to be trying to improve those numbers as his BB/9 has been 1.54 over the past two seasons. He indicates that he refuses to beat himself by giving up the free pass (which can help him out seeing as how does not strike out a lot of batters and he does tend to give up home runs).

Bronson Arroyo has made himself a very good pitcher due to great durability and his ability to change speeds when he pitches. Last season his fastball averaged 87 mph and his curveball averaged about 70 mph. The change of speeds helps him to keep most batters off balance because they have no idea what kind of speed is going to be released from his arm or what kind of arm slot the baseball is going to be thrown at. While watching a Reds game, one of the guests in the booth said that he would rather face a pitcher like Aroldis Chapman because he knows what speed and arm slot to expect most of the time. Chapman will throw his fastball about 85.4% of the time and his off-speed pitch (slider) about 14.6% of the time. Once the batter stands in the batter’s box, he can expect to see that heater for the majority of the time. Bronson Arroyo throws his fastball (or sinker) last season for 44.1% of the time. That is 55.9% of the time that he throws one of his 3 other off speed pitches that ranges anywhere from 70 mph to 77.6 mph.

Despite the fact that Arroyo is such a good pitcher, it is unlikely that he will return to the Reds. The Reds, I’m sure, would like nothing more than to have Bronson Arroyo return to their team. The problem is that the Reds are going to have a full rotation and none of the other pitchers are going to the bullpen any time soon. Tony Cingrani has emerged as a phenomenal young left-handed starter that has earned a starting spot. Homer Bailey and Mat Latos have proven to be durable aces that on their best day can match up with anyone and shut down the best of offenses even in Great American Ballpark. Mike Leake probably would have been sent to the bullpen to make room for Arroyo but because of the great bounce-back season that he had, he has re-solidified his spot in the rotation as well. Cueto could be an option to be sent to the bullpen because of his long list of injuries but it is true that when healthy, he is one of the best pitchers in the game. The Reds also have several very talented pitching prospects in the minors in Robert Stephenson, Daniel Corcino, and Nicholas Travieso who are just waiting for an excuse to be called up to the majors. And because of Arroyo’s proven track record it is almost a solid guarantee that he will not be sent to the bullpen.

If you take away anything from these past few paragraphs, it should be that Arroyo is a solid and dependable starter. Maybe on certain teams (I’m looking at you, Houston) he could be an ace but on most teams he will be a solid mid-bottom of the rotation starter for any team. His tendency to give up home runs could be cured in a more pitcher-friendly ballpark but it is unlikely that the problem will go away all together. He is a good pitcher who might get his 3 years, and 30+ million dollars somewhere but he will not find it in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is a mid-market team who is going to have to worry about signing up Homer Bailey, Mat Latos, and Tony Cingrani in the future and they have already spent a lot of money to keep Jay Bruce and Joey Votto locked up for the long haul. Their depth in pitchers allows them to look elsewhere for places on where to spend all of the money that they would have to spend in order to resign Arroyo. Perhaps they could use it to get La Russa out of retirement . . .