Not going to panic, but something I don't understand

[Falls City Beer]

Originally Posted by mdccclxix

Per Lance's blog, they lead the league in being shut out - 10 times.

Halladay
Santana
Rowland-Smith
Lee
Kuroda
Cain
Paulino
Carpenter
LeBlanc

With only one exception, those are some tough customers.

[Cedric]

Slugging dependent team. That usually leads to major explosions and major slumps.

It is what it is.

[mdccclxix]

Originally Posted by Cedric

Slugging dependent team. That usually leads to major explosions and major slumps.

It is what it is.

That's why I've wanted to stand by Cabrera who was slap hitting and wasting tons of pitches for the first 2 months. He's made it awfully hard to stand with him though.

[Cedric]

Originally Posted by mdccclxix

That's why I've wanted to stand by Cabrera who was slap hitting and wasting tons of pitches for the first 2 months. He's made it awfully hard to stand with him though.

Don't make the mistake of thinking low slugging means productive. This team needs guys that get on base and slug the ball, duh. Cabrera does neither.

As of right now the future success of the Reds offense depends on Gomes, Rolens back, and whoever hits 2nd.

I'm not exactly optimistic about this offense.

[REDblooded]

Yeah... IMO, the best places this team can create a change would be at SS and RF...

Here are a few guys I'm looking at that I think could make a bit of an impact without breaking the bank...

1.) Alex Gordon... Perfect time to buy-low on a player. Is still only 26 years old, and gives you a player with upside at third base when you need to spell Rolen...
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/m...pbp&pid=460086

2.) Stephen Drew... With the DBacks selling, this would be a HUGE get. Can hit pretty much anywhere in the line-up, but especially seems to thrive from the lead-off or two holes... IMO, the perfect line-up would be Drew, Phillips, Votto, Bruce, Rolen, Gomes, Stubbs....

3.) Dexter Fowler... Young and Raw, but has top of the line speed, and knows how to take a walk...

[Far East]

Originally Posted by Falls City Beer

By the way, the Reds scored plenty of runs on this trip; as recently as Friday they scored 7 in one game...

Is there a way to assess how well the Reds hit in their blow-out victories compared to their lowest scoring games and/or compared to games in which they score their average number of runs per game (presently 4.8 runs or 5.0 rounded off)?

One would probably need to establish some arbitrary parameters about the number of runs that would qualify for the three categories (low, average, and high number of runs per game).

For example, an average game could be considered as being between 4.0 and 6.0 runs (calling below 4.0 runs a low scoring game and above 6.0 runs a high scoring game) and then compare the team's OBS, SLG, OPS etc. among those three categories.

If might be self-evident, but my gut feeling is that the Reds' hitters (perhaps this is true for all teams in all seasons) really inflate their stats in the blow-out games and are relatively flat in their average games and below average scoring.

If so, then the hitters perhaps should not be counted on (against contenders or playoff opponents) as much as the -- superficial -- stats appear to make them now look.