8/24/2015 Tigers at Reds

[_Sir_Charles_]

And this one belongs to the Reds!

Nice game boys. Brought the lumber out to play.

[westofyou]

I still SMH at why Votto positions the left foot on the very back of the bag on a throw from the middle 3rd baseline area......why does he not stretch towards that?

Canada

[Big Klu]

Congratulations to Joey Votto, who has passed Vada Pinson for eleventh place on the Reds all-time home run list!


Updated Reds HR list (players in italics are active):

Reds 100-Home Run Club
1. Johnny Bench - 389
2. Frank Robinson - 324
3. Tony Perez - 287
4. Adam Dunn - 270
5. Ted Kluszewski - 251
6. George Foster - 244
7. Ken Griffey, Jr. - 210
8. Eric Davis - 203
9. Jay Bruce - 200
10. Barry Larkin - 198
11. Joey Votto - 187
12. Vada Pinson - 186
13. Brandon Phillips - 178
14. Wally Post - 172
15. Gus Bell - 160
16. Joe Morgan - 152
16. Pete Rose - 152
18. Lee May - 147
19. Dan Driessen - 133
20. Reggie Sanders - 125
21. Ernie Lombardi - 120
22. Sean Casey - 118
23. Frank McCormick - 110
24. Dave Parker - 107
25. Chris Sabo - 104
26. Todd Frazier - 102
27. Dave Concepcion - 101

[Hoosier Red]

19 when he made his debut. 23 when he began to turn his career around. Makes my point. He was one who learned his craft in a trial by fire, and didn't waste many pitches in AA and AAA.

The reason you don't bring them up before their time is that it doesn't make sense to start their career service clock on teams going nowhere.

It's a balancing act of course. If we assume that 1) ALL rookie pitchers will struggle at least a little bit against major league batters but 2)With every year of experience, the struggle will be slightly smaller.
The Reds want to optimize three sometimes conflicting factors, 1)Most years of service time where pitcher will benefit team(ie avoid wasting Homer Bailey's 4 years in the wilderness that led to having to either re-up or let him go before they had maximized his value.) 2)Most years of service time where the player's best performance will benefit the team in games that matter.(Avoid the Mario Soto where his best performance went for naught) 3) The team is able to avoid putting undue stress and/or pressure on pitcher to avoid injury risk without hindering goals of winning Big League games.(avoid the Strasburg/Pryor conundrum)

[Big Klu]

19 when he made his debut. 23 when he began to turn his career around. Makes my point. He was one who learned his craft in a trial by fire, and didn't waste many pitches in AA and AAA.

Rijo was also with his third organization by the time he was 23.