...the 2-2 to Woodsen and here it comes...and it is swung on and missed! And Tom Browning has pitched a perfect game! Twenty-seven outs in a row, and he is being mobbed by his teammates, just to the thirdbase side of the mound.
Wonderful Monds (10-13-2020)
No. That particular stat tells you nothing.
Bauer could have just as easily gotten Sonny Gray's run support and the team would have gone 8-3 or 9-2 in his starts with the exact same team, offense included. The team's record is Bauer's starts says absolutely nothing about the team that is said better by their overall performance in the abbreviated season. Anybody trying to draw nuanced conclusions about the quality of a team based on how it performed over the course of 38% of a full season is running a fools errand.
Before the season, the Reds were universally projected to be somewhere in the ballpark of a wild card team. Anywhere between slightly below .500 to winning the division was entirely within the normal realm of expectations given what we already knew about the quality of the roster. And yeah, the structure of the season adds even more variability to that range of reasonable outcomes. That our particularly outcome happened to be one where the pitching was awesome and the hitting lagged behind doesn't tell us a ton more either. Again, both were more or less within the realm of variance in such a short season.
People need to move on from the tea-leaf reading about the 2020 season and look forward based on updated projections. I'm all for continued improvement of the roster. Replace bad/mediocre players with better players; the best opportunity for that seems to be at SS and C. Get better performances from the players you can reasonably expect to perform better. Hope you don't lose too much in regression from the over-performers. But there's no magic shape of production. The best teams only share 1 thing in common -- they consistently score more runs than they allow.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
REDREAD (10-21-2020)
...the 2-2 to Woodsen and here it comes...and it is swung on and missed! And Tom Browning has pitched a perfect game! Twenty-seven outs in a row, and he is being mobbed by his teammates, just to the thirdbase side of the mound.
My development comments were primarily in regards to pitching, specifically the massive rework of the development operation that's basically a year old. I would clarify, by "development", I mean broadly as in "getting the most production out of the talent" -- not just turning draftees into major leaguers.
The Reds pitching in 2020 was, by far, the best team performance of my lifetime (since '82). Bauer was great, but it goes well beyond him. It includes continued improvement from Luis Catillo's continued improvement, Sonny Gray's return to form, Tyler Mahle, Amir Garrett, Tejay Antone, Lucas Sims, and Raisel Igelsias. Other than Bauer and arguably Iglesias, these were all guys returning more value than projected.
Given all prior caveats about sample size, we'll see how much of this progress sticks. We'll see how much regression there is. We'll see what comes of Tony Santillan, Hunter Greene, and Nick Lodolo, each of whom could contribute in 2021. It's an admittedly open question whether this system is what the early signs suggest it could be.
But the point is that there's a systemic plan, a coordinated, cutting-edge approach that required real buy-in from ownership and management. It wasn't the continuation of the failed "hope to beat everybody else at their own game, only with fewer resources" plan of the prior 30+ years. That's what has me hopeful.
And, as I've said, I'm a bit worried that no such plan seems to exist on the position player side of things...
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
alwaysawarrior (10-14-2020),Ron Madden (10-13-2020),Wonderful Monds (10-13-2020)
Say what you will, they were shut out 7 times in 60 games, the entire IF was below average to terrible defensively and the only reason they made the play-offs was because of the expanded tournament implemented to compensate for the lack of fans in the park. It's OK as transitional year from doormat to competitor, but it's hardly an indication that we can just keep things intact with minor changes while replacing the best pitcher in the league with some fourth starter that they can afford. They have a team filled with Mark Trumbos. We saw how that worked out in Baltimore. Fix it before we end up like them. That means one of the guys who is in that profile needs removed from the mix and replaced with somebody who adds diversity to the line-up and hopefully fits the defensive alignment better. Do that while adding a SS who can play and add to the offense and turning catcher over to Stephenson with one of the others (my vote is keep Casali and deal Barnhart). Three of this team's infielders need to be moved down a notch on the defensive spectrum (Votto, Moose, Suarez) and the other spot is an open hole. To do that, the DH, who was the team's best hitter, needs to go or the expensive RF does so the DH can move to the OF. Of course that leaves the import from Japan out of a spot. He doesn't have the arm for RF and the team's best young player is stationed in CF. Personally, I'd move Senzel back to 2B and let Shogo play CF and get a new RF who can play.
I think people here have watched the Reds play losing, terrible baseball for so long, they've completely forgotten what a good team looks like. This isn't it. It's a mediocrity whose top players are expensive and aging and is about to lose it's top performer. Filling holes and otherwise standing pat, as people in this thread are proposing, isn't enough
Last edited by mth123; 10-13-2020 at 03:24 PM.
All my posts are my opinion - just like yours are. If I forget to state it and you're too dense to see the obvious, look here!
REDREAD (10-21-2020)
Josiah Gray posted a 2.58 ERA with 59 strikeouts, 1 home run allowed, and 29 hits in 52.1 innings in the one season that he was with the Reds. Jeter Downs performance certainly got better when he went to the Dodgers, but he went from a pitchers league to two hitter leagues, too. And he was a former 1st round pick - so identifying him as a talent is a strange claim against the Reds on this one. Everyone I ever spoke to with the Reds (and almost everyone outside of the Reds) thought he was going to get better as a hitter as he grew into things. The questions were almost always about where he would move to on the defensive spectrum.
Ron Madden (10-13-2020)
Hoping to change my username to 75769023
REDREAD (10-21-2020)
Crazy Reds Fan
Tom Servo (10-13-2020)
Except you are leaving out the fact that they didn't score a run in 23 innings and displayed the same inept lack of fundamentals that we have been seeing for over 5 years. I don't care if the Braves go on to be crowned the next 27 Yankees- it was a really miserable performance.
757690 (10-13-2020),Benihana (10-14-2020),Bruce Berenyi (10-14-2020),mth123 (10-14-2020),REDREAD (10-21-2020),reds77 (10-15-2020),Revering4Blue (10-14-2020),texasdave (10-13-2020)
i love the excuses by the "loyalist" try to explain 1-3 no one out twice ,, bases loaded one out, once
childish phony double steals, tring to advance to third on single to left field,, not scoring on a hit from 2nd,, absolute incompetence
https://www.wlwt.com/article/skyline...nnell/44139087Skyline Chili's CEO is retiring after more than 32 years at the helm of the company.
The chili chain announced Richard Williams has been named chairman and interim CEO of Skyline Chili. Williams will replace Kevin McDonnell, who is retiring after more than 30 years with the company.
McDonnell became the company's Chief Financial Officer in 1991 before he was named CEO in 1998.
Williams currently serves as a member of Skyline’s Board of Directors, is the President of North American Properties. Before that, he was the president of baseball operations and general manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
“I don’t care,” Votto said of passing his friend and former teammate. “He’s in the past. Bye-bye, Jay.”
*BaseClogger* (06-10-2023)
Revering4Blue (06-10-2023)
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |