4-19-2007 Reds v Astros

[Marc D]

For all the hell Jerry gets on this board, and deserving in many instances, Wayne seems to get a free pass far too often here. The individual players are all playing to their expected levels and have for the past year plus. Many said not to judge Wayne on last year because of the late start. Well, he had a year and an entire off season to do something about the glaring holes on this club (certainly can't fix ALL of them), but I think he's failed miserably to date. The acquisition of Arroyo and Phillips stand out as plusses and filled 2 holes, but he's left about 20 more on the table. These losses, and the woeful attendance, hang with that man much more than Narron in my opinion.

He doesn't get one from me. Simplified version of my feeling toward him:

Pro's of WK
Arroyo
Phillips
Hamilton
Contracts in general

Con's
Keeping Narron
The Trade
Frenchman in the pen

Obviously quite a bit of other stuff to go in there but those are the major points to me. Cons outweigh the pro's right now imo.

[George Foster]

In Weathers' defense... Gonzo did muff the ground ball. That's the second out. That runner doesn't score and the sac fly becomes the third out instead of scoring another run and inning ends 6-5. And the pitch to Luke Scott wasn't a bad pitch. it was low and outside and Scott went down and got it.

he should not have been pitching to Scott in the 1st place. Scott hit a homerun off Arroyo in the 7th. Scott should of been facing a lefty....not a 87mph Stormy.

[TheBigLebowski]

That's just false.

The bullpen is far from great, but they will win that game the vast majority of times.

Vast majority? That's just false.

You tell me how comfortable you are when we're up by 2 with 2 innings to play and the matter is turned over to our bully. Would you wager your hard-earned money the "vast majority" of the times? I daresay you wouldn't.

[FlyerFanatic]

Vast majority? That's just false.

You tell me how comfortable you are when we're up by 2 with 2 innings to play and the matter is turned over to our bully. Would you wager your hard-earned money the "vast majority" of the times? I daresay you wouldn't.

I wasnt comfortable with the lead we had tonight...with the pen we have now, i'd say we lose about 90% of all 1 or 2 run games.

[Patrick Bateman]

Vast majority? That's just false.

You tell me how comfortable you are when we're up by 2 with 2 innings to play and the matter is turned over to our bully. Would you wager your hard-earned money the "vast majority" of the times? I daresay you wouldn't.

It's hard to ever feel comfortable in baseball, but that's a pretty good situation to be there.

Think about it. Last season our bullpen managed a 4.38 ERA. And that's last season when our bullpen was absolute trash. The expected amount of runs in that situation for the rest of the game is close to 1 run (and that's assuming everyone down there is equal). Presumably, the better relievers are being used to end the games.

I'm actually going to pull out some statistical tables from one of my stats courses. In that situation the odds of each scoring event in total for the 2 innings is:

0 runs: 0.3679
1 run: 0.3679
2 runs: 0.1839
3 runs: 0.0613
4 runs: 0.0153
5 runs: 0.0031

So in summary the odds of giving up less than 2 runs in the final 2 innings of that situation is about 74% with an 18% chance of getting out of it with a tie. That means only 8% of the time will a bullpen with a 4.38 ERA outright lose the game.

Now that is all based on zero runs crossing the plate. There's a 74% chance that you win without scoring any runs. Even with the Reds current offense they will score some runs. I'm going to assume that the Reds will be pretty well close to league average this season which in this same case the odds of them scoring even 1 run is pretty decent (about 63% of the time).

Based on those odds, the Reds will score at least one run in the same period where the opposition ties the game with 2 runs about 11% of the time.

Right there puts the Reds at an 85% chance of winning in that situation (and their odds of scoring two runs when the opposition scores 3 runs is another 1%). Even if you disagree, and say the offense is not league average, and the bullpen is as bad is last season, the Reds are still going to win about 80% of the time.

So in total the Reds' win probability with last season's bullpen is 86% in today's situation. And when you factor in this year's improved bullpen (it's not fantastic, but in no scenario is it worse than least season) it's even better, and the Reds will even toss out sub 4.38 ERA guys in that situation most nights, but for argument's sake we'll keep it at an easy number.

Look, this bullpen is not fantastic, and it's probably not even league average. But it's good enough to win in that situation about 86-88% of the time. That's the vast majority, and if somebody gave me the opportunity to make that bet everytime the opportunity presented itself, then I would be a very rich man.

[Slyder]

Biggio Should Manage someday

How about he takes over for Narron after he gets hit 3000 for Houston? LoL

[WVRedsFan]

He doesn't get one from me. Simplified version of my feeling toward him:

Pro's of WK
Arroyo
Phillips
Hamilton
Contracts in general

Con's
Keeping Narron
The Trade
Frenchman in the pen

Obviously quite a bit of other stuff to go in there but those are the major points to me. Cons outweigh the pro's right now imo.

Nor me. I can agreewith all your points and here's why. Arroyo for Pena--good move. Phillips for nothing--another good move. Risky, but a good move. Hamilton--blind luck, but luck is better than good most of the time (and we haven't seen enough of Hamilton to really know for sure). Contrcts--here we kind of disagree. I think the contract to Gonzalez was ludicrous considering he is performing no better than Lopez and it cost us Kearns in the process. The Cornier extension was horrible and why in the world do you put any money on Chad Moeller? The cons are well documented. Narron, the Trade, and the previously mentioned Cormier are simply dumb moves. In fact, they so outweigh the positives, that I can only saw WK has been a failure so far. I said earlier that it would be better to pass judgment on him after a full year, but not much can be said in his favor.

To sum it up, faces mayh change but the result is the same. We're .500 again and heading south of that. Same old same old.

[Aronchis]

Sure, Hamilton's been in another world, but nobody could have predicted that. A good Rule 5 pick-up, and he could turn into the Reds' version of Puljols, but it's not that Wayne knew this. And that's not a knock on WK.

The overall pitching was and continues to be deplorable (BA and AH excluded).

Wayne loves the rule V. Was the key driver for Ryan getting Santana off of Rule V. When the Rule V comes around, watch out for Wayne lol.!!!!

[Ron Madden]

Every year. Every year. The same thing over and over.

It is ALWAYS the pitching with this team. It's never not been the pitching with this team.

Yet some folks in this thread continue to blame Edwin, Ross and Dunn.

[Marc D]

Nor me. I can agreewith all your points and here's why. Arroyo for Pena--good move. Phillips for nothing--another good move. Risky, but a good move. Hamilton--blind luck, but luck is better than good most of the time (and we haven't seen enough of Hamilton to really know for sure). Contrcts--here we kind of disagree. I think the contract to Gonzalez was ludicrous considering he is performing no better than Lopez and it cost us Kearns in the process. The Cornier extension was horrible and why in the world do you put any money on Chad Moeller? The cons are well documented. Narron, the Trade, and the previously mentioned Cormier are simply dumb moves. In fact, they so outweigh the positives, that I can only saw WK has been a failure so far. I said earlier that it would be better to pass judgment on him after a full year, but not much can be said in his favor.

To sum it up, faces mayh change but the result is the same. We're .500 again and heading south of that. Same old same old.

By contracts I meant the size and the way they are structured moreso than who they went to.

I was hoping I wasn't the only one who sees the Pro's as more luck than skill, save being a good contract negotiator(most of the time). Lets not forget he traded WMP for a guy that was a swingman with a career ERA well north of 4. The fact Arroyo has blossomed into what he is now can't just be chalked up as WK knew it all along.

In fact the WMP for BA trade was a good foreshadowing of what would come later in The Trade. At the time you could, I and others did, make the case he overpaid for a mediocre pitcher. Hopefully he catches lightning in a bottle again with Bray and Majewski because we obviously need them.

My biggest fear after last nights debacle is what might WK do this year if the pen implodes and he decides to trade offense for more middle relief?

[REDREAD]

He doesn't get one from me. Simplified version of my feeling toward him:

Pro's of WK
Arroyo
Phillips
Hamilton
Contracts in general

Con's
Keeping Narron
The Trade
Frenchman in the pen

Obviously quite a bit of other stuff to go in there but those are the major points to me. Cons outweigh the pro's right now imo.

Another con: Just about the entire offseason, save for extending Arroyo + Harang, rule V, and picking up Sarloos (nice cheap low risk acquision like Phillips, even if it doesn't work out)..

Wayne had a boatload of money to spend this past winter and blew it on garbage.. He spent almost as much on Stanton as Baltimore did on Chad Bradford.. who is actually an impact reliever.. I'll cut this short and say that Wayne basically wasted a boatload of money this offseason..