I always thought that Geronimo's 76 season was amazing! He really made that lineup, top to bottom, truly great. When Gullett pitched there were no easy outs.Originally Posted by Big Klu
I always thought that Geronimo's 76 season was amazing! He really made that lineup, top to bottom, truly great. When Gullett pitched there were no easy outs.
Reds Fan Since 1971
Big Klu (10-15-2020)
Is there any analytics that can explain this outlier? How does a guy who never hit .300 prior or after, and usually can be counted on to hit around .250 or so, have a full season hitting .307? What caused this drastic change, for one season only?
.373 Babip plays heavy in that (career .308)
marcshoe (10-15-2020),Rantly (10-15-2020),Ron Madden (10-15-2020)
Okay, I guess that's analytics answer. But why did his babip go up? I can't buy that The Chief's batting skills peaked and then dropped just as fast. Wonder if he was put in more favorable conditions and left out of less favorable conditions. Maybe he was kept out of the batters box when facing pitchers that he historically had major problems with. Maybe the addition of Bob Bailey allowed the Reds to put him in left and move Foster to center against pitchers Geronimo had major issues with.
To be honest, I always thought Geronimo had a pitchers swing. He could hang in batters box better than a pitcher on breaking balls and fast balls inside, but his swing was awful. He was purely a mistake pitch hitter imo. So something took place in 1976 to give the illusion of a very good hitter.
Just looking at the numbers, it just seems like he found a few more holes in 76. He had almost the exact same number of extra base hits in 76 as he did in 75, meaning he was able to instead get a lot more singles that season. His ISO was pretty much in line with his career, so somehow he just had that lucky year where more single fell.
...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.
foster15 (10-15-2020)
Geronimo started 146 games in center that year, the third highest in any position on the team, after Pete and Davey. The year before, he started 148 in center, not much of a difference. There may be a reason for his luck, but I'm not sure how to quantify it. Did opposing teams play their outfielders deeper out of respect for the machine? Seems a stretch they would have done that for every player. Were pitchers intimidated by the BRM? Who knows. I was 14 at the time, and I remember thinking that Geronimo wasn't as good as he was hitting and I shouldn't count on it continuing, but that's all I know. Sometimes luck is luck.
It is on the whole probable that we continually dream, but that consciousness makes such a noise that we do not hear it. Carl Jung.
Yeah, when I was talking about putting him in more favorable spots regarding cherry picking a little more with which pitchers he faced, I didn't think that would be reflected in his playing time. Just that if he's going to be rested 14-16 games a year, maybe they went out of their way more to do it against pitchers he had trouble with than the year before.
Probably a lot of little factors. Maybe the fact the player in front of him when he batted 7th, had the worst year of his career up to that point in Johnny Bench played a minor factor. I know this seems like a reach, but let's say in previous seasons, a hit by Bench triggered the opposing manager to bring in a top lefty out of the bullpen to face Geronimo but since Bench was so much less productive, the manager left the righty in because he was more concerned with Concepcion than Geronimo. Maybe since Bench struggled so much, Geronimo came up more often with the less men on base and less men in scoring position and thus pitchers didn't bear down as much when facing him. Add these factors to Geronimo just naturally being at the peak of his athletic ability might have been the factors.
Also, along the same lines, in previous seasons, a pitcher that can get out Johnny Bench, percentages said they should have no problem with Geronimo. But in 1976, maybe getting out Johnny Bench just wasn't a good reflection on how well that pitcher was throwing at that particular time and not a good measuring stick on if he needed replaced or not.
BTW, something I find kind of ironic about Cesar Geronimo. For a guy who rarely hit the long ball, he had 3 post season home runs in situations that led to Big Reds wins or gave the Reds a chance for a big win that they didn't take advantage of. His first was in game 5 of the 1972 playoffs against the Pirates. If he had not hit an HR earlier in the game, Bench would not have tied up the game on his dramatic homer in the bottom of the ninth that led to the wild pitch for the pennant. And he had two against Boston in 1975 one in game 3 in which the Reds won by one run in extra innings and one in game 6 in which helped the Reds first get ahead and later stay tied with the Sox until Fisk.
So just for the record, Geronimo had as many Reds post season homers as did Vada Pinson, Bobby Tolan, Eric Davis and Ken Griffey Jr. combined. lol
Last edited by foster15; 10-15-2020 at 05:23 PM.
Opposing players rarely, if ever, admit they are intimidated...but Doc Ellis of the Pirates did admit that his team was intimidated by the Reds after he hit the first four Reds in the order. And the Pirates were no slouches.
Joe Morgan, ignition switch of Big Red Machine, never backed down and always showed up pennlive.com
I don't know who this author is, but I know he is truly a Reds fan.
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M2 (10-15-2020),Ron Madden (10-15-2020)
I miss Joe and the days of my youth. I also miss seeing the "magic number" as part of the standings. We were so spoiled! What a time to grow up as a Reds fan!
cumberlandreds (10-21-2020),dreghorntwo (10-16-2020),Redsfan6272 (10-16-2020),Ron Madden (10-15-2020)
Was a great question and answer, very interesting!
mbgrayson (10-16-2020)
I wasn't criticizing the answer. I asked, and yes it was answered. But didn't get to the meat of the question. Saying BABIP improved, to me, is the same as saying his batting average improved. It doesn't explain why the improvement. Were the balls he was hitting, being hit more solid? Or was it luck. And if the ball were being hit harder(better), WHY? I understand players stats change from year to year, but this was a very weird outlier because nothing else ever showed a potential for this. Before and after.
Big Klu (10-15-2020)
If you get a chance, read chapter 3 of Peter Gammons's book Beyond the 6th Game." It's basically what happened in baseball - and particularly the Red Sox - after the 1975 Series. The setting was a spring training exhibition game in 1983 between the Sox and the Phillies who had Rose, Perez and Morgan on that team. Gammons talked about Perez but mainly about Joe. If you were/are a Reds fan of a certain age, you've heard most of it before but it's still nice to read that about him from a non local writer.
The Best Second Baseman Of All Time! RIP Joe
The Stop And Chat
do you think he was better than jeff richardson?
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