Baaah.

Well, after five games the Reds are 3-2. That’s a .600 winning record, which comes out to about 97 wins on the season. Even if we lost tomorrow – that’s going .500 in half of our games against two of the toughest teams on our record. One might ask, “Why do we need a scapegoat, anyway?” Well, because we’re on the internet, and we’re Reds fans, and we need someone to blame.  I lined-up a bunch of potential goats last season, but here’s my 2013 edition, inspired by today’s game and its aftermath (and its duringmath, but that’s not a word.)

So partially based on today’s game – here are some prime scapegoat candidates

First we’ve got our old friend Dusty Baker. Dusty Baker was a huge scapegoat for last year’s team, and he will undoubtedly continue to be. To some extent, that’s the territory that comes with being a manager. I doubt anyone, and I definitely doubt that every MLB manager goes out their and makes nothing but optimal decisions 162 days out of the year. Baker makes his fair share of mistakes, in my opinion, but he’s got his strengths, as well. At its core, though, Dusty Baker has essentially no choice but to occasionally play an individual you don’t like, and given that we usually don’t like shitty ballplayers, they are going to screw it up.  Baker’s also set himself up in the Chapman to the pen camp, which means that he ‘can’ be blamed for any bad starts by Mike Leake all season.

Both our losses this season have come in extra innings, which does point to some bullpen management issues – and I don’t think Dusty’s done a great job of that so far. But we’ve also had two extra inning games in six days. Last year we had 14 extra inning games all year. The other issue is the current roster.

That brings me to Walt Jocketty. Jocketty ultimately gets to make all the decisions for who is on the roster, so he can be blamed for aaaaaallll kinds of failures. For example, Sean Marshall is on the active roster. Sean Marshall has not pitched yet. In all fairness to Dusty, it is a bit difficult to get your bullpen through two extra inning games in six days, when you only have six relief pitchers. Now, we have no idea what on earth might be going on with Sean Marshall’s “shoulder fatigue”, but as time goes on, it’s getting less and less like “This is an unfortunate turn of events” and more like “Someone fucked up.” A GM, much like a manager, will inevitably make a bad call. … So let’s yell at him.

Of course, management failures don’t excuse the players who are the ones, who, you know, actually play the games. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone, I think, if Jay Bruce ended up as a huge scapegoat this year. He strikes out a lot. He’s not quite as good defensively as he used to be. He does appear to struggle a little in high leverage situations, which people remember really really really really well, apparently. He also used to be a top prospect, who has, shockingly fallen a somewhat short of his ultimate ceiling. (“If Joey Votto can be 200% better than we ever imagined, why can’t Bruce?”) Given how certain groups of Reds fans (and announcers) used to treat Adam Dunn, it seems like Jay is doomed to be a lightning rod of criticism. He did strike out tonight when he had the opportunity to win the game at the end, so, obviously he’s the worst player ever.

As a dark horse (dark goat?) I’ll pin up Todd Frazier. Todd’s been awesome so far. But it’s very possible that Frazier will not be as good as he was last year. He might be! He might be better! But, he also struggled in minors for long periods of time (usually when we were moving him around to all kinds of crazy positions, but still). We’ve sort of built Todd Frazier up into a superhero. If he turns out to be an ordinary crime fighter, things could get ugly.

The Chapman Affair was also a shitstorm of internet furor, so I’ll also anticipate Mike Leake as a possible scapegoat. Leake is our fifth starter, generally a pitcher who is not very good, but Leake is pretty good for your number five guy. But more than that, now, Leake may possibly fall short of how good we imagined Chapman would be in the rotation.  The horror. Leake wasn’t great today, and that undoubtedly contributed to the part of the game where we lost, but we really shouldn’t expect too much from a 25-year old soft tosser. Or, you know, let’s.

Poor JJ Hoover wouldn’t ordinarily strike me as someone who would be a scapegoat, but he’s been unfortunate enough to be the bearer of 100% of the Reds current losses. He’s also appeared in four games. See above, re: bullpen management. I think JJ will do ok in the future if he can get some rest, but a lot of times, a bad reputation can be built in a couple days, and take a long time to shed (see: Alfredo Simon, 2012.) Plus, his name really leads to a lot of ‘vacuum’ jokes, which is too much for the Twitterdom to resist.

BTW, I want to start calling him “Jedgar” Sort of like… JJ Hoover + J Edgar Hoover +Jedward. Yeah!

(Photo by Keith Allison/Flickr)

Doesn’t it sort of feel like we’ve been here before? This is pretty much exactly like last year, when the Chapman-starting-pitcher experiment happened, and then didn’t happen. Except now, there’s no ‘good’ reason, like Ryan Madson coming down with a bad case of broken elbow. That’s the only thing that drives this from ‘mild pout’ to ‘full-fledged exasperation’. There is nothing true about Chapman, Leake, or any other pitcher on the Reds today, that was not true back in the off-season when we were treated to a whole lot of “Chapman is totally definitely probably maybe going to be in the rotation this year.”

Of course, it’s not a clear-cut decision. A GM changing his mind, even without any clear change in information (other than your player and your manager both openly opposing the move) is not exactly pitchfork and torch worthy. It just seems like there’s been so much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching all winter long. So many tedious debates. If they had just said “he’ll be the closer” back in December. Well, one, we could’ve skipped signing Jonathan Broxton, and used that money a little better, and B, I could’ve whined about it for about two weeks, and then  largely forgotten about it.

I’ve firmly been in Chapman should start. Partly, because I think it’s better for the team going forward, and partly because the idea of a hard-throwing 6’4″ lefty starter with great strikeout records is pretty exciting. Now, I’m looking for things to make myself feel better about the whole thing in retrospect.

Basically – that’s this season. We have a pretty exciting team for 2013, and I don’t know that Chapman to the rotation helps that much this year. Mike Leake certainly doesn’t add anything to the Reds 2013 bullpen, and I’m not very confident that we can pull off the 2012 – 5 starters/161 starts crazy witchiness we did last year, so I don’t think we should trade him away. Plus, Chapman’s 70 innings in 2012 really limits how much we should think about letting him throw in 2013. I think it’s insane to believe he would be worth significantly more than the 4.3 WAR that Strasburg put up last year. When you compare that to the 1.5 WAR Mike Leake put up last year, and then consider that Mike Leake’s bat was worth 1.0 WAR – that’s normal replacement. Chapman’s probably worth a small negative amount, if anything, with the bat. So with Chapman in the rotation, you’re going to lose as much as 3.3 WAR out of the pen, and gain maybe out most 2.5 in the rotation? (Yes, this is very irresponsible math, but hey, I’m just trying to make myself feel better.)

Am I hoping that we’ll see a Kris Medlen style move, especially in the case of a major injury in the rotation? Yes. Definitely. And maybe I’m just kidding myself, but I’m not about to let this move interfere with enjoying the hell out of the 2013 Reds season.

Isn’t it amazing? We’ve actually had Reds news the last couple days. It’s not exactly the most exciting stuff in the world. But… news!

This picture has been out for awhile, but I think Chapman kinda looks like he’s doing duck-face.

• The Reds have  their promotional schedule for 2013 out, and Red Reporter has all the highlights for you. Bobbleheads this year are: Votto, Phillips, Frazier, Latos, and Chapman. I’m still waiting for the Brandon Phillips Bowling Ball giveaway. Surely there’s nothing impractical about that.

• Two Reds have come to one-year deals with the team, avoiding arbitration. Chris Heisey is in with essentially a standard midpoint deal (Heisey: 1.6, Team: 1.05, Deal: 1.325). Alfredo Simon and the team also settled, but the number hasn’t been released yet. At “somewhere between $750,000 and $1,050,000″, I’m not that concerned.

• MLB.com released their top 100 prospects going into 2013, with Rangers shorstop Jurickson Profar taking the number one spot this year. Reds prospects on the list include #11 Billy Hamilton (#3 OF prospect), #51 Robert Stephenson, #66 Tony Cingrani (#6 LHP). Former Red Didi Gregorius also made the list (#63), now in the Diamondbacks system.

• Jamie Ramsey posted the broadcast schedule for Reds spring training. Only 1 game will be televised on FSN Ohio, but most games will be on the Radio, and a handful will be on audio-streamed on Reds.com. Of course, there may also be a couple of games televised by the opponent’s network, which might get picked up by MLB Network. Maybe.

• And apparently Rolen does want to come back? But they haven’t worked out a deal yet. Fay interprets it as a money issue. I have nothing but respect for Rolen, but I don’t think it makes sense for us at this point. As Fay points out, there’s not a lot of money left in the banana stand, and I think the pieces we already have are going to be more useful.

I told you it wasn’t very exciting. Thankfully, there’s less than two weeks until pitchers and catchers report, so we’ll be able to overreact to the trickle of standardized quotes that players give in spring training. Hooray!

(Photo by Keith Allison/Flickr)

Well, I wrote in the season on the beginning of the Chapman-as-closer Era, and as we’ve seen, it’s turned out to be quite a success. That era may already be over, as the club has indicated that the signing of Jonathan Broxton is partially a move to put Chapman in the rotation for good. Chapman had a pretty decent starter-audition in spring training last year before we all learned that Madson was going to be out for the entire year, and it sounds like he’ll get a good chance this year, as well. As much as I loved watching Aroldis Chapman close, I’m pretty sure I’ll love him watching him start games at least almost as much.

Still, having Chapman close was a pretty great time for Reds fans, so I wanted to look back and see how Chapman’s one, and maybe only, season as a closer stacks up against the historical Reds seasons. So, I did what I always do, Pinky, and set up a spreadsheet. This one has every season by a Reds pitcher with 30 games finished or more. It’s a little bit of an arbitrary cut-off, but it gets the job done.  There have been 81 such seasons for the Reds, starting in 1942 – which means between 1 and 3 different players for each year from 1961-2012, approximately.  Going back before 1960 it gets a little patchy.  (Here’s the spreadsheet, if you want it. )

At 24 years of age, Chapman is one of the youngest to appear on the list – and the youngest since Scott Williamson’s Rookie-of-the-Year winning 1999 (Williamson was 23). By the traditional closer’s yardstick of saves, Chapman comes in at seventh – but that’s to be expected, since Chapman didn’t even get the closer’s job until Marshall lost it. Could Chapman have gotten 7 saves if he had been the closer all year, to beat out Jeff Brantley’s franchise record (Chapman’s first save was on May 20)? Almost certainly, but that’s not what happened, and it’s probably a good thing for the Reds if it never does.

Moving into non-save statistics, you can see what an incredible season it really was. He has the second-lowest ERA on the list at 1.51 – the only one lower is Ted Abernathy in 1967 (Chapman’s also got the second-highest ERA+, if you want to do it that way). ERA isn’t always sensible to apply to relief pitchers, even normalized for park and league, so consider that he has the lowest WHIP of any season on the list, and it’s not close. At 0.809, Chapman’s mark is over 0.150 better than Jeff Shaw’s 1997 WHIP. That’s almost entirely due to a ridiculously low hit rate. Chapman’s 4.4 H/9 is also the lowest of any Reds closer on the list, while his 2.9 BB/9 is just about in the middle of the pack.

Of course, anyone could guess that the area where Chapman really stands out is strikeouts. His 15.3 K/9 mark is also easily first on the list, with three Rob Dibble seasons coming in at #2, #3, and #4. For one of those seasons, though, Dibble walked (on average) a batter per inning. If you move off the rate stats, Chapman is in third place for strikeout totals, just barely sitting behind one Dibble season, and Sam Ellis in 1964. Ellis really hardly counts for this list, as he also made 5 starts, and thus threw 122 innings. But, according to my self-imposed rules, he’s still allowed, since he finished over 30 games. (If you take out his two complete games, he really only squeaks by with 30 games that he finished and didn’t start, but he still makes it.) Somewhat sadly, Chapman’s impressive 5.3 K/BB rate is pretty well outdistanced by Jeff Shaw’s 1997. Shaw, of course, was a very different pitcher, but his 1.1 BB/9 rate, and 42 saves also put him up there with the very best closer seasons the Reds have ever had.

In 2012, Aroldis Chapman had a magical, amazing, history-making season as the Reds closer, and you didn’t really need me to give you a spreadsheet to know that. It’s probably too much to ask that Chapman have an equally magical season in 2013 as a starter, but I can really, really, hope.

The C-ing Red puppy is very proud of the 2012 Reds, and he’s especially impressed with how great the rotation was. It’s not easy to pitch so well in this ballpark, woof!

It’s been a rough few days, Reds fans. The historical catastrophe of the National League Division Series we lost on Thursday night is not something that can be erased from our memories in a few hours. Most of us are still pretty deep in mourning, realigning mostly into camps based on whether they won’t watch the rest of the post-season, have some attachment to the Tigers/Yankees, or can forgive the Giants enough for beating us to hope they beat the Cardinals, and maybe even win it all. Even though there has been some terrible, terrible things that have happened to the 2012 Reds in the last week, there are some amazing things that happened to the 2012 Reds, and I think now’s a perfect time to be reminded of those things.

Most of these are short notes, and I’ll probably cover some of them in more detail as the off-season crawls on, but for now, I just want to remember how good things were for Reds fans this summer.

10. 10,000 Reds win - This was well covered back in April, even here, but the Cincinnati Reds franchise, at least counting the eligible years as baseball-reference and official MLB stats do, won their 10,000th game this year. Unfortunately, there’s no awesome prize for the franchise that wins 10^4 games over a century or so, but it’s a cool marker and our 10,091 wins put us 6th among all the teams. It’s just another fantastic reminder that this is a great team with a proud franchise history.

9. Ryan Ludwick’s 500th RBI – This isn’t so much exciting in and of itself, but more of a symbol of the Ryan Ludwick that we got, as opposed to the Ryan Ludwick some fans worried we might get. For what it’s worth, Ludwick’s 530 total RBI sneaks him into the top 1000 career RBI-attainers. Ludwick seems like a great guy, a good clubhouse influence, and a solid bat now, but back in March, only a small percentage of fans were really excited about him. That’s not for terrible reasons. Ludwick’s put together some excellent seasons since his first at-bat for the Texas Rangers in 2002, but they’ve been spliced in-between a lot of mediocre performances, and some time in San Diego where he seemed outright bad. Now, Walt’s faith in Ludwick dating back to Ryan’s Cardinal days appears very well-founded indeed. He was one of many important cogs that got the Reds into the post-season, but it’s still fair to say that without Ludwick, the Reds do not fare very well in 2012.

8. We have an actual starting shortstop - Hooray for Zack Cozart. Now, while Cozy had a hot start that he eventually couldn’t live up to, he accomplished with his glove what he couldn’t with his bat. Overall, his offensive numbers are not what you might wish, but Cozart never really profiled as a slugging type shortstop anyway. I think we all have hopes that he can his improve his hitting numbers to a more healthy, say 90-ish OPS+, but his defensive numbers, though a small sample size, give him a lot of value.  His 131 games started at shortstop is the most by a Red since Felipe Lopez in 2006.

7. Brandon Phillips’ Bazillionth Web Gem – So, this one might not be totally technical. But though it’s hard to find a milestone for BP’s defensive prowess, his ability in the field is undeniable. Brandon is a great defensive constant in our infield, and it really makes him worth every penny. There are some (jealous, bitter, haters, obvy) who think that his flashy plays are not particularly well-correlated to actual defensive values. While this may be true to some extent, those people suck, Brandon is an excellent defender, both in true value and being an exciting player to watch. People want to watch him play second, and pitchers want him playing behind them. What else can you say?

6. Healthiest rotation ever – The 2012 Cincinnati Reds had five starting pitchers who started 161 games this season. Todd Redmond started one game, and that’s only because of a double-header situation. The rotation that opened the season went on to pitch 99.4% of all starts in the season. I’m sure I’ll write more on this later, but I’ve gone back 30 years, and no Reds rotation has come close to 2012′s reliability.

5. Todd Frazier ROY - I think, now Harper is the front runner for the Rookie of the Year award among all hitters, and probably deservedly so. Frazier’s bat was just a little bit better, and Harper played better defense at a more important position. He’s also younger, which is probably at least a little bit relevant. Still, though Frazier’s had his struggles in the Reds system, he came up this year and put up a great first season, while producing enough material for 10 verses of the Ballad of Todd Frazier. I’m really looking forward to see him as the Reds regular Third Baseman in the future.

4. Johnny Cueto dodges DIPS regression again - While Cueto, like Frazier probably won’t merit an end-of-the-year award, Cueto was fantastic this year. Though just one of many pitchers whose WAR somewhat understates what seems to be a repeated ability to prevent runs from being scored, Cueto is one of the best. This season finally puts to rest most of the troubling ‘regression’ theories when it comes to Cueto. He’s one of the best pitchers in the NL, and people know it now.

3. The rise of Aroldis Chapman - Chapman’s been making waves since he first arrived in the US, but he’s made great strides as a pitcher this season. This success may put the final nail in the coffin of Chapman’s starting career, but it’s hard to complain. His K/9 on the season is over 15, and his BB/9 has shrunk to a more than respectable 2.89. He’s excellent against righties with a .501 OPS against, but lefties might as well just give up before they get to the plate.

2. Homer Bailey no-hitter - This hardly needs any more comment, since it happened so recently. Homer Bailey is going to be a good pitcher. That wasn’t always clear, but it’s pretty obvious now. Of course, nothing in baseball-future is ever guaranteed, but no matter what, no one can take the no-hitter away from him.

1. Reds win a playoff game - It’s easy to remember the really shitty part of the NLDS, but let’s not forget the great parts. We went out to San Francisco and got a great pair of wins away from home. Those two wins are our first since the 1995 NLDS against the Dodgers, so it’s always good to end a 17 year playoff win drought. We’ve gone to the playoffs twice in three years now, and we’ve improved. So, in 2014, we can expect to go to the NLCS, and we’ll probably win the World Series in 2022.

All in all, I’d say it was a pretty excellent year.

Yep, I’m still on that Cueto-not-Chapman-for-Cy-Young, kick. (Photo by David Slaughter/Flickr)

So, I’m gonna bust a chart at you that’s absolutely insane. It’s so big, I had to bust it into two separate image files before the blog would even let me load it up.

It’s also not that useful. But I think it’s a pretty way to look at how the Cy Young Award has changed over the years. Here’s the basic premise: I took every Cy Young Award winner, and looked at where they ranked among qualifying pitchers in that year and league for a handful of stats – from the very traditional to more ‘new=age’ statistics. I used percentile rank, so ’1′ or ’0′ is the league leader depending on whether it’s better for the stat to be high or low – those are all marked in red. Being in the top five %ile is marked in orange, and in the top 10% is marked in yellow. It’s a little problematic, because if you have enough individuals tied for the league lead, then none of them are considered in the ’100 %ile’ category. Without further ado: here you go.

I will make a couple general points, here.

• WAR has turned into a pretty nice indicator of Cy Young status. That makes sense, as it’s a stat that aggregrates other statistics and rewards pitchers who throw a lot of innings, well. Essentially, that’s what the Cy Young is all about, right? But it’s worth noting that that wasn’t the case, for years. WAR encapsulates what we think is important in pitchers now, and by ‘we’, that does include the baseball writers, these days.
• In fact, in the last ten years, WAR is a better indicator of the Cy Young award winner than any single stat. Again – sensible, because it’s aggregates good stats, but in the 19 winners since 2002 (not including Eric Gagne, because let’s not add that complication), the leader in WAR has won more often than the leader in ERA, the leader in strikeouts, or the leader in wins. Let’s be real, though, it’s still only correct about half the time.
• Speaking of which, Wins is losing the dominance it once held of the Cy Young Award. The wins leader still frequently wins the Cy Young, but it doesn’t hurt that the wins leader is still frequently very good at baseball. But Felix Hernandez wasn’t even in the top half of qualified pitchers in wins, and he still got his – that was the first time that had ever happened.
• Interestingly, since 2005, each winner has either led the league in ERA or in WAR.
• Of course, this still misses a lot of the voting dynamics that change so much from year to year. Like the 2011 NL award: Clayton Kershaw might have beat Roy Halladay because he had two more wins (and a magic 20+ wins season), or because he had a phenomenal strikeout rate – but it probably wasn’t because his ERA was 0.07 lower than Halladay’s. A bunch of orange and red boxes can only tell you so much.

So what does that tell us about Johnny Cueto?

» Continue reading “Johnny Cueto And Cy Young Trends, Part 2: The WAR”

I still advocate that we settle this rivaly via insult swordfighting. (Photo by Peter Bond/flickr)

Well, the fallout of last night started to seem very familiar. In a solid, but not exactly dominant win over the Pirates, Aroldis Chapman came into the 9th inning, and hit Andrew McCutchen.

This made Pirates fans angry. Understandably. When Joey Votto gets hit by a pitch, it turns off the part of my brain that’s meant to be rational. It’s especially not good when it’s a three-digit Aroldis Chapman fastball. That one’s gonna hurt. Also, internet Pirates fans are as ridiculous as internet anyone else fans – so you know, rationality is not a strong point.

I’d like to suggest that this is not Chapman just deciding he wants to hit McCutchen because… well, I’m not sure anyone’s come up with a really good reason, but essentially Pirates fans seem to think Chapman wanted to make a statement after blowing his last save against the Pirates, which was two months ago. It’s also a stupid reason. I mean, that’s not to say it couldn’t be true – Chapman is young, and a professional baseball player: not a cohort that’s proved itself immune from dumb reasoning.

But there’s no proof that he did hit him. Yes, Garrett Jones was coming up next, who Chapman would probably get out easily. But this is Aroldis Chapman – if that was a good suggestion to hit someone, Aroldis would have 20 hit batsmen this season. Neither Chapman, nor any pitcher in baseball has shown a tendency to intentionally hit a batter for any other reason than as revenge for a previous HBP, or a personal grudge between the two people involved.

Secondly, Chappy’s control HAS improved, but he’s as susceptible to hit batsmen as any other pitcher. So far in 2012, Chapman has 4 hit batsmen – which makes him second among NL relief pitchers. Even without hitting McCutchen, he’d still be tied for third, behind only Johnny Venters, Scott Maine, and Ryan Webb. So yes Chapman’s control has improved, but he’s still very susceptible to lapses in mental focus. Fortunately for him, and the Reds, he has enough raw talent that this hasn’t hurt us much in the past. This time, perhaps, though, it hurt Andrew McCutchen.

Is it possible that Chapman hit McCutchen on purpose? Yes. I don’t know what’s going on his head anymore than Pirates fans do – and he certainly has made some poor choices in the past. Still, it’s also extremely possible that he didn’t hit him on purpose. In any case, I won’t be too pissed if a Reds hitter gets hit tonight – as long as it’s not a headshot, or something else ridiculous. If they want to give us a free base-runner, fine.

Moreover, I just don’t want another enemy. I don’t hate any of the Pirates. I am largely apathetic to Pirates fans. Don’t we all get enough dumb posturing and circular arguments from hating the Cardinals? That should be enough. Please let that be enough.

(Photo by Wknight94 at wikimedia commons)

What a nightmare of a game. You know, for a win.

Homer Bailey had a pretty great start. 4 runs isn’t awesome, but only 2 earned is. One error by Bailey, and one by Bruce were a little problematic, but Bailey did a decent job of keeping things away from the defense by striking out 8 batters over his 6 2/3 innings. And the offense had a nice night – both Heisey and Stubbs popped homers. And Bailey himself got himself an RBI double.

Homer and I also have the bullpen to rage at. Given two outs, and men on 1st and 2nd, Arredondo came in to immediately give up a single and a run. Then, Marshall had a tricky 8th, giving up a run, to narrow the lead to a single run. Thankfully for him, Ondrusek came in and managed to grab one final out.

The top of the 9th was really an exercise in management hilarity. Dusty isn’t at all to blame for the bullpen melting down. Afterall, Arredondo and Marshall are usually in the half of the bullpen that can get a few outs without giving up most of a three run lead. Pinch-hitting Miguel Cairo is really bizarre though. Cairo used to be our reliable go-to guy to hit for the relief pitchers, but his .152 average this year isn’t cutting it.

And then Cozart tried to bunt his way onto first base. It didn’t work.

All of this is, of course, the perfect set up for the bottom of the 9th. We’ve got a one run lead. Our bullpen has nearly blown the lead twice already. And in walks Aroldis Chapman. Still one of the best closers in baseball, but coming off a month that certainly was not as good as his first month in the closer’s seat.

And Aroldis delivers. Triple digit heat. Pounding the zone. Amarista: strikeout. Headley: strikeout. Quentin: strikeout.

Fin

At least I can be happy for this guy’s first All-Star selection.(Photo by Keith Allison/Flickr)

The All-Star Game rosters were released today, which is good, because it gives the fans of every single baseball team something to whine and feel bitter about. This year, and me, are no exceptions. Especially since, old friend Tony La Russa is managing the NL team, and thus gets to help select the team.

It’s a little astonishing that Joey Votto is going to be starting only his first all-star game – he didn’t start either the year he won the MVP or the year after. Now that Pujols and Fielder and Gonzalez have all set off for American League-ier pastures, it’s JV’s turn to shine. It’s also great that Aroldis Chapman and Jay Bruce will be able to suit up for the NL, Bruce for the second year in a row.

But, of course, there are two big snubs on Reds fans’ minds right now. First, Brandon Phillips, who was a distant second in all-star voting, perhaps a tiny bit unfairly as I’ve discussed before, apparently didn’t merit a selection as a reserve, or a spot on the “Final Man” Vote. Filling both those spots are fellow second-baggers Jose Altuve, and Aaron Hill. I mentioned Aaron Hill as well – and he makes sense, as his numbers are essentially as good as Uggla’s, and he got like, no votes. It’s a minor thing, though, as Altuve, Hill, and Uggla all have at least slightly better offensive numbers than Phillips, and I wouldn’t be as suspicious if it weren’t for a couple other notable omissions.

According to the numbers right now, Johnny Cueto may not be the best pitcher in the National League, but he’s at least in the conversation. Cueto’s really not a strikeout guy, and his walks aren’t high, but they aren’t Cliff-Lee-low either. So by peripherals, using the handy measure of xFIP, most of the chosen starters look a bit better. But Cueto has the fifth best ERA in the National League – better than a full five of the selected starting pitchers. He hasn’t been particularly lucky in the BABIP sense – his is just a hair below the NL average. He does it, of course, with groundballs – with a 49% GB rate, he’s doing better in that respect than any of the NL All-Star SP’s other than R.A.Dickey.

At very least, I’d say he’s better than Wade Miley, but Miley is the sole representative of the Diamondbacks, so what can you do? Still, I get the feeling that TLR still hasn’t quite forgiven the major players in the brou-ha-ha of 2010.

What sort of caps this all off is that the Brewers’ Zack Greinke is another big snub. Greinke maybe has an even better case, as he has been clearly superior to both Lynn and Hamels this season. No matter how you look at it, it’s a bit shocking. Until you remember that there’s no love lost between Greinke and LaRussa.

Yes, it’s obviously all a grand conspiracy by a retired baseball manager who doesn’t particularly like the team I root for. Or Zack Greinke. Also, aliens. Aliens are probably involved.

No seriously, it’s a little bit of a shame, but personal feelings have influenced ASG selections since the beginning of time/All-star selections. If we want Cueto on the mound, I guess we’ll just have to win the World Series this year.

EDIT: Also, the news going around is that Lynn, at least was a player vote – TLR used four of his picks on Phillies – probably Cole Hamels, there. (Partial source)

Ryan Ludwick, sigh, star of the game. Photo by SD Dirk/Flickr

Tonight, the Reds eked out a close one, narrowly avoiding what might’ve been their first consecutive loss in two weeks. Johnny Cueto got off to a good start, but ended up allowing three runs after getting two outs in the 8th inning.

Of course, he had help from Logan Ondrusek, who allowed a three-run home run immediately upon entering the game. Not Ondrusexy’s best work, but I’m not worried – Ondrusek just needs to be solid right-handed set-up man, and we already know he’s the third best reliever in the pen. Those guys give up runs. Thankfully, we had Marshall and Chapman to get the rest of the last five outs.

Chapman continued his closination domination – in the 9th inning, he struck out two, and got through the inning on 9 pitches total. He probably needed to throw a bullpen session after the game just to get his work in. Crazy.

It was, after all, a good thing that we scored one more run in this game than we allowed in that disastrous 8th inning. (Begrudging props to Ryan Ludwick!) This game also featured Todd Frazier’s first career stolen base. Hooray Todd Frazier!