NOT THAT KIND OF BATTERY, GUYS.

Well, that’s probably not fair to Devin. In any case, here’s a battery combo chart (which I started doing last year), for the 2012 Reds. (The 2011 version, with an explanation is here).  This chart is very different from 2011′s, but at the same time, it’s remarkably similar. For one, we had only 6 pitchers start this season, a far cry from the 10 different starters we used in 2011. Along with that, Redmond only started one game, so having 5 starters combine for 161 starts this season is really remarkable – in 2011, we had six pitchers with at least half a season’s worth of starts, and Willis and LeCure had a few as well.

This shows us that whatever Dusty may have said back in 2009 (~), he definitely favors designated catchers, no matter the primary language of his backstops. Arroyo/Hanigan is a combination that’s been going on forever, but Cueto has been caught almost exclusively by Hernandez since getting to the big leagues. This year, all but one of his starts was caught by Hanigan, and that turned out really well for both Cueto and the Reds. Leake has expressed him preference for Mesoraco before – so it’s not surprising that Devin became his full-time catcher this year.

I think the Latos and Bailey situations are pretty interesting. I’m probably reading too much into this, but the fact that Meso caught Latos’ first three starts really caught my eye. It makes sense that Dusty would try to assign Mesoraco to Latos , both of them being new to the Reds, essentially. But Latos’ first three starts were not impressive. In his fourth start, Latos was caught by Ryan Hanigan, and his best outing thus far, and his very first Reds win – after that it was all Hanigan. Now, that, again, is probably not fair to Devin. Latos’s firth start was also not great, and Mat’s had some recurring early season woes. You hope that the switch to Hanigan was more just about a change of pace for Latos, as both him and Mesoraco figure to play big parts in Cincinnati Reds teams of the future.

On the other hand, it’s no slight to Devin that Hanigan is an excellent defensive catcher, and has a lot more experience calling games than Mesoraco does. Meso’s only 25, which gives him plenty of time to learn some veteran catching tricks. Plus, he’s got a good chance to develop into a pretty strong hitter. For now though, matching up Latos and Hanigan meant that Mesoraco needed to catch another pitcher almost full time – and that pitcher was Homer Bailey. Bailey was caught mostly by Hanigan in his MLB starts in 2o11, but he also matched up with Mesoraco a few times, and probably worked with him during his rehab time at AAA.

Homer had a pretty great season with Devin as his full time backstop. But it probably hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that it was Hanigan who caught Homer’s no-hitter – and by ERA, K and BB numbers, Bailey was better with Hanigan calling the shots. Of course, that was mostly in the last part of the season, after Mesoraco got suspended and demoted in favor of Dioner Navarro as backup – the end of the season has also been when Bailey has done some of his best pitching in the last two years – so much like with Latos, it could just be an unfortunate happenstance that puts Mesoraco’s handling in a bad light.

All this makes me wonder what the plan is for next year. The Reds definitely favored Navarro after Mesoraco’s suspension this year, but Navarro is gone now, which leaves us once again with the Hanigan/Mesoraco situation. Hanigan catching Cueto/Arroyo/Latos, with Mesoraco catching Bailey/Leake is fairly like scenario, but it’s a little hard on Bailey to say “With Hanigan, you threw a no-hitter, but Mesoraco will be catching for you for all of 2013, kthxbye!”  It may be time to shake up the catching situation so that no one has a designated catcher. (Or maybe just Arroyo). I also wonder a little bit about Hanigan – Hanigan played 112 games in 2012, the most he’s ever played in the majors. Along with that came one of his worst hitting performances. Now, he’s still valuable at that level, given his on-base and defensive talents, but if we can get him down to half-time, he may be able to hit a little better, as well.

Of course, maybe we’ll just trade away Homer Bailey, and it won’t be an issue anymore. (/sadface)

Or, more likely, I’m reading too much into things.

Tonight’s game was not fun, as losses pretty much never are, but it wasn’t quite up to the ‘heartbreaking’ levels of other losses. Nothing was surprising, no really outstanding performances were wasted, no ridiculously terrible performances were out there to be ridiculed.

I mean, yes, Leake’s six runs in three innings meltdown was pretty bad. But, really, Leake may just be  an saverage pitcher (which is fine), and average pitchers are going to have a couple outings like this every year – and at least it wasn’t an epic blowout – like Yovani Gallardo allowing 10 runs in 2 innings to the Cardinals tonight. It did feel worse in the ninth inning when Jay Bruce and Devin Mesoraco’s solo home runs brought us within 2, but I’m pretty confident that had we not been 4 runs behind, we wouldn’t have been facing Fernando Abad.

Ludwick and Rolen were also pretty bad, each going hitless. I’m getting closer to losing hope with both these guys, but at least it’s not at all surprising. Ludwick seems to get by with a clutch hit every now and then, just often enough to escape being entirely useless-seeming. And at this point Rolen is a big part of this team’s personality, and management loves his leadership and overall veteranocity. That would be fine if we got some offense out of left field.  Hey, I hear the Angels released Bobby Abreu?

In better news, Stubbs made up for a fielder’s-choice-picked-off combo by getting an actual hit and only striking out once, Bruce was pretty awesome, Frazier’s pinch-hit triple was bad-ass, and the bullpen was excellent. We haven’t seen a lot of J.J. Hoover, but I’ve got a feeling he’s going to be a pretty good return for Juan Francisco. Even much-maligned Alfredo Simon did quite a job mopping up after Mike Leake.

So now it’s up to the Reds to win the next two games to win their second series in a row, and come back to .500 on the year. The pitching matchups are Cueto vs.  Lucas Harrell and Mat Latos vs. Bud Norris.  That’s probably a solid advantage, and a good chance, so I don’t think it’s out of the question at all.

It's ok, Ryan Hanigan. You're still MY favorite. That'll be some comfort, I'm sure. Photo By BubbaFan.

In addition to remembering that Spring Training games can end in a tie, we also learned something new from Saturday’s game. If Mike Leake were the Bachelor on the TV Show “The Bachelor”, except “The Bachelor” wasn’t about fake romance and behind the scenes cattiness, and instead was about starting pitchers and who they’d like to catch their games, and Mike Leake had only one red rose left, he would totally give it to Devin Mesoraco.

In Leake’s own words, “”I like him. “If I could choose my catcher, I would definitely choose him. We seem to know each other pretty well. He’s not afraid to call certain pitches and he likes to use my changeup, and I like to use it as well.”

First, let’s just take a small look at familiarity. At the major leagues level, Hernandez has caught the majority of Leake’s starts. But Hanigan’s caught 15 of Leake’s starts, so they should at least be pretty familiar with each other – most of those starts came in the second half of 2011, as well, so there’s recent exposure. Mesoraco caught Leake’s last two 2011 starts, and that article quotes Devin as saying that he caught Leake when ‘he first came up’ (not totally clear what that means. I think they both played in the Arizona Fall League, maybe?) and that they seem to get put together in spring training. There may be some positive conditioning there – as both the games that Mesoraco caught were gems by Leake  - 17 total innings, and 3 earned runs in two games. Can’t blame Leake for wanting some more of that.

This is all essentially non-useful information. But mildly interesting!

As far as the change-up issue goes, it’s a little difficult to get any numbers – as it seems that most of Mesoraco’s catching experience with Leake comes from non-pitchfX situations. Fangraph’s pitch value numbers don’t rank Leake’s changeup very highly, but that obviously misses a lot of the nuance of pitch selection, and hey, maybe it just needs to be used more often. Per catcher, the pitchFx numbers I did manage to wrangle, showed that Hanigan does not call for the changeup very often. The two games of data for Mesoraco and Miller are each pretty worthless.

I will say that although pitchfX usually does a pretty good job of recognizing Leake’s changeup (the cut fastball, sinker, and slider recognition gets pretty weird though), for the two games that Mesoraco caught, I think the system miscounted some changeups as other pitchers. You can kind of see what I mean in the diagram on the right. The changeups are the purple squares, but I think there are some pink triangles, yellow triangles, and red squares that should be changeups as well.

Whether it’s the changeups thing, a close friendship, or if Mike Leake is just buyin’ what Devin is selling, it definitely seems like Leake has a strong preference, considering this is just what he’s telling the media. And Dusty does like to straight up assign catchers to pitchers (as I’ve discussed ad nauseam). This year, there doesn’t seem like there’s an obvious ‘native language’ dichotomy, so, while, we obviously don’t have all the information, it just might be that Mike Leake’s already found his 2012 Battery Buddy.

Photo by mwlguide @ flickr

One player who hasn’t gotten a lot of blog time this winter is Devin Mesoraco, our hypothetical starting catcher. We’ve been busy talking about just about everything else: rotation, relievers, left field, short stop, BP extension, who precisely is going to back up at catcher. But Devin himself is going largely untalked about. Some of this is probably because we’ve got good plans B and C at this point. We know Ryan Hanigan is a more than capable guy whose bat plays well for his defensive position. Corky Miller provides depth and wouldn’t totally suck. And who knows, maybe Dioner Navarro could have a bit of a breakthrough and surprise us?

Still, at least pre-spring training, Mesoraco’s looking like “the guy” and  he’s only got 53 MLB plate appearance to his name. Although he has an excellent prospect record, he wouldn’t be the first young player to fall flat on his face in the majors.

It’s a lot of pressure for a 24 year old with a team now built around pitching, and a lot of question marks in the lineup. So to see  the range of possibilities for Mr. Mesoraco in 2012, I looked at some previous catchers in his age range and situation. Think of it like an analog projection:

» Continue reading “What To Expect When You’re Expecting Devin Mesoraco.”

Don't goooooooo. Photo By BubbaFan.

I love Ryan Hanigan. I do not want him to leave. On the other hand, if a team is actively looking at him, that might mean that he has enough trade value right now that it is essential that we sell. According to rumors, the Angels are interested in Hanigan to, evidently, back up or take over for Hank Conger, the Angels best catching prospect. In that case, Ken Rosenthal, who reported the rumor, suggested that we might re-sign Ramon Hernandez to tandem with Mesoraco in 2012 – as, appropriately, Devin is the one piece of the puzzle the others need to fall in around.

Hernandez will probably be more expensive option – he’s had some really good seasons with the Reds. He’s not a super-star, but few free agent catchers are. He’s also more of a short term option. Hanigan is signed (relatively cheap) through 2013, and will probably get in one multi-year contract after that. At 36, it’s hard to tell what role Hernandez will play in the catching picture, but it would probably be short term. In addition, we’d need a prospect from the Angels for Hanigan – a raw, moderately high ceiling guy seems likely, as Hanigan’s not worth enough to merit a true top prospect.  Both catchers are sound, but Hanigan slots more neatly into a backup role. It’s important to sell high, but the team’s future has to be more important.

On the other hand, we may have the next Ryan Hanigan already in the system. It’s a little pipe-dream-y, but I really liked James Skelton when he was with the Tigers – as a discipline-strong, power-weak, 22 year old catching prospect. He was still never a very highly rated guy, but his star has fallen since then. This last year, he only OPS’d .706 between AA and AAA, as a 25 year old. But that’s been in limited playing time, over both this year and last – perhaps he’s resolving an injury issue? (It wouldn’t be that surprising to me – I mean, how many 165 lb catchers do you see in professional baseball?) In any case, smart money is not on Skelton gracing the Reds major league roster – but you never know. Ryan Hanigan had some rough years in the minor as well.

Today the Reds the face the Cardinals for the final time this season, trying to eke out, I guess,  a series win, after last night’s loss and Saturday’s unconventional slugfest. I say ‘I guess’, of course, because there aren’t a lot of reasons to get too excited to win this game, although, most of the writers emphasize that it’s the ‘rubber match’ of the series, because that is what they do. Let’s think:

• We’re pretty much not going to beat the Cardinals in the standings. We’re six games behind, and both teams are essentially coasting at this point.
• Even if we do, I doubt either team cares very much about distant second to the red hot Brewers
• Right now, the season series stands at 8-6, advantage Reds. Even if the Cards win, we win the series – largely on the strength of that sweep back in May
• Even the vaunted, time-wasting rivalry that had developed between St. Louis and Cincinnati last year, when, you know, one of those teams was relevant, seems to have petered out. Nothing from Brandon Phillips. Nothing from Chris Carpenter.

These days, it’s almost all I think about, but I’ve been extremely disappointed with our known progress so far. The rumor mill for the Reds has been relatively quiet, as we enter July, considering we have at least two big holes to fill, and enough talent laying around to get a trade done. My position on our current trade aims have been pretty clear, I think. We need a shortstop. As you consider trades, one part of the analysis should also be the free agent status of all the possible parts of the trade. Thankfully, someone cracked Elias’ formula, and MLBTR updates these every so often. Ramon Hernandez, for example, stands right now as a type A. That’s usually a good thing – but, given Hernandez’s age, any signing team might be wary of losing a draft pick the next season, and you might not be able to offer Hernandez arbitration at all, given the risk.

And there has been a little talk around the catching position. MLBTR discussed at length the possibility of trading Ramon Hernandez in particular. Catching, as always, is a much desired commodity – and the Reds, luckily enough, are in a position to make that happen. The Giants, evidently, have been looking, well, at just about any catching they can get, but in particular, have been considering Hernandez. Meanwhile, Mesoraco is still killing it in AAA, to the tune of .320/.399/.535. All caveats accepted about minor league numbers, but I think Mesoraco’s ready to play major league ball. Even if he’s terrible, I think Corky’s an acceptable backup – and if we get a legitimate upgrade in pitching or shortstop, it would be more than worth it.

I guess the Reds have been said to be scouting Hiroki Kuroda as well. To be fair, I don’t know a lot about Kuroda outside of the scouting report I did a few weeks ago before the Dodgers series. Generally, I’d rather a trade for a good shortstop, unless we’re getting an ace – but even a half decent pitcher is worth a heck of a lot more than we’re getting from Edinson Volquez. I’m still not sure that Kuroda qualifies. He’s 36, and even though he’s posted an impressive 3.10 ERA this season, a lot of that is driven by a 78% LOB percentage – about 10 percentage points higher than he’s ever done before. It seems unlikely that Kuroda has spontaneously developed the ability to be Clutchypants Pitcher McGee, so I’d guess that Kuroda’s a candidate for regression in the second half of the season. Kuroda IS a type B free agent, which is a little nice, as we could net a supplemental round draft pick if someone else signs him, but wouldn’t need to worry about offering him arbitration.

Of course, if we trade for a pitcher, we may want to sign someone who could be a more likely long term option than Kuroda, since, most of our starting pitching fold has already at least tasted the majors. The Leake/Wood/Bailey soup may be better/more reliable next season… orrrr maybe not.

But….in conclusion: Jose Reyes.