The C-ing Red Puppy is really into the Giro d’Italia right now and has not even been watching the Reds. BAD DOG.

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged about the Reds. In related news, moving sucks.

While I’ve been keeping an eye on the Reds in my absence, I have been a bit distracted, and really, it seems like we’ve had a lot of bad news – Ludwick went out while I was still paying attention, but then we had Johnny Cueto and Ryan Hanigan go on the DL, and also Manny Parra (…oh noooooo..) and Nick Masset (…what a surpriiiiiiise…). Also, from what I’ve been hearing, Jay Bruce is the worst baseball player in the history of the galaxy, and Zack Cozart’s number two hitting has been condemned by the Catholic Church (that new pope is so cray-cray!)

Yet, we seem to be doing alright. 19-15 is pretty good. I can live with it. It probably doesn’t justify how cocky we were before the season started, but I’m not sure what would have justified how cocky we were at the beginning of the season (a Nobel Peace Prize, maybe?). I mean I said “Oh guys, we’ll be pretty good, but let’s not get out of hand,” but you know in my head I was like “YEAH WE’RE THE BEST SCREW THE NATS AND THE DODGERS AND THE GIANTS WE’RE BETTER THAN Y’ALL DON’T EVEN FORGET IT.” So, yeah. We haven’t been that good.

We are doing spectacularly ok, though, and I’d like to take a few minutes to thank the Reds who have picked up the slack for their teammates.Mat Latos: Latos has gone just over 6 inning on average in his seven starts, but they’ve been pretty awesome innings. His worst start so far was probably  his last- Sunday’s afternoon game against the Cubs – but even that was hardly terrible. I also like the way he’s striking out a lot of batters, not walking very man, and being especially sparing with the home runs. The HR number might regress a bit, but it’s a good recipe for success none the less.

Tony Cingrani: Cingrani’s done as much as a 23-year-old called up to the big leagues on an emergency basis can do, and more. He probably won’t striket out 12 batters per 9 innings for his career, but hey, if he can ride a bit of luck out for the next few months, we could very well have a ROY candidate at the end of the year.

Shin Soo Choo: Shin Soo Choo is the greatest ever, and we now have mathematical proof.  He leads the Reds in basically every category – inching out Joey Votto in average and on-base, and outpacing him by a much bigger stretch in power. I thought that Choo would be able to grab some more home runs in Great American, since it’s a little smaller, and the left field wall is a lot lower – in a very limited sample size: I was totally, right.

Joey Votto: Is still awesome. Who cares how many runs he drives in? NO ONE WITH TASTE OR DISCERNMENT. (J/K, guys, j/k. (Actually, I’m not kidding, I mean it.) I am a bit sad that he’s no longer on pace to walk 230 times. That would’ve been totally rad.

Ok, now I’ve got to go write a fake movie preview where the Tampa Bay Rays were the ones behind the European airport diamond heist in order to get enough money to build a time machine and bring back young Wade Boggs. And then somehow convince him he plays for the Rays.

Mike Leake and the Reds were $850,000 apart from each other. (photo by dbking/Flickr)

EDIT: Added Simon and Heisey. All numbers are available here.

So far, only one Red has avoided arbitration for sure – the team and Logan Ondrusek signed a two-year deal earlier this week. That means a good number of Reds players were filing for arbitration this week, and Jon Heyman tweeted some of the numbers out.

So far, Latos and the Reds filed pretty close together,  so that could be a 1 year deal pretty soon, if they’re not working on a multi-year contract. The spread for Bailey’s and Leake’s numbers are a little bigger. Choo’s got the biggest spread, and I thought it was interesting that Choo, whose agent is Scott Boras, basically submitted the same as the MLB Trade Rumors projection. MLBTR could be misjudging the arb-market for Choo, but it makes me wonder if Choo’s less likely to settle, because it seems to me like going to an arbitration hearing is a great way to get off on a bad foot with your new center fielder.

Here’s a summary, with some reference numbers.

There’s nothing like a sexy, attention-grabbing headline, right? Anyway, the news has been out for a little bit that the Reds are thinking about signing extensions with the arb-eligible starters Bailey and Latos, though there hasn’t been a lot of progress on that front. As I’ve said  before, Walt hates arbitration, so I’m confident that there will be deals done with this guy – but for one year, or more, who knows?

I was curious though, to look at the extensions that teams have signed with pre-free agency pitchers in the last few years, and came up with a few examples – specifically, I narrowed the list to starting pitchers with extensions starting in the first (Latos) or second (Bailey) season of arbitration eligibility.

Voila:

The sample size isn’t huge, but the times, they are a changing, so I didn’t want to go back much farther.

The salary numbers for the arb years when you’re starting with Year-4 are a little more consistent. Latos obviously isn’t a Clayton-Kershaw-already-got-a-Cy-Young-award type – but he does compare pretty well to Matt Cain , and I would say that Cain’s 3 year, 27 million dollar contract is probably out of our range. That contract was signed three years ago, and there have been a lot more reasonable extensions signed since then – but none of those guys have quite the impressively consistent numbers that Latos has.

Bailey is a little more out there. First, though WAR isn’t perfect, Homer clearly has been a level below a lot of the guys who have signed these extensions recently. Obviously Verlander, Lincecum and Hernandez are not relevant comparisons – and Johnson and Greinke are probably out too, since they signed right after having a ~5 WAR season. Bailey was better this year, but he’s not nearly there, no-hitter or not.  I think Jackson/Feldman/Morrow are closer cases than Ricky Nolasco, too, and only one of those guys signed a deal that went into free agency. Still, a little payroll predictability would be beneficial, if we can get Homer to sign for the next two years.

So… man, Johnny Cueto’s extension looks awesome now. Well done, there, Walt-O-Meal.

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.

Yay for Bronson! (Photo by DavidMeyersPhotos on Flickr)

There’s not much to talk about right now: the Reds had the day off, the division is well in hand, and our manager doesn’t go around telling people he . There is some mild concern in the Cueto arena. He’s had three increasingly distressing starts. It started with a reasonable, but somewhat hard luck start, where four runs scored, via two home runs – and we all sort of knew Cueto’s home run had to run out at some point. The last two have been more in the way of bad.

It doesn’t seem like an issue, but it’s nice to remember that we have other capable pitchers in the rotation. Leake hasn’t been so great of late, but he’s more than serviceable for a No. 5 .  All members of the rotation show up in this list – it seems unlikely, but it actually includes the top 7 pitching performances, since three starts are tied for number 5. Yes, I’ve used game score, as is my wont. I like it.

Number 5 (ish): Johnny Cueto, June 23; Homer Bailey, May 29; Mike Leake, August 15

• This is Cueto’s only appearance on the list, somewhat surprisingly – not too much, because Cueto’s byword is sustained excellence, not individual performances here and there. Cueto pitched this perfect game against the Twins. The three hits he allowed included a double by Joe Mauer, but no other extra base hits, and he yielded only one run, with 9 strikeouts. He did hit a dude, as well, but I think that doesn’t count towards gamescore.
• Bailey appears one more time on the list, but this game was against the Pirates, who we know Homer loves to face. He pitched a complete game, allowing only 1 run on 4 hits – with 1 BB and 5 K. Bailey’s complete game was in contrast to the Pirates, who used 6 pitchers after starter Charlie Morton left after the fourth
• This is also Leake’s only game on the list, just one month ago versus the Mets. Mikey outpitched R.A. Dickey in this one – throwing a complete game, 1 R, 0 BB, 4K. None of the hits he allowed were for extra bases, and went to only two of the Mets hitters – he shut down the other 3/4 of the line up entirely.

Number 4: Homer Bailey, September 1.

This is sort of a horrible one, because, as you might remember (it was only two weeks ago), the Reds actually lost this game – and not even in extra innings. Homer Bailey pitched about as well as you could want – though to the not-well-hitting Houston Astros. He went 8 innings, allowed 1 run on 3 hits, a walk, and 9 strikeouts. Of course, one of those hits was a home run – which figures for the run scored. Homer’s mistake was throwing 107 whole pitches in that 8 innings, which meant that Sean Marshall took over the mound in the bottom of the 9th, with the game tied 1-1. Marshall allowed a double, intentionally walked the next guy, and hit the guy after that. Thus, when Brandon Phillips made on error on Jose Altuve’s groundball, the Astros walked off, despite all Bailey’s fine work. Boo.

Numbers 2 and 3: Mat Latos and Mat Latos, June 25 and June 30

Mat Latos really outdid himself against the Brewers on June 25 – pitching a complete game, with a very impressive 13 strikeouts, especially since that’s a team that can kind of hit. It’s tough to come back and try to match that performance, but Mat did it against the Giants. Exactly. Obviously the game wasn’t exactly the same, but he matched his gamescore of 86 exactly with another complete game – one run allowed, no walks and 7 strikeouts. Latos has struggled with home runs at Great American, but you can still tell that he’s a great pitcher in the making.

Number 1: Bronson Arroyo, July 6

It’s appropriate that number one on this list belongs to the elder statesman of the Reds rotation – who has both struggled and excelled during his time with the Reds, but whose innings numbers will be hard to match. It the only shutout pitched by a Reds pitcher in 2012. Arroyo did so in PetCo against the Padres, which perhaps hints at the secret of Bronson’s success, but it’s undoubtedly a great pitching performance anyway: 9 innings, 0 runs, 3 hits, 1 BB, 8 Ks. That’s the second best number of Ks in a game for Bronson this year, so you know it was a pretty great day for him all-around.

So now that we’re all thinking happy thoughts, let’s not lay awake in our beds, obsessing about the playoff rotation. Go to sleep friends, it will be alright. There’s baseball tomorrow.

(Photo by sideonecincy/Flickr)

That was a good win, as the Cardinals look to win tonight, as well. Maintaining the gap, at a formidable 8.5 games right now is all we can ask for. I also heard from Mitch Williams of MLB Network (because everything he says is totally 110% correct) that the Phillies are the out-of-contention-spoiler team to fear the most this September. Beating them essentially makes us the awesomest, but we knew that already.

The game was won mostly on the play of two individuals. Jay Bruce clubbed his 31st home run of the year, turning a 1-0 loss into a 2-1 win, as Ryan Ludwick was on base. Bruce’s batting average and on base percentage aren’t great – but 31 home runs is pretty decent, especially with a month to play – it’s good enough for 2nd in the NL (though he lags behind Ryan Braun by quite  large margin).  Last year was his previous season record for homers, at 32, so he’s probably going to beat that by quite a margin.

Also, by my count, 18 of Bruce’s homers have come in a tie game, or with the Reds behind. That’s not a particularly reliable or in-depth analysis. But I think his 125 OPS+ shows that we’re definitely better off without him, even if his strikeouts are frustrating.

Mat Latos was also a big part of tonight’s win. Seven innings and one earned run is always good. Of course, he didn’t look great the whole way through – walking in a run is always a big flashing alarm. Two walks and a hit-by-pitch in the same sequence definitely looks like your control is gone. Latos has Stubbs to thank for getting out of that. Stubbs caught a sinking liner into center field on his feet, and got the ball back into the infield  for a double play.

Other than that inning though, Latos only allowed 3 hits and no walks. It was definitely nice to see a young guy like Latos buckle down after a rough inning and come back out for three more.

This game also featured a great defensive play by Bruce, Scott Rolen’s 2000th hit, and Aroldis Chapman’s 35th save. What it didn’t feature was Joey Votto. SOON.

This is not an original idea or anything, I know I’ve seen them around, in various permutations and combinations, and maybe in almost exactly this form, too. The data is all from ESPN Home Run Tracker. The length of the line is the related to the speed off the bat, and the elevation angle contributes the angle of the vector. I also differentiated HRT’s main classifications by color. “No doubters” are in red, “Plenties” are in blue, and “Just enoughs” are in green. (The colors didn’t exactly come out perfect). I believe the speed off the bat is just calculated from the distance and angle, but it’s there to give an idea of the pure amount of force.

The best comparison is Bailey (above) and Arroyo. Bailey’s let a lot of low, hard hit go over the wall in Great American, but Bronson’s home runs are coming on a lot of higher flies. You can see how hard hit Bronson’s no doubters are, too.

Then, of course, you have Johnny Cueto, who makes my life easy by not giving up home runs.

Mat Latos has also had a few high flies – but also has a bunch of low, just-enough home runs. You can see where he would have done much better in PetCo’s spacious confines.

Mike Leake’s had a little better overall luck with home runs than Latos, or Bailey, but he seems to have a smaller proportion of GABP-specials.

To be honest, I don’t have a lot of analysis on these – I just thought they were pretty. And maybe a little interesting.

The good news: Todd Frazier’s rookie of the year season proceeds apace. (Photo by BubbaFan at the english language wikipedia)

That sucked.

Things were lovely for the first five innings. Before the 6th, things were going reasonably well for the Redlegs, who were winning 5-2 based on strong hitting, and reasonably good pitching from Latos.

The sixth inning is where everything became terrible. Latos let the first two batters on base via singles – and then allowed two consecutive home runs from Allen Craig and Reds fan favorite Yadier Molina. After Latos walked the next batter (all with no outs), we brought in Alfredo Simon, who then allowed a series of hits/wild pitches/sac flies which allowed a total of 6 runs to score in the inning. (Alfredo semi-redeemed himself by pitching two more scoreless innings.

The offense did alright, really, chasing Lance Lynn in the third inning with good performances from Frazier (per usual), Phillips, and even Rolen. But there were plenty of strikeouts. We threatened in the bottom of the 9th against closer Jason Motte – Ludwick and Frazier got on with singles, but Rolen struck out for the third out.

Even so, as a whole, this loss is more on Latos than anyone. It’s really been awhile since Mat Latos has been so outright bad. I’m not getting on his case, he’s had a really great last couple of months, but tonight was bad.Nights like this are bound to happen I guess – we’ve still got a six game lead, and as long as we can win one game this series, we’ll stay five games up.

So… how’s Joey Votto doing, again?

BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE! (Photo by Trev Stair/Flickr)

Through a long, yet low-scoring game tonight, the Reds continually put base-runners on without driving them in. In fact, the Reds combined for 9 hits and 6 walks in the first eight innings of play against the New York Mets, and that even included four doubles, yet no runs driven in – mostly because the doubles all happened when the bases were clear. That, and we did have some serious RISP issues.

If not for Mat Latos, Bruce doesn’t get so much of a chance to be a hero. Even though he allowed quite a fair number of base-runners in the first couple innings he pitched, running up his pitch count to the 70′s by the fourth inning, he kept the runs from getting in, and eventually turned in a line of 7.0 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 4 K – with only one of those hits going for extra bases. The poor guy just gets no mercy when he has a rough night because of his bad start – but he’s been pretty awesome lately. Tonight he dropped his ERA to 3.63.

In relief, Marshall was solid after walking David Wright in the 8th inning, and Arredondo was shaky, but prevailed in the 9th. That makes this the 10th (team) shutout of 2012 – compare that to only 5 shutouts in all of 2011.

Before the 9th inning, Bruce was looking at being the scapegoat of this game – although he hit a nice double in his first plate-appearance, he also bore the biggest left-on-base burden, with three runners left on. Of course, it’s not like anyone else had any ribbies thus far – but it’s been a pretty long time since Jay’s last hot streak, which makes him a lightning rod for fan (and Brennaman) disapproval.

That’s why I think most of us were extremely pleased (well, more so than usual) when, after fouling off three third strikes, Jay Bruce lifted a fastball just over the wall into left-center, driving in Ryan Ludwick and Brandon Phillips (who walked three times tonight, BTW). It was Jay Bruce’s 23rd home run of the season, it was his fourth walk-off homer ever, and hopefully it was just what he needed. It was our fourth win in a row, it gives us a six game lead over the Pirates, and puts us 24 games over .500.

In a word: Hooray!

(Photo by Teddy Delivery/Flickr)

Tonight’s game was a rough game. Latos was pretty bad, but he left the game  at least within striking distance. (But the two home runs to Jason Kubel did set off a few alarms in my head.) LeCure did some impressive fire putter-outting, and we got a decent little appearance from Bray. Then, after some some terrible Arredondocity and no Reds hitting, by the time Logan Ondrusek came in – also with a pretty excellent relief outing. Even if Latos had kind of a half decent outing, we still probably couldn’t have mustered up a win, hitting like that.

Yeah, we saw Wilson Valdez for the first time in two weeks. Yeah. Xavier Paul’s Reds debut wasn’t exactly stellar either.

To give credit to Drew Stubbs, he did manage to get two hits – one of them a double. That’s about as well as any Red did tonight against Ian Kennedy. Hopefully, Drew might be turning things around. Frazier had two hits as well, and Ludwick had a double and reached base via the hit by pitch.

To sum up: We need Joey back.