(Photo by Keith Allison/Flickr)

Definitely a nice change of pace from our recent troubles, all around. First of all, we won (twice), which is great. Second, we swept the Phillies, which is pretty amazing after the 5 game losing streak (and the panic and doom-foretelling it inspired). Thirdly, the offense was back to Week 1 levels. Fourthly, it was a really great start from Mr. Mike Leake. It’s sad, really – Mike Leake was so impressive as a rookie that never went to the minors, and we all loved him. A few years later, he’s still pretty good for a 25 year-old non-flamethrowing starter, but we apparently expect more out of him. Well, we got more tonight. 7 innings, no runs, 3 hits, and seven strikeouts/zero walks is good enough no matter what, but to add to that – he goes 3 for 4 with a triple.

So now Mike Leake has 9 PA – with four hits, including a triple (thanks to some adventurous fielding by Ben Revere) – by my math, that gives him a 0.444 average (and OBP) and a .667 OBP – a 1.111 OPS. Clearly that makes Mike Leake our best all-around hitter. If you’ve read the Enquirer lately, you’ll realize that the Reds have a huge #3 hitter problem. The current batter in that spot just walks too much – and doesn’t drive in runs, because he’s too busy walking. Thankfully, we have an obvious solution. Bat Mike Leake 3rd. With three hits tonight and one extra base hit in every 9 plate appearances, Leake is clearly what we need in that number three spot. In AL games he can be our DH. If he’s not pitching, let’s just stick him in LF.  BAM! Third spot in the order problem solved! (/sarcasm)

It’s also great to see Cozart and Bruce pick it up, in both the bottom 9th of yesterday’s game today, and in the main show this evening. Jay Bruce may not be super clutch, but he’s not totally unable. Also, you have to love Cozart’s 4 home runs already. Some more pop from him could really help this team drive in runs – especially if Ludwick comes back and Cozart goes back toward the bottom half of the lineup.

The best part is that Joey didn’t hit today, but he did walk in the bottom of the 9th in the continuance game, and then got hit by a pitch in the evening game, which means the on-base streak is still alive! Choo sat today, and the Angels got postponed – which means that Trumbo was out too, so their streaks are still alive, but Votto moves into sole possession of the longest-season on base streak. Also – ho w

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!

Well, since we do seem to be looking at another season of the “Mike Leake: Pretty Decent for a 5th Starter” show, I thought I’d dwell a little bit more on something that Leake brings to the table that certain flame-throwing lefties (probably) do not. Namely, a bat, and a half decent one at that. Leake’s 2012 wOBA of .324 is probably not sustainable, but note that it was better than: Scott Rolen, Chris Heisey, Ryan Hanigan, Zack Cozart, Drew Stubbs, Devin Mesoraaco, Miguel Cairo, and Wilson Valdez. Mike Leake and Dioner Navarro were, by the numbers, essentially the same hitter last year.

Ok, so maybe not sustainable, but Leake’s career numbers show him to be a reasonably good hitter. His 2011 .201 wOBA is much more pitcher-like, but his .351 mark is, again, crazy good. 60 PA in a year isn’t a very reliable sample size, but I thought it might be a little bit more reliable in a starting pitcher, just because it has to cover at least a few months of time.  Incidentally, the different between Cueto (one of the worst hitting pitchers) and Leake, via ye olde lineup generator, might be in the realm of 0.5 runs per game (of course, that’s 27 outs, and both pitchers come out long before that). Considering the difference in earned runs allowed between the two pitchers last year was 24, that’s kind of significant.

Leake is young, and came straight from college,  where, presumably he hit more often in than in the minor leagues. I wondered if there were any trends in pitcher hitting, so I looked at the data (from 2003-2012, pitcher seasons with at least 40 PA). It turns out, it’s not that interesting.

You’ve got your standard scatter plot.

And, here’s one with an average by age, with some background data to give you an idea of sample size

Mmm. And here’s one with the individual pitchers sorted out into their own little lines.

Pretty much worthless!

So, that’s the easy statistical breakdown, and I’m not yet prepared to do anything more advanced, so we’ll go with the old standby – anecdotal information. So these are the pitchers in the last ten years who have wOBA’d over .300 and qualify in at least two seasons.

It’s still meaningless, but interestingly meaningless. I mean, there’s a lot of different guys on here. Brooks Kieschnick doesn’t count, for obvious reasons. Micah Owings turned into not a good enough pitcher, though he’s trying his luck as a position player now. Randy Wolf was not terrible, but his .327 wOBA season was clearly a fluke. Zambrano was excellent, but eventually got crazy and bad at pitching. Mike Hampton was awesome. Dan Haren clearly improved as he spent more time in the NL. Yovani Gallardo (who hit 4 home runs in 2010) and Adam Wainwright have both declined as they got older. Stephen Strasburg, we have to wait and see. 

Basically,  I don’t know what will happen to Mike Leake’s bat – but pitchers wOBA’ing that high in two separate seasons is clearly not something that a that frequently an occurrence. Pitchers who do it appear to be legit good hitters (for pitchers), and that’s good news. In any case, Mike Leake’s bat certainly adds a little something to his resume, and makes him more than worthy to be a 5th starter, even on a division-winner.

(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.

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.

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.

He’s a great fifth starter…and an awesome dancer. (Photo by Keith Allison/Flickr)

Last off-season, I took a look at the ERA+ distribution of the ‘rotations’ of all the MLB teams, and updated it partially through this season. Now with the season over, I’m redoing the numbers. Once again, the methodology was basically: top five pitchers on each team by numbers of game started, then sorted by ERA+. Now, there are a couple problems, due to the stranger rotations we’ve got going on, but that’s restricted to a couple of teams. Very few teams have a consistent fifth starter throughout the year, as well, but as I said in the earlier post, I think this is still the best basic approach to get at this concept.

Of course, I also realized that I had accidentally used the mean, when I meant to use the median, but now I’ve fixed that.

The thing that is nice is that the two sets of numbers from 2011 and 2012 line up very well. This actually is pretty expected, given that ERA+ is adjusted to league average every year. Unless the comparative numbers of awesome and terrible pitchers shift, the averages should all come back to about the same level.

Here’s the comparison:

Unlike in 2011, the Reds had an excellent rotation in 2012. Cueto, Latos, Arroyo, Bailey, and Leake were one of only three rotations where every pitcher was in the top quartile for their ‘position’, along with the Rays and the Tigers. It’s unsurprising, as the strength of the rotation has been an obvious strong point to this team all year long.

While Cueto and, to lesser extents, Bailey, Latos, and Arroyo have been great and acclaimed as such, Mike Leake did suck a little bit. But I don’t think he’s given enough credit for how little he sucked. Mike Leaked suck less than the vast majority of fifth-best starters, and he did so all year long. Yes, Mike Leake allowed kind a lot of runs, but he was pitching in Great American Ball Park, and overall, he gave the Reds as good a chance to win the game as we could probably expect, every fifth days.

Also, he’s young. We pay him barely anything and there’s tons of possibility for improvement. I mean, there hasn’t really been a lot of Leake criticism, but there shouldn’t be any at all. He’s the best! (…fifth starter.) (Ok, the fifth best.)

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.

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.

(photo by dbking/Flickr)

Mike Leake’s had a  relatively tough season. With a 94 ERA+, Reds fans ought not to have many complaints, but his ERA is higher than in 2011, which in turn, was higher than his rookie season ERA. That’s probably got to be a little frustrating. So far in 2012, Mike Leake has had the worst ERA of all Reds starters, and it’s mostly been a matter of consistency. Leake’s thrown a handful of gems, but he’s also run into a few problem games.

Tonight, though, was a gem. Even a quality bullpen like ours can use a night off, so just by itself, Leake’s complete game was appreciated. He also held the Mets to a single run on four hits. Only two of the Mets starters got any hits at all – but they did so in the same inning, allowing a run to be scored on a Daniel Murphy double play ball. Leake also didn’t walk anyone, and also allowed no extra base hits – which is promising, as Leake’s SLG against is the highest among all Reds pitchers, by a fair margin.

The offense took its sweet time in getting to R.A. Dickey, but they did, lighting the knuckeballer up with 5 runs, including three home runs. I sort of wonder if the expansive confines at Citi are helping to hide Dickey’s flaws. On the other hand, you could equally argue that the Reds impressive infield defense hides Cueto’s flaws.  Todd Frazier, in particular, hit a monster shot right after Scott Rolen’s home run, that was estimated at 474 feet.

In any case, I can’t help be a bit pleased that the Reds have helped drive up Dickey’s ERA and denied him the win. I’m quite fond of R.A. (love me some trick pitchers), but all’s fair in Cy Young Awards. On the other hand, the Reds also struck out 9 times, which helps pads Mr. Dickey’s strikeout totals. Darn it.