Milton to have surgery, to be replaced by Elizardo Ramirez

As I feared, Eric Milton's injury is serious enough to require surgery. Hopefully he will not be out too long and can return with good leg strength. We've seen this and last season how important Milton's legs are to both his velocity and his effectiveness.

In his stead, the Reds have brought up Elizardo Ramirez, who was acquired as the player to be named later in the Cory Lidle deal. Ramirez, 23, appeared in 6 games for the Reds last year, 4 as a starter. Stats:

Team	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	ERA	FIP	PERA	VORP	GB%
2003/PHI-A+	157.1	5.8	1.9	0.23	0.323	3.78	2.88	4.22	-19.2	--
2004/PHI-A+	59.0	5.0	1.2	0.46	0.265	2.44	3.15	4.63	8.1	---
2004/PHI-AA	33.2	5.4	3.8	1.08	0.371	6.68	4.83	5.66	-14.2	--
2004/CIN-AA	31.0	6.7	1.2	1.74	0.293	3.19	4.62	6.75	4.2	--
2004/PHI	15.0	5.4	3.0	1.80	0.280	4.80	5.60	6.00	1.6	51%
2005/CIN-AAA	131.1	5.6	1.2	0.96	0.304	3.77	3.75	4.43	21.1	53%
2005/CIN	22.1	3.7	4.1	2.04	0.328	8.46	6.68	6.56	-7.7	41%

Ramirez has risen relatively quickly through the minor league systems of the Reds and Phillies, but there's some question as to how far he can go. In 22 innings last year with the Reds he was a disaster, showing no ability to get batters out, no control, and a strong proclivity for allowing the long ball. However, with AAA he pitched pretty well -- he won't strike a ton of guys out, but he had above average control and also kept the ball in the park. Hopefully he can post similar numbers with the Reds. He is only 23, so it's hard to think that he has peaked in ability yet. Hopefully he can fill in the rotation unless either Milton or Wilson are ready to pitch again. If not, look for either Germano, Gosling, or (god forbid) Darrell May to join the club in the coming weeks.

The scariest thing about this is that Dave Williams is now our #4 starter. He's not a good pitcher, but he is better than he has shown so far this year. Hopefully he'll have a few good ballgames to get his numbers back toward his career averages...

Today in Baseball (4/22/06)

Just a few quick things:

Red Hot Mama Interviews Tom Browning
In her ongoing quest to take over the world, Red Hot Mama has an exclusive podcast interview with Tom Browning about his book, Tom Browning's Tales from the Dugout. Browning's one of the more enjoyable personalities from the 1990 Reds World Series team, and it's great to hear from him again. I still have a this clear memory of him sitting there on the roof of a Waveland Avenue house, waving to the other Reds players in the Wrigley Field dugout with a huge s$#%-eating grin on his face. I know he got in trouble for that, but it had to be worth every minute.

I do hope they continue to involve past Reds stars in an official capacity with the Reds' franchise like they did this past spring--it's a great development.

Reds made history today
Today was just the fifth time in the history of baseball in which five home runs were given up in the same inning. Of course, this is something of a tradition for the Reds. As Marc Lancaster points out, the Reds have been on the giving end of this feat four of the five times it has ever happened: 1939, 1949, 1961, and now 2006. It's nice to see our team carrying on traditions from our rich history. I just wish it was a tradition that actually helped us win ballgames...

Milton to miss Sunday start; may be available Monday
Bad news tonight: Marc Lancaster reports that Eric Milton is suffering from discomfort in his left knee. Harang will pitch in his stead. Narron was cautiously optimistic that Milton might be able to start on Monday instead, but reading between the lines, I have a feeling this might not happen. If they want to avoid making a roster move for a short-term injury, the only real option for a spot-start is Matt Belisle. If they make a roster move, placing Milton on the DL, it may be Darrell May, who is Louisville's scheduled starter for Monday (yikes)... I'd much rather see Justin Germano, but I'm not sure what his pitching schedule has been (and I'm too lazy to look it up right now).

I'll echo RHM here: I am somewhat glad to hear this news, as it provides some reason for Milton's ineffectiveness in his last outing. Even if it wasn't "bothering" him then, it could have still been slightly injured and therefore a bit weak. I read somewhere that he wasn't breaking 90 mph in his most recent start, while I saw him hit 94 mph vs. Chicago on April 13th. However, given his history of knee problems, there is some cause for concern that this might be something a bit more serious. Let's hope not. We could really use a healthy Milton of the sort we saw in his first two starts this year ... and it's nice to see a guy having success after the sort of year he had last year.

Win Expectancy Graphs Available
FanGraphs is now releasing daily Win Expectancy graphs for all major league baseball games. For those who haven't seen these, they essentially calculate the probability that the home team will win a game on a play-by-play basis throughout each game. The resulting graph shows how the odds change over the course of a game with each play. The way the Reds' games have been going this season, these graphs can be pretty lively (see especially the graph for the Reds' amazing comeback over the Marlins on April 19th). They also provide a list, for each game, of the players who had the biggest effect on win expectancy. Nice resource to have.

No reflections on today's game (4/22/06)

Just thought I'd let you folks know that I won't be reflecting on today's game. It hurts to much to even watch it right now, much less reflect on it. I need to move on.

I mean, really, five home runs given up one inning? Really?

GABP's HR park factor just got smaller!

Better Know a Red #9 - Austin Kearns

In part 9 of our ongoing series, Better Know a Red, we turn our attention to Reds' 25-year old right fielder, Austin Kearns. Kearns was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the first round (7th overall) of the 1998 amateur draft out of Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. Kearns enjoyed immediate success with the Billings rookie-league team, and moved up the ranks to AA-Chattanooga by the end of the 2001 season. His tenure there was short lived, however. In 2002, Kearns received a combined total of 46 at bats in AA and AAA before being promoted to the Reds' major league team. He was thrilling in his debut, hitting 0.315/0.407/0.500/0.907 in 372 at-bats and making a very strong bid for the rookie of the year.

Since then, unfortunately, Kearns has been beleaguered by a series of (freak) injuries and inconsistent playing time, and has yet to return to his rookie-year dominance...and some have begun to wonder if he ever will. The trades of Sean Casey and Wily Mo Pena guarantee Kearns, who is still a month shy of 26, a full year of playing time. He also has the advantage that Jerry Narron has been among his biggest fans, constantly complementing both his offense and defense in interviews with the press last fall and this spring. That's a stark contrast to the message we heard from Dave Miley about Kearns, who seemed more focused on his weight than anything else last spring. As Baseball Prospectus wrote in their '06 Annual: "Although Kearns earned a spanking by reporting to camp overweight and out-of-shape last year, he should have spent the spring listening to the Reds talk about how their two titans were going to lead the club back to glory. Instead, he spent the spring training hearing trade rumors and competing with Wily Mo Pena for a job..." The difference was palpable this spring. While the trade rumors persist, the Reds are clearly expecting big things from Kearns this year.

For additional biographical information, please see Austin Kearns' profile in Red Hot Mama's Human League.

Historical Statistics (for explanations of all statistics used here, please refer to the Baseball Statistics Quicksheet):

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	SB/%	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA	EqA	VORP	GB/LD/OF
2003/CIN-AA	8	1.00	0/0%	0.500	0.200	0.700	0.275	---	---	---
2003/CIN	338	1.66	5/71%	0.364	0.455	0.819	0.278	0.280	12.8	---
2004/CIN-AAA	104	0.84	3/75%	0.471	0.518	0.989	0.341	0.320	9.5	---
2004/CIN	246	2.54	2/67%	0.321	0.419	0.740	0.249	0.252	2.5	---
2005/CIN-AAA	123	2.73	0/0%	0.407	0.685	1.092	0.354	0.313	12.2	---
2005/CIN	448	2.23	0/0%	0.333	0.452	0.785	0.263	0.269	9.1	31/15/14

Austin's power was down in 2003 compared to his rookie year, but he still had a good season with his 0.364 OBP. His 2004 performance was rather alarming, however. All aspects of his game declined, including an extremely alarming increase in his k/bb ratio. Some of his struggles in '03 and '04 can be attributed to injuries, but it seems overly generous to credit injuries and the consequential lack of playing time for all his problems. Nevertheless, he made he made some progress in 2005, but his overall performance was still well below what we had all hoped for him.

There are some good signs, however. Last year, it was a tale of two seasons for Kearns. His first half struggles were well documented, as was his eventual demotion to AAA...which was justifiable from a performance standpoint, but the club instead focused their blame on Kearns' conditioning (or lack thereof). Kearns erupted in AAA, posting a staggering 0.407 OBP and 0.685 SLG. After returning to the majors in the second half of last season, Kearns approached the numbers we all have hoped he could produce: 0.253/0.353/0.498/0.851. I would be pleased if he continued that production line this year, but there's great reason to think he can do even better. After all, last year was the first time he'd been healthy in quite a while. Hopefully the cobwebs are finally gone and he can become the player we all have hoped he will.

'03-'05 Splits:

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA
vs Left	277	1.33	0.372	0.371	0.743	0.260
vs Right	750	2.61	0.331	0.471	0.801	0.266
Home	522	2.14	0.337	0.428	0.765	0.259
Away	505	2.07	0.347	0.463	0.810	0.272

Kearns' left/right splits are interesting. On one hand, he has had a substantially higher OBP against left-handed pitchers versus right-handed pitchers. Nevertheless, he shows substantially more power against righties. In fact, 35 of his 42 home runs have been hit against right-handed pitchers over the past three years--that's a home run rate of one per 21 plate appearances against righties and one per 40 plate appearances against lefties. The sum effect of these differences is best given in his GPA (defined as (1.8*OBP + SLG)/4, and is a better predictor of runs scored than straight OPS), which shows very little difference in his overall productivity between the two sides. I think, with more consistent playing time over this and coming years, we can expect some improvement in both his power numbers vs. left-handers and his OBP vs. right-handers.

His home/away splits have to be staggering to those that think GABP is a hitters' park (it's not, though it does favor home runs). Kearns homer production is fairly similar at home vs. away, but that's about the only place where he matches up well; in general, he has hit substantially better in away games. He does tend to hit a fair number of ground balls (31%; compare to Dunn's 21%...though he does get some elevation; see Hatteberg's 37%), and ground balls turn into outs at a high rate in GABP compared to other parks, so perhaps that helps explain his struggles at home..?

Fielding:

				Range						Arm
Pos.	Year	Level	DI's	Dewan+- (plays)	DialZR (runs)	Gassko (runs)	D*G (runs)	Pinto (runs)	Davenport (runs)	DewanHold (% held)	Walsh (runs)
CF	2003	MLB	323	---	---	---	---	---	0	---	---
RF	2003	MLB	365	4	---	---	---	---	-4	-0.3	---
RF	2004	AAA	---	---	---	---	---	---	7	---	---
RF	2004	MLB	508	13	---	---	---	---	-13	-0.5	---
RF	2005	AAA	---	---	---	---	---	---	0	---	---
RF	2005	MLB	890	11	48.1	2	33	0.237	3	5	0.4

Kearns is the only guy among our three starting outfielders that is a plus fielder. In fact, if you look at the two range statistics that John Dewan has had a hand in--his plus/minus system from the fielding bible (Dewan+-) as well as STATS, Inc's Zone Rating (DialZR)--Kearns is a defensive superstar. Other measures of range aren't quite as high on him, but all agreed that he was above average last season. His arm is also slightly above average; DewanHold indicates that he held 5% more runners than average from taking an extra base last year, and Walsh attributes his ability to hold and throw out runners to 0.4 runs saved per year above average. On a team that struggles defensively like the Reds, it's nice to know we have at least a few guys like Kearns that can help our pitchers out with their gloves.

Projections:

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	SB/%	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA	EqA	VORP
PECOTA75	480	1.79	6/67%	0.377	0.533	0.910	0.303	0.301	30.5
PECOTA	455	1.87	6/75%	0.367	0.510	0.877	0.293	0.292	22.4
PECOTA25	360	2.08	5/71%	0.338	0.448	0.786	0.264	0.265	5.9
ZiPS	486	2.15	5/71%	0.349	0.480	0.829	0.277	---	---

Both ZIPS and PECOTA project improvements for Kearns this season, with PECOTA being higher on him. It would be huge for Kearns to put up a year like that predicted by the weighted average PECOTA projection--the OBP of his 2003 season coupled with the power of his 2002 rookie season. Nevertheless, if he can stay healthy this year, I think the good-case projections (PECOTA75) is absolutely something that Kearns can achieve. Having his big right-handed bat nestled in between Griffey and Dunn would be a tremendous asset for our offense this year.

It does seem like Kearns has been around and disappointing for a long time now, but the guy will turn just 26 in May. In fact, he's only two months older than rookie Chris Denorfia! Kearns' comparables at Baseball Prospectus and Baseball-Reference include Dale Murphy, Tim Salmon, Dwight Evans, Richie Sexson, Mo Vaughn, Frank Thomas, Larry Walker, and Willie Stargell. Granted, there are a number of less impressive names on those lists, but it's still nice to see those sorts of players associated with a guy one can still call a prospect. Austin has a lot of baseball to play yet, I still expect him to have an excellent career. At the minimum, we can reasonably expect a 0.350ish OBP with 20-25 home runs for years to come, but I think we'll see a great deal more.

References:
Baseball Archive, The
Baseball Cube, The
Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Prospectus '06 Annual
Baseball Reference
Baseball Think Factory
CBS Sportsline
Fan Graphs
Fielding Bible
Hardball Times '06 Annual

Today in Baseball (4/21/06)

Reflections on Tonight's Game
Outstanding game from Arroyo tonight. Wow. I'm feeling very encouraged by his performance thus far in the season, particularly with reference to his strikeout rates. Last year, his K rates fell from 7.2/9 innings in 2004 to a rather poor 4.4/9 innings. At the same time, his ERA (and FIP) rose a half-run. This year, through 4 starts, his K-rate is 7.4/9 innings. Very, very encouraging. I'm not saying he'll go 8 innings of 1-run ball every time out, but I think it's reasonable to hope for a 3.9 to 4.1 ERA from the guy this year. That'd be huge for us. Yeah, it's still early, but things are looking up for him.

The Reds didn't have a ton of chances today. But they were efficient when they needed to be, with good baserunning and "clutch" hitting. Felipe Lopez, in particular, was exciting on the basepaths. He continues to be perfect through six steals this season, and also advanced on a flyout to the outfield that facilitated his scoring on Hatteberg's single.

Trivial pursuits: I'd really like to know how many times a team has homered on the first pitch of the game and then not scored another run. Anyone seen anything on that? It can't have happened often.

Reds Value at $274 Million
The Enquirer has a brief article on Forbes Magazine's 2006 report on major league baseball team values. Chris Peale's opening states that "The Cincinnati Reds are growing in value." That's true, with the Reds showing an 8% growth over the past year. It's hard to get upset with 8% growth in a 200 million-dollar company.

But what I found really surprising about their numbers, however, was that 8% growth weighs in at only 20th (tied with 5 other teams) out of the 30 teams. The league average was 15%, with nine teams showing over 20% growth! If you look at the actual dollar increase in the past year, the Reds ranked 26th overall with an increase of around $22 million. In contrast, 14 teams increased value more than $50 million.

Major league baseball looks like a heck of a good investment right now for those with a few hundred million dollars lying around. No wonder the owners love Bud Selig so much. I don't have a terrific understanding of how these values are calculated, but it's clear the the Reds have got to figure out how to get in on this action better than they did last year. One way is probably to win: 4 of the 7 seven teams, in terms of total dollars gained, made the playoffs last year (Angels, Yankees, Astros, Cardinals). Another seems to be to spend money on free agents: both the Mets (+$121 million) and the Blue Jays (+$97 million) had large surges in their value this year. I'm very high on Bob Castellini, and I'm sure that we can expect the Reds franchise to gain value at an increasing rate over the next few years...if for no other reason than the increased win totals I expect under Krivsky, and the corresponding increase in attendance rates those wins will cause.

It should be noted that Major League Baseball has slammed Forbes Magazine's analysis, saying they had no access to the actual financial data and that the numbers were generally fabricated. Of course, this quote is somewhat telling:

"They make these numbers up," Manfred said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "However close and lucky they may get in aggregate, there are individual instances that materially misstate the situations. From our perspective, we just think it's important that people understand and realize these are not in real in any sense of the word."

Emphasis added. My guess is that there are a few inconsistencies with MLB's actual numbers (which are always top secret), but in general, it's pretty spot-on. I love how he claims they are made up and lucky, and yet at the same time acknowledges that they may be close...at least in aggregate. Fun with words!

2006 Amateur Draft Order/Sickels Profiles Top College Pitchers
Brian already mentioned this in the comments, but the draft order has been annouced, and the Reds' first pick is 8th of the draft. That's pretty good draft position, and should make it possible to pick up one of the better college starting pitchers available this year. As a preview to that, John Sickels has brief scouting reports on seven college pitchers who could go early in the draft. Several of those names are becoming familiar to me due to reading Kevin Goldstein's Future Shock columns at Baseball Prospectus. Particularly Andrew Miller (University North Carolina), Brad Lincoln (University of Houston), Tim Lincecum (University of Washington), and Brandon Morrow (University of California). This is the first year I've paid much attention..heck, any attention...to the amateur talent prior to the draft, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how these guys get picked. Hopefully the Reds will take a good one.

Relationship between Reds' runs and Reds' homers
Interesting little stat that McCoy mentioned in his meeting with Marty today: prior to today's game, the Reds have scored 51.4% of all their runs on home runs. The major league record is 47.7%, set by the Texas Rangers. The #2 team is the 1956 Cincinnati Reds.

What does this mean? Well, a team that scores a lot of runs via the long ball obviously has to hit a lot of homers. It also means that they have to hit those homers with men on base--we've had a bunch of three-run homers this year, and already at least two grand slams that I can think of (Encarnacion and Phillips). The Reds have been unbelievable offensively thus far, leading the league in runs (107; next highest is Braves at 91), home runs (32; next highest is Braves at 26), OBP (0.375; next highest are Brewers at 0.361), and SLG (0.531; next highest are Rockies at 0.482). Unbelievable numbers. I'm a bit skeptical they can maintain this dominance all year, but they sure are exciting to watch right now.

Hal McCoy Should Be Reading My Site
Hey, I read Hal every day, so why shouldn't he read me? Ok, so maybe that's a bit of an unfair (at least from McCoy's perspective--he's an excellent and very unique writer, even if he sometimes gets the details wrong), but I have to call Mr. McCoy on this article about Great American Ballpark. It's yet another indictment of GABP as being a huge hitters' park--a "baby Coors" as he puts it. As I wrote about in some detail before, GABP is actually a very neutral ballpark. It is more permissive than average to the home run, but even that effect is weaker than at several other parks. The reason so many home runs are hit at GABP probably has more to do with our outstanding offense and dreadful pitching than anything else. This is different than in Arlington or Coors, a point which Jerry Narron seems to realize.

Fun with small sample sizes: according to ESPN's park factors, GABP has been a huge hitters' park so far this season, with a runs park-factor of 1.390. However, it has actually been a bad place for home runs (HR factor 0.954)--hence Narron's comment that they'd seen the ball flying out "everywhere." Instead, runs in GABP seem to have come frm singles (factor 1.247), walks (1.130), and most especially doubles (1.645). I don't know about doubles, but the runs and homers are behaving in the opposite direction to the aggregate data over the past three years. Moral? Don't trust short-term impressions on the effect of a park. It's a lot more to do with "random" variation in player performance than anything else. Still, we're going to need to have a few pitchers with outstanding years in order to dispel this inaccurate understanding of our ballpark's characteristics.

Schramek Released
According to RedLeg Nation, former first-round (supplemental) draft pick Mark Schramekwas released yesterday. Schramek hit reasonably well in single-A Dayton (0.296/0.368/0.447/0.815), but may have been promoted too aggressively. He was in AA-Chattanooga before the end of his first professional season. They dropped him back down to A+ Potomac and Sarasota, but he never got his groove going again. I don't know that he was necessarily mishandled, or that he might have turned out differently had he been moved along more slowly...but it does seem like an odd set of decisions. Still, he was a better pick than Bowden's #1 pick in the '01 draft.

Quick Links

• This is a great example of why I enjoy reading Marc Lancaster's blog so much.
• Red Hot Mama ripped Fox Sports' Kevin Hench a new one, and for very good reason. I do get tired of the New England-bias of national sportswriters, but then I guess that's where the real money is.
• I know RHM already linked this, but I bookmarked it in bloglines too so I wanna link to it as well. Daedalus might go to hell because of this, the resemblance is remarkable. Funny stuff. I really look forward to my daily homage at the Church of Baseball, if for no other reason than to see his latest visual masterpiece.

Today in Baseball (4/19/06)

Reflections on today's game
Way to go offense -- EdE's the man tonight!

Eek about the pitching. I'm not really worried about Harang, though Brennaman's comment on today's radio broadcast about his notable inconsistency in the early goings here is valid. Nevertheless, I still have more confidence in Harang than any other pitcher on our staff. There's little indication that he'll regress substantially this year vs. last year based on his prior performance. Good to see Coffey come in and be dominant again, however.

Womack really seems to be in Narron's doghouse these days. I haven't been surprised that Tony's not starting much with Freel starting in centerfield; there's little point from an offensive standpoint to have both Womack and Freel in the same lineup. They're both essentially defined as leadoff hitters, at least among traditionalists...which Narron is (mostly). It's a great time to get Phillips some at-bats at 2B (go Brandon, by the way--he's certainly surpassing most people's expectations in his first week with the club, mine certainly included).

But in the bottom of the ninth, when Dunn walked to lead off the inning, I was surprised that Narron didn't pinch run for Dunn with Womack and try to steal a base. Narron still would have had Valentin on the bench to pinch-hit for the pitcher, who was not due up for another 7 batters. It all worked out in the end thanks to Hatteberg's single and EdE coming through in the clutch, of course. But I still found it surprising given Narron's comment the other day about how "you can't just wait for the home run every night." That's especially the case in a tie home game, in the bottom of the 9th, when your bullpen has been awful.

Womack, by the way, has yet to steal a base this year.

Gosling up, then down; Shackelford present for road trip
Michael Gosling was up to the majors and then down again before I even had a chance to post about it! But Shackelford has now arrived in the big league camp to take over for the largely ineffective Mike Burns. Stats on Shackelford (copied from my post when he was demoted):

Year/Team	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	ERA	FIP	PERA	VORP	GB%
2003/A+	27.3	6.6	2.6	0.33	0.205	1.98	3.09	5.47	4.4	---
2003/AA	20.0	8.6	6.3	1.35	0.359	6.30	5.35	9.00	-8.2	---
2003/AAA	15.7	5.7	4.0	0.00	0.288	2.29	3.26	4.20	3.3	---
2004/AAA	73.0	7.8	5.2	0.74	0.263	3.58	4.27	5.35	10.0	--
2005/AAA	32.7	5.8	2.8	0.28	0.333	5.23	3.23	4.18	0.1	57%
2005/CIN	29.7	5.2	2.7	0.61	0.224	2.43	4.45	4.40	9.1	45%

His 2.43 ERA with Cincinnati was very impressive last season, while his 5.23 ERA in AAA was thoroughly unimpressive. If you look at his peripherals, however, they differ in the opposite manner--his FIP in AAA was 3.23, while his FIP with the Reds was 4.45. The reason for this seems to be his BABIP, which was unusually high in AAA and unusually low with the Reds. Still, a 4.45 ERA would be an improvement for this Reds team. He's a guy who doesn't strike out many hitters, but also doesn't walk all that many and, most importantly, consistently keeps the ball in the park (0.61 HR/9 last year, and has been below 1 hr/9 in every season except his 2003 20-inning stint in AA).

Shackelford's promotion gives the Reds four right-handers (Belisle, Coffey, Weathers, White) and three left-handers (Hammond, Mercker, Shackelford) in the bullpen. There's a sense in which I would have preferred that they bring back Wagner instead of Shackelford, but they may want to keep Ryan down there a bit longer to keep working on his fastball velocity. I still think Wagner can really help us this year (he was unbelievably unlucky last year--compare his 6+ ERA to his 3.8ish FIP!), but it might be good for the kid's psyche if he can have a good couple of months down there to get his confidence back before we bring him back up to the big club.

Dunn is the 19th most valuable player in baseball
...at least he is according to Nate Silver, PECOTA guru at Baseball Prospectus. This is based on a two-part series he did on ESPN's page 2. Excerpt:

Even the most tradition-minded fans have come to accept the importance of a high on-base percentage and slugging average. However, in spite of his excellence in those departments, there remains something of a blind spot with respect to Mr. Dunn; I expect to receive more than a few choicely worded e-mails about how such a clumsy-looking player can rank two slots ahead of Mr. Intangibles. The math here is simple -- all of Dunn's strikeouts and base-running gaffes don't cost the Reds more than a handful of runs over the course of a season, whereas his bat projects to be worth about 50 runs per year for the foreseeable future. His awkward outfield defense is a more tangible problem, but it isn't his fault that the Reds put him back out to pasture while employing Rich Aurilia and Scott Hatteberg at first.

Edwin Encarnacion was also mentioned favorably, though only in passing under Brian McCann's spot at #40. Thanks to Red Reporter for the link.

David Wright makes 3 errors
Wright, widely regarded as the best young third-baseman in baseball (Silver rated him as the #2 most valuable player in baseball in his rankings in the above story), made three errors today. It's worth pointing this out, because I thought people were going to lynch Encarnacion when he did the same a few days ago.

Granted, EdE's now made 7 errors and absolutely must improve on his consistency on routine plays. Nevertheless, it's worth pointing out EdE was a better defensive third baseman than Wright was last year. EdE was rated (Fielding Bible) at +5 bases saved in 478 innings, while Wright was rated at a very poor -17 bases saved in 1404.3 innings (25th out of 27 regular 3B's in MLB). Good range from EdE made up for his miscues.

Thanks to AvesIce51 at RedsZone for the heads up.

Grapefruit League Sets Attendance Record
Spring training in Florida was more popular than ever, despite the World Baseball Classic sucking many of the best players away from their teams. This is yet another indictment against those who nay-say (nay-said?) the WBC. I'm really looking forward to the Classic when it comes again in 2009--if you think the US team is a bit peeved about not winning the classic, the Dominican Republic team is going to be fuming--although I still am hoping for some changes in the format.

Thanks to the Hardball Times for the link.

Superstitions and Baseball Players
bhsu21 posted this article on his blog about baseball player superstitions. Really funny stuff. Here's an excerpt:

Larry Walker is obsessed with the number "3." He sets his alarm for 33 minutes past the hour, takes practice swings in multiples of three, wears No. 33, was married on Nov. 3 at 3:33 p.m., and bought tickets for 33 disadvantaged kids when he played in Montreal, to be seated in Section 333 at Olympic Stadium. His last contract his current contract included a joint $3,333,333 donation to children's organizations in British Columbia and Colorado. Finally he has 3 kids.

Thanks to MikeS21 at RedsZone for the link.

Better Know a Red #8 - Javier Valentin

In part 8 of our ongoing series, Better Know a Red, we profile the Latin Love Machine himself, 30-year old catcher Javier Valentin. Valentin was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the third round of the 1993 amateur draft out of Fernando Callejo High School, Manati, Puerto Rico. Unlike many of the players featured in this series, success did not come quickly to Javy Valentin. He spent his first two years in the rookie leagues, putting up rather poor numbers in the process. In '95, however, he was promoted to A-ball and responded with a huge year, hitting 0.324/0.401/0.567/0.968 with 19 home runs in 383 AB's. He missed the '96 season (not sure why...), but was promoted to AA in '97, and, despite struggling there, was a late-season call-up to the Minnesota Twins that year.

He won the back up catcher job in '98 and played for two seasons with the Twins (with little success) before being sent back down to the minor leagues. In November, 2002 he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers along with Matt Kinney for Gerry Oakes and Matt Yeatman. Five months later, he was flipped to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for Jason Conti. He played the '03 season with the Devil Rays and then left as a free agent. Finally, the Cincinnati Reds signed Javy on January 8th, 2004 as their backup catcher.

After a ho-hum '04 season, Valentin broke out in a huge way last season. Coupled with Jason LaRue, he was part of the best hitting catching tandem in the major leagues last year, combining to hit 28 home runs and 110 RBI's. The Reds are hoping for more of the same offensive production from Valentin this year, although the arrival of David Ross may mean he'll see less time behind the plate and more time as a pinch hitter/spot starter at first base.

Among Reds fans attuned to the Reds blogosphere, Javy is certainly most famous due to the efforts of Red Hot Mama. She even provides this dedication in her title tag: "Endeavoring to make Javier Valentin a household name since 2005." Therefore, you simply must go to her Javy Valentin Human League entry to get the real scoop on this guy...once you've finished reading here, of course.

Historical Stats (please visit the Baseball Statistics Quicksheet for definitions and explanations of the various statistics used on this page):

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	SB/%	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA	EqA	VORP
2003/TBA	142	6.20	0/0%	0.254	0.356	0.609	0.203	0.215	-4.0
2004/CIN	222	2.12	0/0%	0.293	0.381	0.674	0.227	0.231	0.3
2005/CIN	254	1.23	0/0%	0.362	0.520	0.883	0.293	0.293	20.8

2005 was just an amazing year for Valentin. While his strikeout rate stayed constant, his walk rate almost doubled, resulting a far better K/BB ratio. This increased patience at the plate was accompanied by a huge surge in both his batting average and, most impressively, his power. Javy had never slugged over 0.381 in the majors prior to last year, but he erupted with a 0.520 SLG, belting 14 home runs in only 254 plate appearances. His VORP went from almost precisely that of a replacement player to a full 20 runs over replacement. I guarantee you that there wasn't a single team in the major leagues last year that wouldn't have loved to get this sort of production out of their backup catcher...heck, most would be pleased to get that from their starting catcher!

2003-2005 Splits:

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA
vs Left	110	1.67	0.255	0.216	0.471	0.169
vs Right	502	2.10	0.329	0.475	0.804	0.267
Home	307	2.57	0.274	0.375	0.648	0.217
Away	305	1.55	0.357	0.487	0.845	0.283

Here we see the primary reason why Javier Valentin is unlikely to ever be legitimately considered for a full-time starting job. Despite being a switch hitter, Valentin really struggles against left-handed pitching. Although he does have slightly better K/BB ratios against lefties, he traditionally has trouble getting on base against them, much less hitting with authority. He has averaged a woeful 0.471 OPS against them over the past three years (note, however, this is only 110 AB's). Last year, he may have shown some slight improvements in this regard. Despite a batting average of only 0.184 vs. lefties, he managed a 0.354 OBP...though still slugged only 0.342. One has to wonder whether he might be better off dropping the switch hitting and becoming a full time left-handed batter. Regardless of his performance vs. lefthanders, Valentin remains a weapon against right-handed hitters. Even when we average across the last three years, rather than only looking at his outstanding '05 season, Javy has a 0.804 OPS vs. right-handers. I'll gladly take that from a catcher.

Valentin shows fairly dramatic home/away splits. His past two years have been with the Reds, so if we were looking for an influence of GABP we might expect to see it here. Instead of the often-predicted surge at home for a guy with power like Valentin, he has actually been a far superior hitter on the road. Nevertheless, we're only looking at about 300 plate appearances per split here; sample sizes could certainly be a factor.

Fielding:

Pos.	Year	Level	DI's	PintoGB (+-runs)	Passed Balls/150g	Caught Stealing	CS%	ERAeffect
C	2003	MLB	306	---	4.4	7	30.4%	-0.16
C	2004	MLB	410	---	3.3	12	30.8%	0.32
C	2005	MLB	508	0.00596	8.0	10	28.6%	-0.23

(Since this is the first time I've evaluated a catcher, I will once again encourage you to seek out the Baseball Statistics Quicksheet for descriptions & explanations of these statistics).

Valentin looks to be a fairly average defensive catcher. He generally keeps the opposing team from stealing enough bases to do anything other than break even (the break-even point is 28% - less than that means the other team profits from stealing). Over the last three years, there has been no consistent pattern in terms of team ERA when he is in the game (in '03 and '05, pitchers had a better ERA; in '04, pitchers had a worse ERA), indicating that he calls a decent enough ballgame and doesn't otherwise negatively affect pitcher performance. One place in which Valentin may excel defensively: in terms of runs above average saved on ground balls (PintoGB), he was the second-best in baseball last year behind Dioner Navarro. Both Valentin and Navarro are well above the next highest regular (Ivan Rodriguez @ 0.00322), however, so this could also be a small sample size problem. I'd like to see more info on this before rendering any sort of verdict.

Projections:

Year/Team	PA	K/BB	SB/%	OBP	SLG	OPS	GPA	EqA	VORP
PECOTA75	277	1.73	6/67%	0.341	0.478	0.819	0.273	0.273	14.5
PECOTA	232	1.86	6/75%	0.324	0.441	0.765	0.256	0.257	8.1
PECOTA25	219	2.11	5/71%	0.295	0.377	0.672	0.227	0.227	-0.9
ZiPS	227	1.57	5/71%	0.332	0.456	0.788	0.263	---	---

Projections do predict a decline for the Latin Love Machine this year, which is unsurprising given how different last year was compared to his four other big-league seasons. Baseball prospectus writes: "mediocre pitchers probably aren't going to challenge him with fastballs again in 2006, which will hurt his power numbers." That's probably true, but I'm not entirely convinced he'll regress as far as these values say. If nothing else, I'd predict that he maintains his 0.350ish OBP due to his newfound patience, but that his slugging declines back down to the numbers predicted here. Nevertheless, all projections (save for the bad-case PECOTA25) do predict a solid season out of Javy for a backup catcher. He should continue to be an excellent reserve for us this year.

References:
Baseball Archive, The
Baseball Cube, The
Baseball Prospectus
Baseball Prospectus '06 Annual
Baseball Reference
Baseball Think Factory
CBS Sportsline
ESPN.com
Fan Graphs
Fielding Bible
Hardball Times '06 Annual