Is Drew Stubbs hitting? And other Reds news.

Is Drew Stubbs Hitting?
2006 first round pick Drew Stubbs, who struggled to make contact in his pro debut last season, is hitting 0.371/0.405/0.429 at Dayton, with 2 bb's and 8 k's in 37 plate appearances. K-rate is down a bit, 22% this year vs. 26% last year. Encouraging.... though it's worth noting that his BABIP is an absurdly high 0.481, which indicates that much of his surge might be due to nothing more than good fortune. I'd be more excited if he were showing a bit more pop (0nly a 0.058 ISO).

Freel Extended

Freel signed a 2-year contract extension worth a total of $7 million, plus some modest incentives based on (rather lofty) plate appearance levels. This contract will keep him through his age 33 season.

I'm a fan of Ryan Freel, but I'm glad they didn't spend an enormous amount of money on him. It's also just two years, so it's a managed risk. But one has to question how long Freel will remain effective, given his playing style and age. My guess is that he'll decline a bit either this or next season from his typical 0.370 OBP of the last three years, but will continue to be valuable given his patience at the plate, plus defense, and especially his tremendous versatility.

For what it's worth, PECOTA projects Freel's biggest decline (from "regular" to "fringe") to happen in the 2008 season, with fairly steady projection from there out through age 35. But looking at the actual projections, the biggest expected decline is in his stolen base rate--mid 30's to mid 20's. Overall, they project his bat to remain pretty solid, staying in the 0.350-0.360 OBP range for the next 5 years. If he does that, this deal will clearly be well worth it.

I also need to applaud Freel for the completely selfless attitude about the Josh Hamilton situation that he displayed in his conversation with Trent Rosecrans. I'm not sure that I'd be as selfless as he has been about both this and the Phillips situation, but I respect him for keeping his head on straight. Or, at least, saying the right things.

Josh Hamilton IPO'd on Protrade

...and I couldn't help but pick him up. I'm not positive that he'll take the league by storm, but I'm starting to believe despite understanding that his spring was due to a lot of good fortune. He debuted at $139/share, and I bought it about 30 seconds later at $142.86. He's currently trading at $144.05. If he can stay hot before entering his inevitable slump, I think he might fetch upwards of $160 or $170 before declining again. But maybe I'm just being optimistic.

I might well lose "money" on this, but I like having another reason to root for the kid. :)

Update: Heh, this was before I found out that he hit ANOTHER one last night. :)

Coffey lit up

For the record, I think Thom Brennaman was correct in yesterday's broadcast (which I finished listening to today--yay xm radio) to suggest that the Reds should have brought in a lefthander to face Berkman with two outs and a man on 2B. At least, that's what you do in an ideal world...especially because Coffey was pitching his third consecutive game. If the lefty (either Cormier or Coutlangus) was unable to retire Berkman, then you bring in either Weathers or Saarloos to face Lee. I would bring in Weathers, because Saarloos had pitched the prior two games--and I'm a big fan of bringing in a closer early in the game in a high-leverage situation.

Speaking of which, did anyone else's jaw hit the table when Marty mentioned Bill James yesterday--and not only mentioned him, but indicated that he very well may be right about something based on statistical evidence? I mean, holy cow, I nearly peed myself.

Moeller out, Hopper In

When the Reds' signed Moeller in the offseason, I wrote this:

Honestly, I'd be surprised if he lasts the season. The Reds always have roster size issues, and this year will be no different (e.g. we already have too many outfielders already on the roster). He should be an easy guy to cut.

So, while there's a sense in which this is a relief (i.e. Krivsky really *isn't* insane), it wasn't really surprising that the Reds activated Norris Hopper and DFA'd Moeller yesterday before the game. It removes the log-jam at catcher while giving the outfield depth a much needed boost. This was especially important because the outfield was starting to get stretched really thin, especially as Hamilton moves from backup to a most-of-the-time player.

It will be interesting to see whether Moeller will accept demotion to AAA. I hope he does, simply because I'm not wild about the Reds AAA catching crew and it'd be nice to have him for depth if/when either Ross or Valentin get hurt.

My computer is hurt

Finally, my desktop's hard drive is apparently fubar. Well, maybe. I'm hopeful that I can still recover stuff off of it, which includes all of my baseball research, not to mention a lot of family photos. It had been behaving strangely for a few days, and then yesterday evening it just wouldn't boot. I hate it when this kind of thing happens, but hopefully a fresh install of windows will be all it needs...though I have a feeling that I'll need a new drive. Bleh.

Josh Hamilton and Norris Hopper photos by AP/Al Behrman

Book Review: Rich Burk's Baseball Scorebook Model BP16-30

Keeping score is something of a lost art, but I find it to be a wonderful way to enjoy a baseball game. It helps me stay on top of every pitch, keep an eye on the big picture, and keep track of everything that happened in a game. What's more, keeping score gives me a record of a game that I can pull out years later should need or curiosity strike me.

When I was growing up, I learned to keep score at Reds games using the scorecard that came with the game program my Dad always bought. But by the time I got to college, I decided it was time to upgrade to a bound scorebook. The only one available at College Book Store in Athens, OH, was C. S. Peterson's Scoremaster (Rawlings)--and I bought every one they had in stock. It had a lot going for it: room to keep track of balls and strikes, play by play space for up to 12 innings, stat totals for all players, scorer notes, nice hard backing... And I've used these books for a number of years and have been pleased with them. But over the past year or two, I've grown a bit frustrated by some of that book's flaws and limitations, and therefore have been looking for a new scorebook for some time. And I finally found one.

A few weeks ago, I happened across a google advertisement for Rich Burk's website. Burk is the play by play announcer for the Portland Beavers, and has recently released his own line of scorebooks. There are a variety of different options on his site, but I decided to buy the one he describes as the "cleanup hitter" of his scorebook line, the BP16-30, which I'm reviewing tonight.

The book opens with an excellent, graphical introduction to scoring and how to use the scorebook. It should serve as a good primer to anyone new to scoring, but is still worth a skim to folks who are more experienced, as Burk has a number of good "advanced tips" that I've already adopted. He also goes into detail on how to use some of the custom features in his book, including his excellent pitch count system. If you follow this link, you can read this introduction and see an example of the scorebook sheets themselves. Below, I'll showcase how I scored part of Sunday, April 15th's game vs. the Cubs. You'll note that I don't do things exactly as Burk does them (everyone has their own style), but that this book allows me to do some things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do as easily.

We'll start at the top of the page:
Please note that I am only showing the top-of-the-inning page--the facing page has room for the bottom-of-the-inning defense, as well room to list the umpires.

Moving left to right, you can see pitching lines for the home pitchers (note that there is room for six pitchers--my old scorebook only had room for three), defensive charts for the home team, and a scoreboard for the game. I've never had either of the latter two features before, and I really like them. The defensive charts perhaps aren't necessary, but they might be nice to have, especially when I'm at a live game and don't have the benefit of an announcer to remind me who's who.

The heart of any scorebook, of course, is the play by play space:
We'll start at the left and work right. First, we see the list of players in the batting order. Note that there's plenty of space to write in substitutions or notes. Next is an interesting feature that allows you to write in relevant statistics prior to the start of the game. It's set up for AVG, HR, RBI, and SB/CS. I didn't write anything in here because I was watching the game on TiVO and didn't want to risk spoiling the game by logging onto a stats site. But I can definitely see doing this prior to driving out to the ballpark, though I'd probably substitute OBP and SLG for AVG and RBI...might also be nice to have PA instead of HR, just to keep track of sample size...but hey, I'm a geek.

Next we get to the inning columns. If we start in the first inning, we can see that Ryan Freel struck out swinging ("K") to start the game. Perhaps the best part of this scorebook, however, is also highlighted here--the pitch tracking system. To the left of Ryan's "K" are two columns: the left signifies balls, while the right signifies strikes. Each row represents a different pitch in the sequence. Here, we can see that Freel took the first pitch for a strike (the dot in the first row), and then fouled off two pitches (I'm using a diagonal slash to indicate fouls) before swinging and missing.

Phillips, the #2 hitter, had a more interesting at-bat. After swinging and missing at the first two pitches (I use a horizontal slash for a swing and miss), Phillips took a ball, fouled off a pitch, and then took another ball before flying out to center field. My old scorebook would let me show he had a 2-2 count when he hit the fly ball, but it wasn't easy to show that he battled back from being down 0-2. This sort of detail is fun to track (for me, at least), can quickly help you identify great at-bats, yet is usually not as easy to track in traditional scorebooks. I love this system: simple, easy to read and use, yet very powerful.

Let's move over to the fourth inning to highlight another novel feature, the RBI dots. Here's how they work: each dot represents an RBI at a different base, starting with home at the left and third at the right. A slash through a dot means a runner was left on base following an at-bat, while a circled dot represents an RBI. Here, we see that Hamilton struck out looking with Phillips on second base (Brandon stole second on the 6th pitch of the at-bat), leaving him on base with one out (note the slash through the "2B" dot). Fortunately, Jeff Conine came through with a "clutch" single on a 3-2 count (it was actually a run and hit play, though I haven't worked out a good way to note that), driving him home (circled "2B" dot). Junior and EdE subsequently struck out, stranding Conine at second (his SB bordered on defensive indifference, but I think that's a silly rule and gave him a SB--the official scorer did too). Note that the clean nature of this scorebook's cells allowed me to take some notes on Eddie's unfortunate K, as well as other interesting pitches and at-bats.

The other nice aspect of the pitch tracking system in this scorebook is that it makes it very easy to keep track of pitch counts for pitchers. This next section falls just below the inning columns:
Here you can see Ted Lilly's pitch counts, inning by inning. They went up remarkably fast considering that there were next to zero baserunners most of the night (10 strikeouts can push up your pitch count, of course), and he ultimately exited the game at 101 pitches (63 strikes, 38 balls) at the end of the 6th inning. I'm not showing it, but below this section is a fairly standard place to note runs, hits, errors, and men left on base.

There are a few additional features of this scorebook worth mentioning: it has a unique design in which there is a middle sheet that you flip back and forth between innings:
I find this to be a rather ingenious solution that allows all the detail that is jammed into the play by play section, as well as a full 16 innings worth of space for those extra inning games, and yet still manages to keep all the data for each game in one place. The only drawback is that you actually have to do the cutting yourself.

Following the game pages is a 5-page baseball glossary. There are a few minor omissions (e.g. infield fly rule, hit and run play, etc), but overall it's a good, concise, and readable dictionary of common baseball terms and plays--most of what you see on the field in a game can be explained by it. This would be a really nice resource to have available for someone who was learning the basics of the game.

I do have a few modest critiques. First, I have some questions about how durable this book will be. I'm not particularly kind to my scorebooks as I trek them to and from the ballpark. While the paper it is printed on is certainly not cheap or flimsy, and the spiral binding seems fine, my old scorebook seems a bit sturdier. This new book also doesn't have a hard back cover, which will make a clipboard a necessity when scoring at a ballpark--or even on the couch. I appreciate that this is a consequence of the limitations of publishing on Lulu, but it is still a factor worth considering.

Second, there are no stat lines for the batters. This isn't a big deal for me, as I honestly didn't bother to fill them out for most games with my old book. But some people enjoy doing this, and admittedly it is nice to be able to look back and immediately see who got hits, walks, etc in a game. Furthermore, some individuals who keep score little league or softball teams might be charged with keeping player stats, and even Burk's line of amateur league scorebooks meant for those types of games (more than 9 batters, for example) do not have stat lines for batters. This, of course, is a space issue. But I'm a bit surprised that none of his models offer this feature.

Finally, there is not a good place near the top of the page to give title information about the game. If one was a broadcaster and scored every game for one particular team, that wouldn't be a big deal, as there is a place to write in the date and game number near the bottom of the page. But if you're like me and score only ~10-20 games a year, you might find it necessary to write in your own title to make the game easier to find (see the first image above, "Cincinnati Reds @ Chicago Cubs"). Admittedly, of course, this particular model is geared towards broadcasters, which may be why the title line isn't there.

Despite these quibbles, I'm delighted with this new scorebook. Games I score come out much cleaner and less cramped than they did before thanks to the large & clean format, and I absolutely love the pitch tracking features. At $16.99 + shipping, it may seem a bit expensive for a scorebook (quote from my wife: "you paid $20 for book that doesn't even have anything in it??!?"). For me, though, it's worth it: this book not only provides me with all the features I was looking for, but it also provides a few new tools than let me score a baseball game more effectively than ever before. Highly recommended.

Click here to view Rich Burk's entire line of scorebooks, or here to preview and purchase the BP16-30 via Lulu.com.

Lohse sets career strikeout high against Cubs

I had the good fortune of watching today's game on WGN's telecast. Comments:

• To say that Lohse was awesome is an understatement, but what else can I say? His command seemed almost perfect for most of the night, and the few obvious mistakes that he made he got away with. It was one of those games that could have been very different with only one swing, but fortunately, things always went Lohse's way...
• ...thank goodness, because our offense was hopeless against Ted Lilly. Three baserunners all night? Thank goodness for Phillips' speed and Conine's contact ability, or we wouldn't have scored a thing. I hope Adam Dunn's back spasms subside quickly, because this team borders on anemic without him in the lineup.
• The Reds desperately need both Edwin Encarnacion and Dave Ross to figure something out and start hitting again. Both look really uncomfortable, and have seemed that way just about every game that I've seen them play this season. Those are the right-handed power bats in this lineup.
  
• Hamilton didn't look so good today, though his last AB was a nice battle--even if he ended up striking out.

• I thought the little video presentation that MLB put out about Jackie Robinson was pretty well done, except for the weird "I am Jackie Robinson" bit near the end. It's a good reminder about what a positive difference integration has made for the competitiveness of this sport (among other benefits). Speaking of which David Gassko has been doing a lot of work adjusting past player performance for competitiveness at THT. Here are links to parts one and two.
  
• Tonight I broke in my new scorebook. I'm going to give it a full review soon, but here's a link to it--I really like it, huge improvement over my old one. Not without a flaw or two, but it's very, very nice.
  

Here is Fangraph's WPA graph from today's game:
That blip in the 6th inning? Yeah, my heart about siezed when Theriot flared that single. And then note the nice slide back down below 50%... :)

Photos by AP/Nam Y. Huh

Better Know a Red #22 - Jon Coutlangus

LHP Jon Coutlangus played a pivotal role in this afternoon's victory over the Imploding Cubs, stopping them 1-2-3 with two strikeouts in the bottom of the fifth following the Reds' 6-run burst in the top of that inning. This got the Reds right back to the plate, which is precisely what you want to do in that situation...even if the Reds' hitters failed to do anything but strike out for the rest of the game. Anyway, it got me thinking that it was high time I did a profile on Coutlangus...

Coutlangus was a 19th round selection by the San Francisco Giants out of the University of South Carolina in the 2003 amateur draft. Originally drafted as an outfielder, Jon hit for two seasons, showing minimal power but decent on base skills and the ability to take a walk. He hit a decent 0.301/0.394/0.392 in his debut season in low-A Salem, but couldn't do much as a 23-year old in high-A ball the next season (0.194/0.293/0.242). Following the 2004 season, with a strong left arm, he converted to a reliever and saw near-instant success. He pitched his first year in high-A San Jose and was excellent, sporting a 3.04 ERA with a 79/29 k/bb ratio in just 77 IP. The Reds claimed him off of waivers on March 31st, 2006. I wrote this at the time:

He just converted over to pitching from the outfield last year after encountering limited success in '03 and '04 as a hitter. While he was a bit old for high-A ball last year, he did extraordinarily well considering it was his first year pitching in pro ball. He had a very high strikeout rate, average walk rates (K/BB = 2.7), and very low HR rates. Overall he looks like a nice pickup that might eventually make the club in the bullpen. I'd look for him to start in AA this year, as he has nothing to prove in high-A ball.

Coutlangus went on to have a good season out of the pen for Chattanooga as a 25-year old, and even had a cup of coffee (if that's possible with a AAA team) with Louisville at the season's end. Most recently, Coutlangus played in the Arizona Fall League, putting together a 2.70 ERA in 12 games (10 IP), with a 12/5 k/bb ratio. His best pitches are reportedly a cut fastball and a slider.

Stats:

Team	Age	G	GS	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA	FIP	BABIP	PERA	VORP	GB%
2004/SF-Rk	23	1	0	1.0	0.0	0.0	0.00	0.00	3.20	---	---	---	---
2005/SF-A+	24	50	0	77.0	9.2	3.4	0.35	3.04	2.78	0.318	4.49	11.5	56%
2006/CIN-AA	25	49	0	63.0	8.0	4.6	0.00	2.86	2.95	0.250	5.06	5.6	59%
2006/CIN-AAA	25	2	0	2.7	6.7	3.3	0.00	0.00	2.83	0.286	3.76	0.2	43%
2007/CIN	26	2	0	1.7	10.6	0.0	5.29	5.40	8.49	---	---	-0.20	---

The main issue with Jon's performance last year in AA is that his walk rate skyrocketed to unacceptable levels. Otherwise, he did great--nice strikeout rate, and more impressively, he didn't allow a home run all season. In fact, the home run Coutlangus allowed to Jason Bay on April 8th was only the 5th of his career (counting the one given up in the AFL), which now totals 156 1/3 regular season innings (majors and minors). I'm sure his HR rates will increase in the majors, but his GB% (almost 60%!) shows that he's good at inducing grounders and keeping the ball in the park. If that can be maintained in the big leagues, he can be valuable.

His lefty/righty splits looked normal last year for a lefthander, allowing an 0.486 OBP vs. lefty batters and an 0.570 OPS vs. righties (here you can see the effect of the low BABIP, though his k/9 and hr/9 rates didn't hurt here either).

Projecting his performance in 2007

Coutlangus is making the jump from AA to the majors, so we shouldn't get overly optimistic this season. Nevertheless, he seems to have the tools (lefty, high gb rate, decent strikeout rate) to be successful at the big-league level in the future, and clearly impressed enough folks on the Reds staff this spring to put him on the opening-day roster. For reference, PECOTA projects that Coutlangus will have between a 4.10 and 6.87 ERA this season (25th and 75th percentile projections). If he can keep his control issues from last year under wraps, I'd hedge him towards the better end of that range.

Still, I expect that he'll spend a lot of time in AAA this season. Unless there's another injury, or the Reds are successful in trading away Cormier, he seems destined to return to the farm when Bill Bray returns from the DL--which should be soon. Still, I can see him driving back and forth between Louisville and Cincinnati a lot this season, sort of like Brian Shackelford has over the past two seasons.

References:
The Baseball Cube
Baseball Prospectus
Minor League Splits
AFL Interview on MLB.com

Photo credits: Jerry Hale of MLB.com

2007 Reds Spring Training in Review (pt. 2) Pitching and Defense

This post continues my look at the Reds' 2007 spring training. See this post for the introduction and hitting analysis.

Pitching

As with the hitters, I was liberal in who I allowed onto these graphs. There was less of a clear drop-off in innings pitched this time around, but 7 IP was the lowest total by anyone who made the opening day roster (Stanton), so I went with that.

As before, the usual caveats apply--I do make comments about performance, but spring training stats are about the least reliable you can get given the context in which the games are played, and the small sample sizes most players achieve. So don't get too caught up with trying to predict performance from these stats (I hope I haven't). Nevertheless, I think they have at least some value, especially if you're careful in what you look at.

How They Got Hit - OBP and HR/9
An overall view of how Reds' pitchers got hurt, or conversely, shut down their opponents. Vertical and horizontal lines are 2006 NL averages. The cluster of players near the bottom center reads: Coffey-Shearn-Livingston-Coutlangus-Stanton-Belisle-Cormier.

Comments:

• The place to be in this graph is the lower-left.
  
• Santos had an incredible spring training, allowing almost no one to reach base and allowing zero home runs. While I noted on my initial profile on him that he might be able to contribute to the staff, he separated himself from the rest with his performance and ultimately became the only non-roster invitee to make the opening day squad (thanks in part to injuries to Majewski, Bray, and Milton, among others).
  
• Arroyo and the Coffey-Shearn-Livingston-Coutlangus-Stanton-Belisle cluster also had nice springs
• On the flip side, Harang, Milton, and Hermanson got killed. Hermanson's performance ultimately cost him his chance at the closing job for the Reds.
• Weathers and Lohse both gave up a lot of home runs, though their allowed OBP's were nice. I'd like to know what their fly ball rates were, as home rates that high are typically the result of small sample sizes and bad luck. If their fly ball rates weren't substantially worse than usual, these totals would be no cause for concern.
  

Control of the Strike Zone - %BB vs. %K
Strikeout and walk rates for Reds pitchers in spring training. Horizontal and vertical lines are 2006 NL averages. Santos and Hermanson overlap a bit near the center.

• The best spot in this graph is the upper-left hand corner, and the Reds very happily had three of their opening day starters in that quadrant, plus the most likely AAA call-up in Livingston.
• The other good news was that no one was in the lower-right quadrant.
• Causes for concern?
• Jared Burton flashed a great arm, but also was wild as all heck, at least near the end of spring training. Might be a long season if we keep him on the roster all year, as it seems a like a year in AAA might have been good for him as he harnesses his control. It will be interesting to see what other injuries the Reds can invent for the guy. :)
  
• Paul Wilson seemed to have some of his stuff back (decent strikeout rate), but had very poor location. He was also rather unlucky (see below). I have to say that I wouldn't be surprised if Wilson turned up somewhere else this year and contributes.
  
• Milton's strikeout rate was down from last year, and some of my prior work on him has indicated that a substantial indicator of his effectiveness is his strikeout rate. Hopefully, now that his back issues have (apparently) subsided, he'll rebound for the regular season.
• Mike Stanton's strikeout rate was also a bit of a surprise. I'm not going to get too bent out of shape about 7 innings (2 k's) worth of work, but it will be worth tracking his k-rate early on, as you can't help but worry that the 39-year old's skills might collapse (right now he has 2 k's in 3 IP, which is just fine).
• Weathers showed good control, but didn't have a very good strikeout rate. More on him below.
  

Good performance, or just good luck?
This graph contrasts actual ERA with FIP, which is an estimate of ERA based on peripherals. The diagonal line indicates a perfect match between ERA and FIP. Individuals in the upper-left quadrant underperformed, meaning that their peripherals indicate that they pitched better than they actually did. In the lower-right quadrant are the overperformers, who had a better ERA than their FIP indicates they should have.

Comments:

• First, let's talk about those who were probably better than their ERA indicates:
• The big name in this section was Harang, who battled the devil to the tune of a 6.66 ERA this spring. He had fine peripherals (7.7 k/9, 0.7! bb/9, 1.4 hr/9), but a ridiculous 0.428 BABIP, which indicates that he had a much larger number of batted balls fall in for hits than is typical. His HR rates were a little bit high, but Harang is a fly ball pitcher. I'm not worried in the least.
• The story was similar for Cormier (0.345 BABIP), Hermanson (0.368 BABIP), and Wilson (0.413 BABIP). For the latter two individuals, it's kind of disappointing, as these data indicate that they might have had a shot at contributing in a positive way to the Reds staff. Hermanson, in particular, had decent peripherals (6.2 k/9, 1.2 bb/9, 1.2 hr/9) and 4.02 FIP (albeit in just 7.7 IP). I have to wonder if choosing Santos over him will, in fact, turn out to be the better choice in the long run.
• Stanton didn't have a particularly high BABIP, but he might have been victimized by a clustered bout of hitting. That's not uncommon with such low sample sizes as these. I could go back into the game logs and check, but I don't wanna--it's just spring training, after all. :)
  
• Tom Shearn sure had a hell of a spring, eh? A glance at his numbers over the last few years shows a guy who generally puts up pretty good (though not great, especially given his age) strikeout numbers, but also a guy who walks a lot of batters. I don't see him as a contender for space on the active roster this year, though I'm sure his chances are a little better now than they were before the spring.
  
• Causes for concern?
• Weathers...he had a very high HR rate in the spring and a fairly poor strikeout rate. His ERA is respectable only because of an 0.167 BABIP. And he's coming off a year in which his peripherals all took a big hit. And he's 37. I'm worried.
• Lohse's fall below the line was primarily driven by his HR-allowed rate, which can fluctuate a lot with low IP's due to the randomness that underlies whether a fly ball will become a homer or an out. I'm much more encouraged by his strikeout and walk rates than I am discouraged by his HR-rates.
• Oh, and don't worry about Livingston's drop below the line. FIP just doesn't go that low very often...and I think we can all agree that a 1.02 ERA indicates a fair amount of luck, eh? His FIP was still a stellar 3.29.
• Milton, by the way, shows almost perfect agreement between his ERA and FIP. Not good, considering both show him over 6.05. ... I just hope his back is really better now.
  

Defense

Unfortunately, good defensive metrics aren't available from spring training games, so this section will largely need to be omitted. Look for more to be done with it as the season progresses. For now, I'll just report that the Reds had a Defensive Efficiency Ratio (the proportion of balls turned into outs among all balls hit into play) of 0.693. That's right at the 2006 NL average last season, and better than the '06 Reds mark of 0.684. ... A step in the right direction.

Pitching statistics
Here are some relevant pitching stats from this Spring.

Player	GP	GS	R	ERA	IP	SO	BB	HR	ER	HBP	OBP	BABIP	FIP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9
Harang	6	6	20	6.66	25.7	22	2	4	19	0	0.403	0.428	3.74	7.7	0.7	1.4
Arroyo	5	5	7	2.38	22.7	13	4	1	6	1	0.297	0.272	3.29	5.2	1.6	0.4
Lohse	5	5	11	4.74	19	16	5	5	10	3	0.317	0.236	6.20	7.6	2.4	2.4
Livingston	6	4	2	1.02	17.7	14	3	0	2	2	0.314	0.303	2.47	7.1	1.5	0.0
Saarloos	6	1	9	4.32	16.7	11	1	2	8	0	0.292	0.310	3.62	5.9	0.5	1.1
Belisle	5	3	6	2.87	15.7	10	4	0	5	1	0.328	0.296	2.88	5.7	2.3	0.0
Santos	9	0	0	0.00	15.7	11	3	0	0	0	0.204	0.181	2.37	6.3	1.7	0.0
Milton	4	4	12	6.59	13.7	6	3	3	10	1	0.391	0.350	6.05	3.9	2.0	2.0
Wilson	5	2	13	8.10	13.3	11	7	1	12	1	0.435	0.413	4.33	7.4	4.7	0.7
Coffey	11	0	2	0.84	10.7	11	3	0	1	0	0.289	0.312	1.99	9.3	2.5	0.0
Burton	10	0	5	4.35	10.3	13	5	1	5	1	0.367	0.381	3.69	11.4	4.4	0.9
Coutlangus	12	0	5	2.79	9.7	8	4	0	3	0	0.317	0.280	2.79	7.4	3.7	0.0
Cormier	8	0	6	5.63	8	6	3	0	5	1	0.359	0.345	3.20	6.8	3.4	0.0
Weathers	8	0	2	2.25	8	4	2	2	2	0	0.267	0.167	6.20	4.5	2.3	2.3
Hermanson	8	0	8	7.36	7.3	5	1	1	6	0	0.371	0.368	4.02	6.2	1.2	1.2
Stanton	7	0	5	5.14	7	2	1	0	4	0	0.323	0.310	3.06	2.6	1.3	0.0
Shearn	3	0	2	2.57	7	9	1	0	2	0	0.296	0.368	1.06	11.6	1.3	0.0
Salmon	6	0	5	0.00	5.7	4	4	0	0	0	0.333	0.181	3.90	6.3	6.3	0.0
Ligtenberg	5	0	1	1.69	5.3	4	0	0	1	1	0.238	0.252	2.26	6.8	0.0	0.0
Meadows	5	0	2	3.38	5.3	1	0	1	2	0	0.286	0.251	5.28	1.7	0.0	1.7
Ramirez	2	0	1	1.80	5	1	0	0	1	1	0.333	0.263	3.40	1.8	0.0	0.0
Shackelford	6	0	2	1.80	5	3	2	0	1	0	0.286	0.235	3.20	5.4	3.6	0.0
Bailey	3	1	8	19.64	3.7	3	3	2	8	2	0.524	0.331	12.66	7.3	7.3	4.9
Bray	3	0	0	0.00	3	4	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	0.53	12.0	0.0	0.0
Kershner	3	0	1	3.00	3	2	1	0	1	0	0.385	0.364	2.87	6.0	3.0	0.0
Majewski	2	0	0	0.00	2	1	2	0	0	0	0.333	0.000	5.20	4.5	9.0	0.0
Medlock	2	0	2	9.00	2	0	2	0	2	0	0.538	0.455	6.20	0.0	9.0	0.0
Gosling	2	0	1	6.75	1.3	1	0	1	1	0	0.200	0.000	11.66	6.9	0.0	6.9
Dumatrait	1	0	0	0.00	1	0	1	0	0	0	0.333	0.000	6.20	0.0	9.0	0.0
Flannery	1	0	0	0.00	0.3	1	0	0	0	0	0.000	0.000	-3.47	30.0	0.0	0.0
Wilkerson	1	0	2	54.00	0.3	0	1	1	2	0	0.667	0.000	56.53	0.0	30.0	30.0

Hamilton carries the Reds - I was there!

It felt sooo good to see the Reds again in person. It'd been far too long.

My comments:

My favorite quote of the night was from someone sitting in the row in front of me, right after Josh Hamilton hit his second career home run: "That's a double and two home runs in 9 at-bats. Who is this guy?" I'm in awe of the kid right now. I thought he looked a little bit lost in his first two at-bats, and I remember thinking that he looked like someone with only a handful of AB's above A-ball. But he apparently made some adjustments after those first two appearances, because his double was blistered into the corner (after the odd bounce off the wall, I thought he might try for three, but I think he hit it too hard for that)...and what else can I say about the opposite-field home run? The fan who caught it wisely didn't throw it back...who knows, it might be worth something some day (heh, I love being on the bandwagon!).

Given how much the Reds' offense is struggling right now, I'm not sure that we can afford to sit him for the time being, at least not against right-handers. I don't know where we can find room for him though...maybe Freel could sub in for Phillips & Encarnacion once a week? Along with the weekly rest of Freel and Griffey, that's 4 starting opportunities per week for Hamilton. Just a thought.

Belisle looked pretty good. His pitching line looks great, but there were an uncomfortably large number of well-hit balls to the outfield and relatively few ground balls. Fortunately, our outfielders had a nice day out there, including rangy catches by Ryan Freel (especially off of Tracy in the 1st!) and Hamilton. Dunn also made a nice running grab. So I think he may have been a tad hit-lucky tonight. Nevertheless, he did a great job of challenging hitters and avoiding the BB issues that haunted him last season (4.28 bb/9 vs. only 5.85 k/9). After his walk of Drew to start the game, he went to a three-ball count on only one batter. I'll gladly take that sort of effort from him. Overall, 6 innings, three hits, 3 strikeouts, and a walk results in an FIP for today's performance of 2.70.

Anyone hear what happened with Encarnacion? He smacked pretty hard into the umpire Mark Wegner (I could hear the collision) on a foul off of Chad Tracy's bat, so I was worried he might have hurt his shoulder or something. Apparently Rob Butcher had no explanation for it, except to say that he was not hurt. Fay speculated that it was due to him not running out his pop-up in the top of the 1st, but he played defense in the bottom of the first, so that doesn't make much sense. If he actually is hurt somehow, despite the current reports, the easy move to get Hamilton into the lineup would be to move Freel to third for the time being.

David Ross is seriously struggling, and Narron made the right move (obviously...but even if the result had been different, it was the right move) pinch hitting Valentin in the 7th. I would not be surprised to see Valentin and Ross platoon until Ross finds his groove again. I do expect Ross to decline this season after his brilliant '06, but I'd be shocked if he completely collapsed. His batted-ball stats were right in line with his outstanding performance last season--it was not just luck--so I think he does have the ability to be at least a decent hitter this season...he's just in a miserable slump. Meanwhile, Valentin's hitting pretty well, and the Reds need to ride some hot bats for the next few games to keep the Cubbies down.

I (and everyone else in my section) thought Griffey's pinch hit was gone when it left the bat. It's amazing how much he's hitting to the opposite field this season. His bat speed must just not quite be back after the hand injury.

I was a bit surprised to see Moeller pinch hit in the 8th instead of Conine, given that they seem so concerned about keeping a catcher on the bench in case of emergencies.

Gonzalez has some serious style out there. He didn't get a lot of chances tonight, but his attempted double play 9th (not in picture--that's from one that he did turn in the 7th) was one of the cooler ways to start a double play that I've ever seen. Too bad he didn't actually turn it, or it'd be on highlight reels around the league. But I think he did well to get to the ball and get Hudson at 2B. I really like having good defenders up the middle... Speaking of which, THT currently rates the Reds as +1 runs saved overall on defense: +4 on ground balls, -3 on fly balls. Woot.

Finally, Weathers... Here's my issue. The guy essentially pitched two innings last night in the extra inning loss. I'm fine with throwing him out there to close tonight's game after that, as the guy has shown pretty good durability in the past. But why is it that there was no one even warming in the bullpen after that double by Chad Tracy? I guess I'm just not a believer in the closer-is-my-guy-no-matter-what mentality. Seems like hanging with your guy is a good way to lose some ballgames.

But at least we still won. :) I love winning, man...you know, like, it's better than losing.

Courtesy of FanGraphs, here is tonight's WPA graph:
Way to be Javy! :)

Update: Looks like Fay was right about Encarnacion. So I wonder if Eddie was pulled in the bottom of the 1st and I just didn't notice it? That would mean that Castro was the one who ran into the umpire. Castro wasn't announced in the ballpark until the bottom of the 2nd inning.

One thing I do want to say is that it was very good to see this as part of Narron's comments about Encarnacion:

“I love him. I think he’s going to a great player. He messed up. But doggone it, you can't be messing up in this game. If you don’t know where the ball is, you run until you know where it is....The one thing he’s never done here is dog it. It was probably an honest mistake. But it was a mistake."

This seems very reasonable to me, and I think it was handled well. He also said that Hamilton will be playing on Friday. That means someone isn't playing in the outfield. My guess is that Freel is likely to either sub for Phillips (since EdE got his "rest" in today), or sit. I guess Dunn could play first, but I doubt that'll happen very often this season. Besides, I like having Hatteberg's bat in the lineup too much to do that.

Photos by Rick Scuteri of the AP.

Game Reflections: D-Backs win their home opener

Sort of a frustrating game to watch. No, I wasn't there, but I will be going to Wednesday's game--if you're in Phoenix, jmcclain19 and I are planning to get together prior to the game for a beer or two. We'd welcome additional company. Some comments:

• I really enjoy watching Arroyo pitch, especially how he varies that little curve of his with arm angles and velocity. It's such a bizarre looking pitch. Tonight he was locating it pretty well all game, though his fastball location came and went.
• Doug Davis looked awful tonight, and yet somehow the Reds weren't able to string together more than a couple of hits together. When you work 7 walks (6 unintentional) in a game, you really should score more than 2 runs. Fly balls off the Reds' bats just seemed to die tonight, and that's not the way that Chase Field usually plays.
  
• Tonight was the first time, I think, that I've ever written SF-4 in my scorebook, thanks to Dave Ross's sacrifice fly to Orlando Hudson in shallow right field today. Way to get the ball elevated and do the little things. :) Also, heads up play on Junior's part to hustle down the line and score on that play as soon as he saw it going badly for AZ.
  
• I really like Saarloos as a reliever. He has good control (word is that his high walk totals in past years are due more to a problem with a need to nibble than poor control), and induces a lot of ground balls. Somehow, he's striking out people at a tremendous rate so far as well (6 k in 4 IP). I can see him as being invaluable as a situational reliever for times when you need a ground ball from a right-handed hitter. That said, he sure left that pitch in the fat part of the plate. I know Orlando Hudson is hot right now, but come on...Orlando Hudson?
• I was a bit surprised that Narron didn't hit Hatteberg for Conine during the Reds' failed rally in the 8th. Granted, Conine had had a great day at the plate, and ended up having a terrific at-bat. And that it set up the chance to do the double-switch in the bottom of the inning. But the double-switch wasn't really necessary (Saarloos wasn't going to pitch two innings anyway, was he?), and I think you want your best hitter in that situation to drive in Dunn at 2nd. I personally would have played the lefty/right matchup.
  
• WPA is makes an appearance on TV: There were two times in the 7th inning in which Fox Sports AZ showed the current Win Probability of the game tonight. One moment was in the 7th inning when Chad Tracy led off with a double, moving the win probability to an even 50/50%. It's nice to see that this matches up perfectly with Fangraph's live wpa reporting at that moment.
• I know a lot of people have been complaining about Jeff Brantley early in the season, but I'm actually really enjoying the new Reds on Radio crew (I've listened to about 80% of the games since I got my XM Radio, not including tonight). My affection for our crew is particularly apparent after sitting through my first Mark Grace broadcast of the season. I'm sorry, I liked Grace as a player, and he seems like a nice guy, but he is not a particularly...accurate announcer. Tonight he mentioned that Brandon Phillips is a switch hitter, "described" Saarloos's pitches without mentioning his sinker, and, in a joke, repeatedly emphasized that Dave Ross is the best hitter in the history of baseball (Ross hit a home run off of Grace in Grace's only inning as a relief pitcher in MLB) without ever acknowledging that he was an outstanding hitter last year. In contrast, I actually do learn things from Jeff Brantley with some regularity, even if he is known to fib now and then as well.
  

Photo credit: AP/Ross D. Franklin