Reds Exchange Conine for Castro & Henry

The Reds finally managed to find a home for Jeff Conine in the last 6 weeks of his career, sending him to the Mets for two players from the Florida State League. I wrote in my evaluation of the trade that brought Conine to the Reds would need to rebound to at least his 2005 (0.304/0.374/0.403) performance level to be valuable to the team. Looking back on it, that may have been a bit strong. Jeff's performance with the Reds this year (0.265/0.320/0.409) wasn't up to those standards, and while he didn't particularly help the Reds this season in his platoon role at first base (3 VORP), he wasn't really harmful either. At the same time, I think the Reds can quite reasonably expect similar or slightly better performance levels from Jorge Cantu, so losing Conine is not much of a hit.

Let's look at what they got in return:

Jose Castro, 20 years, SHB SS/2B

Year/Team	Age	PA	%K	%BB	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	OPS	SBRns	RC	wOBA
2005/NYN-Rk	18	17	6%	12%	0.308	0.286	0.412	0.286	0.000	0.697	-0.5	1	0.341
2005/NYN-Rk	18	128	7%	5%	0.311	0.293	0.359	0.379	0.086	0.739	0.4	16	0.334
2006/NYN-A	19	474	11%	4%	0.247	0.217	0.285	0.245	0.028	0.530	-0.8	31	0.251
2007/NYN-A+	20	331	6%	3%	0.336	0.318	0.363	0.383	0.065	0.746	-3.4	40	0.336

Castro, a Puerto Rican native, looks like a fairly classic light-hitting middle infield prospect. After a terrible year at the plate last year, he has shown decent on-base ability this season in the pitcher-friendly Florida State League. He's done it entirely via hits though, as his walk rate has steadily declined each of his first three seasons. He also doesn't strike out much, indicating a very aggressive hitter. However, his line drive rate looks rather low (just 32 of 281 balls in play), so this aggressive approach of his may not work at higher levels--we'll see.

If Castro doesn't get in base, he doesn't seem to have much in the way of additional skills. He has shown absolutely zero power thus far, and while he has tried to show off some speed, he hasn't been very successful (just 7 steals in 17 attempts this season). He has also apparently received some criticism for his defense, but I can't find anything other than error rate on him, which I consider to be all but irrelevant--I'm much more interested in a young infielder's range. On the plus side, he is only 20 years old, and the Reds think he's ready for AA. So he has a lot of development time left.

Sean Henry, 22 years, RHB OF/2B

Year/Team	Age	PA	%K	%BB	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	OPS	SBRns	RC	wOBA
2004/NYN-Rk	19	228	19%	10%	0.342	0.282	0.364	0.436	0.153	0.800	-1.1	33	0.354
2005/NYN-Rk	20	177	24%	12%	0.314	0.255	0.350	0.416	0.161	0.766	2.2	27	0.338
2006/NYN-Rk	21	170	17%	12%	0.319	0.275	0.365	0.463	0.188	0.828	2.6	28	0.362
2006/NYN-A	21	71	23%	4%	0.286	0.254	0.282	0.463	0.209	0.744	-0.4	7	0.314
2007/NYN-A+	22	502	15%	8%	0.325	0.293	0.355	0.456	0.162	0.810	-2.0	74	0.353

Henry has gotten far more action this year than any other in his still young career (he just turned 22 last Saturday), and he's performed reasonably well. His walk rate has been decent, and he's shown a nice combination of speed and power over the last two years. This year, he hasn't been as effective in employing his speed as he has been in the past, but I like that he has shown good percentages in the past--and you never know what sort of emphasis they put on these guys in the minor leagues in terms of base stealing percentage. His strikeout rate has fluctuated at times over his career, but generally he seems to make good contact. If his speed and position are any indication, he's likely to be a pretty good fielder...but again I have no data on that.

He doesn't look like an outstanding prospect, but he might eventually make an impact. Toby Hyde at MetsMinors predicted that he has a shot at being a major league CF, though a 4th outfielder seems more likely. That matches my initial impressions of him.

Evaluation
Overall, this looks like a decent return for Jeff Conine, and on par--if not better than--what we paid to get him in the offseason. I'd probably rate Henry about equivalent to Javon Moran (Moran has less SLG, but more OBP), while Castro has to be better than Brad Key. It's a pretty small deal in the grand scheme of things, but for what it is, Krivsky did fine.

I'd have a hard time rooting for a New York team in the postseason, but for Conine's sake, I hope they make it.

Link Dump - Talent Pools and Social Conscience

I'm departing a bit from my typical focus on statistical analysis with this post (sort of), but here are a few things that I've been mulling over during the past few weeks:

What do we mean by Modern Baseball?

Typically, when folks refer to modern baseball, especially in the context of records, we refer to baseball played after and including 1900. But does that make sense? 1900 baseball bares very little resemblance to today's baseball--it was the "dead ball era," and no one had ever hit more than 27 home runs in a season. I'm not even sure if they were using gloves yet(?).

Another option might be to declare that modern baseball began in 1920, when Babe Ruth doubled the all-time home run record with 54 in his first season with the Yankees. Then, at least, we were starting to see offensive levels that approached what we see today.

Tom Tango, however, argued a few weeks back that we might be better served declaring that modern baseball began in 1947. That, of course, is the year that Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues as the first African-American ballplayer. All of the sudden (well...at least within 20 years...), the population from which modern baseball players could be drawn increased dramatically--and with it, the level of competition increased as well.

This talent pool, of course, has continued to increase ever since. The infusion of Latino talent has been the story of the past several decades, and we're probably still just beginning to see the invasion of Asian talent in the game. And all signs indicate that this will continue as the game becomes more global. But the start of this expansion in available talent--and the huge increase in level of play that it has brought with it--can probably all be traced back to the presence and actions of Jackie Robinson, with a hat tip to Branch Ricky for helping make it happen. Quantitatively, there may not have been a big jump around that time in the level of competition. But from a social and historical perspective, 1947 seems to have been the turning point.

So count me as one on board with this notion--if it happened before 1947, it wasn't not modern baseball. Sorry, Babe.

How do MLB's activities affect the Dominican Republic?

On a somewhat related note, a few weeks back, I made a comment about Edwin Encarnacion's status as a ballplayer from the Dominican Republic, and what that likely means for what he has been through to arrive at this point in his still-young career. While I still haven't found much on Eddie's personal history, I did spend an evening doing a bit of research on Dominican ballplayers in general...and found some disturbing things.

The story we tend to hear about Dominican ballplayers are the success stories--the Miguel Tejada's and David Ortiz's, and to a lesser extent, the Edwin Encarnacion's, who have made it off the island and onto major league rosters. Even making the league minimum, for example, Encarnacion's annual salary of $390,000 is an enormous sum of money compared to what I hope to make upon finishing grad school in a few months. ... And is an outrageous sum of money compared to what one might hope to make in the D.R., which ranks 73rd in per capita income in the world, with an value just 20% that found in the USA.

But what we don't hear about is impact of the far more frequent cases of young boys and men from the Dominican Republic who fail to make it even off Hispanola. This article by Dave Zinn, while somewhat dated, reports that boys in that country often quit school at 10-12 years old to join baseball academies. There they stay for several years before being discarded, with little education or other additional skills, in their late teens. And even of the small number that do make it to the the US minor league system, only a small fraction of those individuals will ever arrive in the major leagues and start earning good money. While there are rare successes, Zimm insinuates that the activities of Major League Baseball are causing more harm than good to that country's people. In fact, he calls it strip mining.

I'm having a hard time confirming the extent to which this is true. There are a few other articles like this scattered about the internet, but none seem to incorporate enough quantifiable numbers or hard sources to make me feel confident that this is the case. Major League Baseball certainly has focused on the positives related to its activities, such as how they pull these kids out of poverty, give them clean sheets and English lessons, and teach them discipline as well as baseball. I may try to do some searches in the academic literature when I have some time...

But if Zimm's argument is true, it's a genuine problem that we, as fans, need to be aware of. And the Reds, one of many teams with an academy in the Dominican Republic, will be partly to blame. Hopefully more will come to the surface on this issue in the future--like most problems of social justice, it will most likely need to be the people (in this case, the fans) who drive the institution to make a change in its practices, and that won't happen without information.


What does pitcher hitting ability tell us about level of competition?

Major league baseball is the pinnacle of competition in the world, and the increase in the available talent pool we've seen over the years--not to mention improvements in training, strategy, nutrition, and medicine--keep pushing that level of play to higher and higher levels. As the level of competition increases, it makes sense that any one player would find it more difficult to excel in all aspects of the game.

Such is the case with pitchers, which is apparently why few of them can hit particularly well. Pitchers are the ultimate specialists in baseball--their value is determined entirely by their performance on defense, with no attention paid to their ability to hit. As such, it makes sense that as the level of play increases over time, the typical offensive performance of a pitcher should decrease. Dan Fox recently demonstrated this. The following figure, from his blog, plots park-Normalized OPS for pitchers divided by park-Normalized OPS for hitters from the 1800's through the mid-1970's (he stopped the figure with the advent of the DH):
Note that a pitcher was about 70% as good a hitter as a position player in the 1920's, but by the 1970's they were only about 50% as good. As Fox noted, this makes Rick Ankiel's return to the major leagues as a hitter (0.296/0.367/0.667 in his first 30 PA's) all the more interesting.

I wonder what this might tell us about converted minor league outfielders like relief pitchers Coutlangus or McBeth? Were such conversions easier in the past than they are today?


Personal note

I wanted to close by thanking Greg Gajus for breakfast this morning. He was in town for a convention, and it was really fun to get together and chat with a Reds fan out here in Phoenix, especially one as knowledgeable as he is. Greg was one of the other two individuals (the third being myself) cited in the Erardi article from a few weeks back.

Better Know a Red #26 - Jason Ellison

Last week, the Reds acquired RHB OF Jason Ellison from the Seattle Mariners off of waivers. Let's take a look at him:

Ellison was a 22nd-round selection by the San Francisco Giants in the 2000 amateur draft out of Lewis-Clark State College, an institution that also counts former closer Keith Foulke among their alumni (as an aside, Jason Bay was also selected earlier in that round by the Montreal Expos--that's one heck of a steal!). Ellison was initially advanced at a slow and steady pace, and showed fair performance for a mid/late round pick in the low minors. Then, in 2002, he made the leap from A+ ball to AAA and held his own. He made his major league debut in 2003 at age 25, and got significant playing time for the 2005 Bondsless Giants.

Unfortunately, he did not perform well when given that opportunity, and in '06 was relegated to the role of Barry Bonds' designated late inning pinch runner. As a result, he had the very rare distinction of appearing in more games (85) than he had at-bats (81)! Acquired by the Mariners in return for a minor league pitcher near the start of this season, he has had little playing time in Seattle, who ultimately allowed him to depart via waivers to the Reds.

Recent Stats:

Year/Team	Age	PA	%K	%BB	%LD	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	OPS	PrOPS	SBRns	VORP
2004/SF-AAA	26	549	12%	7%	---	0.348	0.315	0.368	0.459	0.145	0.827	---	-0.9	11.4
2004/SF	26	4	25%	0%	67%	0.500	0.500	0.500	1.250	0.750	1.750	1.885	0.4	2.4
2005/SF-AAA	27	41	22%	5%	---	0.310	0.237	0.293	0.289	0.053	0.582	---	0.0	-3.8
2005/SF	27	380	12%	6%	17%	0.292	0.264	0.316	0.361	0.097	0.677	0.691	-0.4	-1.0
2006/SF-AAA	28	210	10%	7%	---	0.448	0.406	0.452	0.536	0.130	0.989	---	-0.6	24.8
2006/SF	28	88	16%	6%	10%	0.242	0.222	0.273	0.383	0.160	0.655	0.676	-0.6	-3.4
2007/SEA-CIN	29	52	27%	2%	18%	0.351	0.255	0.269	0.255	0.000	0.524	0.551	-0.9	-4.0

Ellison's best performance of his career, at any level, was his 2006 tear through the Pacific Coast League AAA Fresno. Unfortunately, the 0.989 OPS he posted there seems to have been substantially affected by an extraordinarily high BABIP (0.448), requiring us to look more closely at his 2004 Fresno performance and his 2005 season in San Francisco to get some idea of what he is capable of as a hitter.

What those stats reveal is a guy who makes good contact, but but doesn't walk much either. While he flashed good doubles-power in AAA, his power has been virtually absent at the major league level in over 500 plate appearances. He's not a particularly good singles hitter either, with a MLB line drive rate around 17%. He has some speed, stealing 27 bases in '04 with Fresno and 14 bases with the Giants in '05. But as is so often the case, his success rate, while not horrible, has been bad enough that his base-stealing escapades have actually cost his teams more runs than they've produced.

One place we might hope to see exceptional performance from a player like Ellison is his defense. Here are his career major league defensive performances according to UZR, through May of this year:

pos	expOuts	runs_range	runs_fldErr	runs_othErr	runs_total	G	Innings
LF	35	0	-1	0	-1	19	217
CF	205	1	0	-1	0	81	657
RF	51	0	0	0	0	26	289

Ellison has been dead-on average defensively at all positions. I would qualify that assessment, however, with the observation that our best sample size is in center field, indicating that he would probably be above average in the corner positions with additional playing time.

Now, being an average center fielder certainly isn't a bad thing, especially for the defensively challenged Reds. But when combined with his performance at the plate (career VORP = -6 runs) you get a picture of someone who is essentially the definition of a replacement player. And at 29, he's unlikely to get a whole lot better.

That's ok, of course. He was, after all, acquired via the waiver wire, and probably is about on par with someone like DeWayne Wise to fill in the 5th outfielder spot on the club for the time being. Just don't expect a whole lot from him.

Better Know a Red #25 - Phil Dumatrait

The latest addition to the rotation--and with the trade of Lohse and demotion of Belisle, the apparent #4 starter--is LHP Phil Dumatrait. Dumatrait has a rich pedigree, being the #1 selection of the Boston Red Sox in the 2000 amateur draft out of Bakersfield Junior College. Dumatrait began his career in the Gulf Coast League, and didn't pitch very much until he was finally promoted at 21 years old to Class-A Augusta, where he posted excellent numbers. A year later, in 2003, he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds along with a player to be named in exchange for Scott Williamson in the fire sale that followed the conclusion of Jim Bowden's tenure with the team.

As almost seems typical of Reds pitching prospects, Dumatrait suffered a critical injury almost immediately after he was acquired, missing the entire 2004 season with a torn rotator cuff. After his return, he spent the '05 season in AA and then arrived in Louisville midway through the '06 season. Dumatrait made his big league debut on August 2nd, allowing 6 runs in 3 1/3 innings and earning his first big league loss.

Recent Stats:

Team	Age	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	R/9	ERA	FIP	PERA	VORP	GB%
2005/CIN-A+	24	10.0	11.7	2.7	0.00	0.320	3.60	2.70	1.50	3.30	1.0	64%
2005/CIN-AA	24	127.7	7.1	4.9	0.28	0.282	4.09	3.17	3.67	4.65	13.7	54%
2006/CIN-AA	25	49.7	8.1	4.0	0.72	0.252	4.35	3.62	3.76	5.65	-1.1	43%
2006/CIN-AAA	25	87.7	6.0	3.7	1.03	0.314	5.03	4.72	4.59	5.74	-4.8	49%
2007/CIN-AAA	26	118.7	5.3	3.6	0.68	0.259	4.09	3.49	4.22	---	---	42%
2007/CIN	26	9.3	5.8	4.8	0.00	0.407	7.74	7.74	3.52	---	-2.0	27%

Despite his first rounder-pedigree, Dumatrait's numbers look decidedly ordinary. His strikeout rate was well above-average earlier in his career, but has dropped steadily as he has moved up and at AAA has been below-average (by comparison, finesse lefty Bobby Livingston struck out 5.4 batters per nine innings at AAA this season). At the same time, Dumatrait's walk rate--while it has improved--remains fairly high. The one peripheral that looks solid is his home run-allowed rate, but his ground ball rate seems to have been steadily dropping over the past three years, giving little reason to think that he'll maintain low homer rates in the majors. He has produced a nice 3.49 ERA in AAA this season. But his BABIP is a bit low, and his FIP is about 0.7 runs higher than his ERA, indicating that he may have been lucky. Furthermore, he's already 26, so he probably doesn't have a lot of development time left.

So, in short, there's unfortunately just not a lot that I see here that provides much hope for his future success at the major league level. Poor control, low strikeout rates, and average ground ball rates adds up to someone who is probably best suited as a long man in the bullpen, if he is to play int he major leagues at all. I hope I'm wrong. But if the Reds are counting on getting much production from this guy next season, they may be disappointed.

Photo by AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

I Heart Joe Nuxhall

(I wrote this over the course of a few nights, but it never quite was finished 'til now--been a busy week...figured a late post is better than never)

This is the first year that I've been able to catch a significant number of ballgames on the radio in quite a while, thanks to a combination of being able to record games on my XM Radio for later listening, and having a lot of lab work that invites uninterrupted hours to listen to ballgames.

This week, Joe Nuxhall has been calling games in one of his rare appearances this season. And my goodness, it's been nice.

Joe was not my favorite announcer when I was a kid. He tends to allow reasonably long periods of silence when on the air, is prone to monotone delivery when not much is happening in the ballgame, and is prone to errors at times, like calling the Reds' centerfielder "Norris Harper." Or calling a Gonzalez single a home run earlier this week.

But this season, the games for which he's been behind the mike have been my favorite listening experiences of the season. Here are a couple of the reasons:

1. He's has much better skills as announcer than I remember him having. I tended to focus on his occasional slowness as a kid, but the guy can pick it up nicely when the situation calls for it. He also does a nice job of painting the scene.

2. He's a better analyst than I remembered. He understands the game in the way only a player can, of course, but he also avoids launching into the absolutes that announcers are prone to do. And that makes him better.

3. He actually calls the game. I often find that I have a hard time following the action when one of the Brennamen are calling games because they tend to focus more on what's happening in the booth--be it a trivia question, a rant, or what have you--than what is actually happening on the ball field. Joe, in contrast, focuses almost entirely on what is happening on the diamond. Furthermore, I like to have consistent reminders of who is on what base, how many outs there are, what the score is, etc, and Joe provides that with great regularity. With Marty, you're lucky to get such an update once an inning.

4. (probably most importantly) He's positive. I am so tired of hearing the other three radio announcers rag on our team. As far as Marty et al. were concerned, this season was headed down the tubes from the moment spring training began--at least, that's the impression I had listening to them. I don't need my team's announcers to tell me how bad this team is. I know their record. I want to have a reason to listen, and it certainly isn't to listen to Marty Brennaman talk about trivia or rant how bad the players are.

It's ok to identify when something bad has happened (e.g. "so-and-so-pitcher has no clue where the plate is right now," or "why is it that Coutlangus was sent down instead of Coffey?"). But the absolute disgust and guilty-until-proven-innocent approach that the three regular Reds announcers have for the vast majority of Reds players is a real disservice to the team. The problem is that baseball is a game in which players fail more often than they succeed, which means that being pessimistic about a player will usually make you look credible.

I think I saw Slyde once state that he'd like the announcers to dedicate at least one inning per game to talking about the good qualities of a Reds player. If I were Bob Castellini, I'd mandate that. Because as it is, all the regular announcers are doing is driving fans away from this Reds team.

...

So anyway, cheers to Joe for doing such a terrific job and bringing some extra enjoyment to my afternoons this week.

...

Update: I just noticed that Marty got a contract extension. Good for him, I guess. But I'm not positive that it's good for the franchise.

July 2007 Reds Review Part 4: Fielding

Here are the '07 July defensive splits. All statistics are based on THT's RZR statistics, with the process for transforming them into a "+/- plays made statistic" described here. Splits are calculated by subtracting defensive totals from June 30th from defensive totals dated July 31st.

July Zone Rating Splits
Last	Pos	Inn	BIZ	+-PiZ	+-PooZ	+-Totals
Conine	1B	104	14	-0.4	-0.3	-0.6
Hatteberg	1B	135	22	-0.3	-2.6	-2.9
Phillips	2B	230	44	2.0	4.7	6.7
Keppinger	2B	8	4	-1.3	-0.5	-1.8
Freel	3B	28	6	-2.2	2.1	0.0
Keppinger	3B	28	7	-0.8	-1.1	-1.9
Encarnacion	3B	180	51	-3.2	-2.6	-5.9
Gonzalez	SS	76	16	-1.3	5.1	3.7
Lopez	SS	84	16	1.9	-0.4	1.5
Keppinger	SS	71	23	1.2	-0.5	0.7
Castro	SS	6	1	0.3	-0.1	0.2
Hopper	LF	27	8	0.2	1.7	1.8
Dunn	LF	210	50	-1.6	-6.3	-7.9
Hamilton	CF	30	9	1.1	1.2	2.3
Hopper	CF	45	18	1.0	-1.8	-0.9
Freel	CF	165	45	-2.1	1.0	-1.0
Hopper	RF	25	7	0.9	-0.2	0.7
Griffey Jr.	RF	214	59	0.6	-3.0	-2.4

Lookin' Good:

• Brandon Phillips had another fine month, both in terms of balls hit within his zone, and (especially) balls outside his zone. He easily was to be the team's July MVP, given his offensive and defensive performances.
• Phillips' partner across the bag, Alex Gonzalez, also had a very fine month when he was available to play. Good to see, as he did nothing with his bat.
  
• While they weren't particularly outstanding, both Pedro Lopez and Jeff Keppinger did a fine job at SS. Keepinger, in particular, deserves mention, as he is not "supposed" to have adequate range to play shortstop. The data indicate that, at least in his first 71 innings this year at that position, he acquitted himself quite well, despite having an unusually high number of balls hit into his zone of responsibility. If he can play league-average defense at shortstop--and there's no guarantee that he can keep this up, of course--it would be pretty hard to make the argument that he shouldn't be our starting shortstop given Gonzalez's deficiencies at the plate.
  
• Josh Hamilton also seemed to do quite well in center field in the brief time he was out there last month. If he can be average, much less above average in center, his value goes through the roof.

Not Lookin' So Good:

• After UZR rated Eddie Encarnacion as well above average in June and early July, I'd hoped that he might have turned the corner. Despite the fact that these data overlap with those UZR data in time frame, however, they show Eddie having missed nearly 6 plays that an average third baseman would make in just a month's time. Given his struggles with the bat, this is disappointing--the reality is that Eddie may have hurt the Reds more than any other player last month. I will note, however, that we could also be seeing some differences between UZR and the Hardball Times' RZR... We'll see what UZR says next time MGL releases those data.
• Adam Dunn had an absolutely awful month, more than doubling his negative ZR on the season. Eek.
• While his performance wasn't as severely negative as the other two, Griffey continues to show really bad range, even though he remains adequate on balls hit relatively close to him.
  

July 2007 Reds Review Part 3: Pitching

In July, Reds pitchers posted a 4.80 FIP, identical to their overall performance in June. Starters led the way, posting a respectable 4.28 ERA on the month, while the relievers struggled (4.64 ERA, 4.96 FIP). Let's look at the individual performances:

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	R/9	ERA	FIP
A. Harang	38.7	8.8	2.8	0.9	0.300	2.79	2.79	3.71
B. Arroyo	34.3	7.1	2.6	1.0	0.274	3.15	2.62	4.34
M. Belisle	25.7	6.3	2.5	1.4	0.393	6.65	6.30	4.73
Livingston	21.0	5.6	2.1	1.3	0.356	5.57	5.57	4.50
Weathers	14.0	5.8	2.6	0.0	0.404	3.86	3.86	3.17
M. Gosling	13.7	9.2	7.9	0.7	0.333	3.28	3.28	4.92
T. Coffey	11.3	4.8	4.0	2.4	0.390	9.56	8.76	6.89
M. Stanton	9.7	6.5	3.7	1.9	0.334	7.42	7.42	5.64
J. Burton	9.0	6.0	7.0	0.0	0.296	3.00	3.00	4.17
H. Bailey	8.7	7.2	7.2	1.0	0.320	8.28	8.28	5.47
Coutlangus	8.3	6.5	8.7	0.0	0.249	1.08	1.08	5.34
V. Santos	3.7	7.3	0.0	0.0	0.200	0.00	0.00	1.55
B. Salmon	2.3	11.7	0.0	3.9	0.333	7.83	7.83	6.21
M. McBeth	1.7	5.3	5.3	5.3	0.333	10.59	10.59	11.41

First the good...

Aaron Harang continues to just be superb. What more can you say about the guy? His strikeout rate continues to be right up there with his performance last year, while his control continues to be above average (though his walk rates were up a tad last month). Perhaps even more impressively for a fly ball pitcher (40% GB%), he keeps the ball in the park pretty darn well.

Bronson Arroyo also has a fine month in what has been a frustrating season. Although his FIP isn't as flattering as that shiny 2.62 ERA, his peripherals are all solid and very consistent with what he did last year. The main reason his FIP is ~.2 higher than it was last season is that he managed to hit four batters last month (he only hit 5 all of last year). His blowup on August 1st was disappointing following such a strong July, though it is worth noting that Arroyo was coming of a 123 pitch performance in Chicago, his second highest total of the year. As we've discussed before, Arroyo has tended to show a substantial carry-over effect into the next start as his pitch count rises.

And Weathers continued to make a modest case for team MVP. He wasn't as much of a stopper this month as he had been previously, but his control continues to be excellent compared to his career norms, and he didn't allow a home run all month--and he's only allowed two all year. I've been really skeptical of his performance this season because it's just be so different from what he's done for most of his career. But there's no question that he's been excellent, if not a god-send. Can you imagine the Reds' bullpen without him?

Lucky/Unlucky Performances...

One of the big stories in July was the emergence of Jared Burton as a reliever out of the bullpen. It's great to see one of our young guys having success in the major leagues, and receiving the confidence of management. This sort of month can do wonders for a kid's confidence. ... And hopefully that will translate into better peripherals moving forward, because his strikeout rate was fairly unimpressive, while his walk rate was a disaster. The only reason that his FIP was as low as it was in July was the fact that he didn't allow a home run, and while his 48% GB rate is fine, it's not enough to avoid home runs for long. In short, the kid got a bit lucky that month, and unless his performance improves--which it absolutely could--he's unlikely to keep getting the results he has.

Pretty much everything I wrote for Burton also applies to Jon Coutlangus, though Coutlangus has a history of avoiding home runs...though his 45% GB rate this season isn't particularly reflective of that.

On the more positive side (depending on one's perspective), Belisle and Livingston seem to have pitched better than their ERA indicated. In both cases, their walk rates and strikeout rates are right about what you'd expect from them, given their past history. They did allow a rather high rate of home runs, but if they can reduce the number of fat pitches down the middle of the plate by a few pitches per start, they can be reasonably effective throwing as they did. They just got a bit unlucky with their hits, as their high BABIP's indicate.

Michael Gosling continues to have one of the more bizarre seasons I've seen. As of last night, he'd struck out 23 batters in 20.7 innings, for a rate of 10 k/9. But he'd also walked 19, for a rate of 8.2 bb/9! Now just looking at that sample, one might think that he's Nuke LaLoosh incarnate--a fireballer with terrible control. The thing is, his minor league career k-rate is just 6.4 k/9, and in AAA (78 IP) this year, he's posted a rate of 7.5 k/9. Meanwhile, his '07 walk rate in AAA is 2.7 bb/9. Clearly, he doesn't have the stuff to keep up this pace, so one would hope that he can get his his walk rate back under control...

Disasters...

Todd Coffey. In April, his peripherals indicated that he was throwing the ball fine. In May, he looked awful, despite a decent ERA. In June, it looked liked he'd finally turned the corner. But my goodness...it's hard to find a pitching line worse than the numbers he put up in July. I almost wonder if he has a hidden injury..

Mike Stanton wasn't as bad as Coffey, but he was still pretty bad. I've been a modest defender of the Stanton signing, and his performance this season. He wasn't very good early on, but he had been solid if not good for several months coming into July. I don't know what happened to his control, but he walked a lot of batters and allowed a ridiculous number of home runs for how many innings he pitched.

And then there's Homer Bailey. I have to wonder if his groin had healed sufficiently for him to be pitching any time within his call-up. The fact that he's on the DL with it now, and that he was "feeling it" in his shoulder certainly doesn't indicate that he was healthy... Hopefully he can come back from that injury completely healthy before the end of the year, as I'd like to see him have a little success in the majors before the season is up--but not if he can't come back 100%. If the Reds are going to contend next year, they're going to need a good year from this kid.

Coming up next...July defensive splits!

Photos by AP/David Kohl (Harang) and AP/Tony Tribble (Belisle)