Better Know a Red #24 - Homer Bailey

With Homer Bailey's Major League debut happening last Friday, and his second start just around the corner, it's high time he gets his own BKR profile!

David DeWitt Bailey, aka "Homer," was the Reds' 1st-round selection in the 2004 amateur players draft. The 7th overall pick that year, Bailey was a tall, wiry right-handed fireballer from LaGrange high school, Texas, which immediately brought inevitable comparisons to Nolan Ryan. Bailey already had two outstanding pitches--a fastball that could reach the mid to upper 90's, and a big 12-6 curveball. The question with was whether he could learn to command those pitches. Other players drafted in his class include Justin Verlander at #2, Jeremy Sowers at #6, Jered Weaver at #12, Bill Bray at #13, Stephen Drew at #15, and Houston Street at #40.

After signing, Bailey threw just 12 innings in the Gulf Coast League his first year as a professional. In 2005, the Reds pushed the then-19 year old to low-A Dayton. Bailey held his own, sporting a 4.43 ERA and outstanding strikeout rates (10.8 k/9), but also showing trouble with his control (5.4 bb/9). In 2006, however, Bailey broke out in a huge way. As a 20-year old, he performed very well in the Florida State league, showing huge improvements in his walk rate while maintaining a steady, high strikeout rate. Sensing that he needed a greater challenge, the Reds moved him mid-season to AA-Chattanooga, where his ERA actually dropped to an unreal 1.59 ERA. His walk rate did spike a bit to 3.7 bb/9, but his k-rate remained constant.

In 2007, despite rumors that he might make the starting rotation out of spring training, Bailey began the season in AAA-Louisville. Charged with improving his ability to use his offspeed pitches, Bailey's strikeout plummeted and walk rates soared during his early starts, but by the end of May, he'd managed to push them back up to a respectable 8.1 k/9 and 3.8 bb/9. Despite those struggles, and perhaps aided by a very low 0.240 BABIP, Homer posted a superb 2.31 ERA.

Minor League Stats:

Team	Age	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	R/9	ERA	FIP	BABIP	PERA	VORP	GB%
2004/CIN-Rk	18	12.1	6.7	2.2	0.0	5.21	4.38	2.46	0.000	0.00	0.0	0%
2005/CIN-A-	19	103.2	10.9	5.4	0.4	5.58	4.43	3.21	0.332	4.91	-7.2	49%
2006/CIN-A+	20	70.2	10.1	2.8	0.8	4.49	3.31	3.00	0.247	5.26	2.3	45%
2006/CIN-AA	20	68.0	10.2	3.7	0.1	1.72	1.59	2.36	0.298	3.28	23.1	52%
2007/CIN-AAA	21	56.7	8.1	3.8	0.5	2.86	2.31	3.36	0.240	---	---	52%

He has advanced very quickly through the minors, especially considering that he was a high school pick, and his peripherals have remained impressive each stop along the way. Bailey has always posted excellent strikeout rates, and furthermore has consistently shown the ability to prevent the long ball thanks to good ground ball rates. His control, evident in his walk rates, seems to be his biggest challenge, but he has made great strides in the past season and a half--which is why he is now in the major leagues.

As we saw in his first start, Bailey will have lapses in his control from time to time, but his great stuff (and the resulting high strikeout rate) should help him survive his occasional wildness. If he can harness that control as he continues to mature, the scouts think that Bailey can become one of the great pitchers of our time.

His Major League debut with the Reds was one of the most exciting things I've heard on a Reds' radio broadcast since the world series. Fans gave him a standing ovation when he arrived, and chants of "Homer! Homer! Homer!" were audible during a dramatic bases-loaded showdown with David Delucci in the top of the 5th. It's going to be a lot of fun watching him blossom over the coming years.

Photo by the Cincinnati Post

First Day Draft Recap

Overall breakdown of day 1 picks:

College Hitters: 3
College Pitchers: 2
High School Hitters: 2
High School Pitchers: 1

Overall, a fairly balanced first day, though it was split 5:3 in favor of hitters. The Reds probably do have more organizational depth among pitchers than hitters right now, however, so that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

After reviewing the information I could find on these guys, here are my very brief summaries of the scoop for each pick:

• 1st round:
  
• RHB C Devin Mesoraco - High School - Sounds like everything you'd hope for in a mid-1st round pick of a high school player. Great athlete, good polish for his age, excellent skills on offense and defense, and no significant problems in his game.
• My earlier post on Mesoraco has most of the info I've seen on him.
• Nice article in his local paper.
  
• Supplemental Round:
  
• RHB SS Todd Frazier - College - The Big East player of the year and first-team All American is likely to move to 3B/OF, but he's a big, athletic kid with good power and speed. Reports are that he has an unorthodox swing (I think I see the "hitch" mlb's scouting report mentions when I watch his video, particularly during BP), but he put up spectacular numbers at Rutgers (0.377/0.502/0.757, 1:1 k:bb ratio). Not particularly good range (especially not at SS), but a good arm. He could have gone at the end of the first round proper, so the Reds did well to get him here. I like him.
  
• Kevin Goldstein's articles on him.
• MLB.com scouting report
• Nice profile video (not the scouting video) of him is accessible via this link.
• School paper article about today's selection.
  
• RHP Kyle Lotzkar - High School - Hits 94 mph in high school, so he may yet gain mph as his career progresses. Also has a very nice "slurve." At 6'3" 185 lbs, he's fairly tall and with some muscle, which is desirable. Control is an issue, but he has time on his side. Plus, he's Canadian, so he might be expected to be behind in his development, eh?
  
• MLB.com scouting report
• I'm no scout, but the initial foward arm movement of his delivery seems a bit jerky to me...? If anyone out there knows anything about pitching mechanics, I'd love to hear from you.
• 2nd Round:
• RHB SS Zack Cozart - College - Slap hitter with little power (0.304/0.382/0.428 at U Miss) and little speed. MLB.com says he has below-average range, but good hands and arm. Doesn't seem like a particularly good athlete. I guess I tend to be more partial to guys who get to the ball but boot it as opposed to guys that will catch anything, but only if it's hit right at them. So assuming MLB's report is accurate, this to me isn't looking like a very good pick, even as a defense-first middle infielder. This is the one pick that I think is something of a waste.
  
• MLB.com scouting report.
• A mention by Kevin Goldstein
• 3rd Round:
• RHP Scott Carroll - College - Not much written about him yet. He had a 2.93 ERA in 89 IP this season for Missouri State U, along with a 81/25 k/bb and 4 hr allowed. Nice season, though not as dominant as you'll sometimes see. Doug Gray found scouting info indicating that he can hit 94-95 on a good day, and has some variations on the split finger to go with his fastball. He's also a very good-sized kid at 6'5", 220lbs, which hopefully means he'll be durable.
• Again, I'm clueless as a scout, but my impressions of his video are that he's got a fairly smooth delivery (compared to Lotzkar, for example), and a relatively low arm angle (certainly not a side-armer though). He routinely was hitting 91 with movement, and he threw a few breaking pitches that I'm guessing are his splitters.
  
• RHB Neftali Soto - Puerto Rico Academy (high school) - Tall infielder (6'3" 180 lbs) with power and some speed. An average arm and poor range sound like they'll push him to the right side of the infield or the outfield. Has good potential as an offensive player, so this seems like an ok pick to me. He might pan out great, or turn into nothing. Given that the Reds already had several picks to this point, a high risk/high reward kind of player seems appropriate...though I'd feel better about it if the 2nd-round pick didn't seem like such a waste.
  
• MLB.com scouting report
  
• 4th Round
• SHB 1B Blake Stouffer - College - Put up an excellent hitting line at Texas A&M this season, hitting 0.402/0.490/0.663. Doesn't seem to have Frazier's power, and I'm guessing that Texas is a better hitting environment than New Jersey. But still, he was easily A&M's best hitter last season, and college first basemen are generally very reliable performers. Not particularly big at 6'0" 190 lbs, but he is a switch hitter.
• I need to stop doing this (I'm completely unqualified to scout players like this...but I don't have any other information on him), but looking at his video, he seems to have a smooth if fairly long swing. Will he hit better pitching?
  
• 5th Round
• LHP Andrew Bowman - College - The former Sun Devil and now-Nebraska Husker pitcher had a somewhat tough season, posting a 4.31 ERA in 39.7 IP, splitting time between the rotation and the bullpen, along with a solid 30/11 k/bb ratio. But at 6'4" and 190 lbs, he's a big kid and left-handed, which is a good way to get a shot at pro ball.
  
• His video shows that he has a pretty smooth delivery, and consistently hits 90-91 on his fastball, sometimes with movement tailing away from a right-handed hitter. He also seems to have a decent breaking ball that comes in 10 mph slower.
• Here's a small background article from Nebraska's school paper.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. I'm probably not going to cover the remaining picks in this sort of detail, but if something interesting comes up, I'll post about it. At first impressions, this looks like a nice draft--time to sign these guys and get them playing ball! :)

It's Devin Mesoraco!

Buckley "bucks" his trend of favoring college hitters and takes a high school catcher in the first round: RHB C Devin Mesoraco.

I'm sure a lot of others will post links to scouting reports and such, but here are some initial things I've seen in the past few minutes about him (my first impressions follow):

MLB.com scouting report:

Focus Area	Comments
Hitting Ability:	Mesoraco has a ton of hitting ability, using a little leg kick in his approach, and doesn't swing at bad pitches.
Power:	Mesoraco has plus power. Right now, it's more pull power, but eventually he'll develop power to all fields.
Running Speed:	He's a fringy-average runner, which is pretty good for a catcher.
Arm Strength:	He has a plus arm and isn't afraid to use it in pick-off attempts.
Arm Accuracy:	His throws are always right on the money.
Fielding:	Mesoraco has plus hands behind the plate.
Range:	A terrific athlete, Mesoraco is outstanding at blocking balls in the dirt.
Baseball Instincts:	Off the charts. He's got great makeup, he's very aggressive and he's a natural leader behind the plate.
Physical Description:	Mesoraco is a strong backstop with a body type that might remind some of a Joe Girardi or Ivan Rodriguez.
Medical Update:	Mesoraco missed much of 2006 following Tommy John surgery, but now is completely healthy and clearly is having no problems with his throwing.
Strengths:	He's a complete package. He can hit with power and he can play defense with a strong arm and soft hands.
Weaknesses:	He tends to get out on his front foot on his swing from time to time.
Summary:	Mesoraco has answered any questions about his arm following Tommy John surgery a year ago and is on the rise among catching prospects. He's a complete catching package, with hitting ability, power, good hands, a plus arm and outstanding leadership ability.

Baseball Prospectus's Kevin Goldstein, who took Mesoraco #5 for the Pirates in his mock draft yesterday, has had this to say about him over the past few weeks:

May 25th: As far as real, full-time catchers go, scouts felt like they were put in the movie Groundhog Day when they went to see Punxsutawney High's Devin Mesoraco, as every time out he showed solid hitting abilities and excellent catch-and-throw skills. He could got towards the end of the first round.

June 4th: Every draft has that one high school guy, the guy who starts the year as a pretty good prospect. and then keeps going up from there. Mesoraco is that guy. He began the year as clearly the best player in the state, and a guy who was seen as a second- or third-round pick. By May he had entered the first round, and now, with three days to go, it’s quite possible that he’ll be a top 10 pick. He’s as athletic a catcher as you’ll find, teams love his projection, and he’s seen as very signable. Also, let’s face it, his hometown is rife with headline possibilities. Hometown hero to the Pirates at number four? It’s possible, if they decide to save a little money.

June 5th:
Pros: Very athletic catcher with good agility behind the plate and excellent throwing arm; his stock has risen quickly of late thanks to highly impressive private workouts with wood bats.
Cons: His power is still more potential than reality; he has an injury history (Tommy John surgery).

June 6th: A mid-first-round pick a week ago, Mesoraco has been highly impressive in private workouts, showing better-than-expected hitting skills with wood bats to go with already top-notch defensive ability. “He’s not the top hitter in the draft, nor the top defender,” said one team executive. “But when you combine the two, he just might be the top offense/defense combination in the draft.”

Today in their live commentary, BPro's Bryan Smith said: "A semi-local kid, this is a good pick by the Reds, as this catcher could have gone in the top five if things went a little differently."

My Take:
I like this pick. I generally prefer college hitters, because, on average, they outperform all other player types, but most of the good college hitters in this years' class (Wieters, LaPorta, Mills) seem to have already been selected. This kid seems to be a great selection for what you look for in a high schooler--good polish already, excellent athlete, good offense and defense, no obvious problems in his game. And while you don't draft for need, the Reds' catching in the minor leagues was extremely thin prior to this pick, so that's a nice side benefit. The injury history doesn't bother me much, because Tommy John Surgery is such a successful procedure that, on average, may even increase a players' arm strength and durability (see Gassko's article in the 2007 THT Annual).

And you gotta love that this kid is from Punxsutawney!

Toronto ended up taking the guy the Reds had been reportedly very interested in, HS SS Kevin Ahrens, with the next pick, so any hope of him falling to the Reds' first supplemental round pick are dashed. But we'll see who they take--there may be some good arms available then.

Update:
There's been talk at a number of sites questioning the performance of high school catchers like Mesoraco. I wanted to link to this outstanding study by BPro's Rany Jazayerli. While it's true that high school catchers were terrible picks from 1984-1991, Jazayerli found that they were excellent picks from 1992-1999, performing better than all other positions except third base. First-round high school catchers during that time period returned 18.8% over their expected draft slot return in WARP. Examples of picks that have worked out include Jason Kendall, A. J. Pierzinski, Paul Konerko, and Justin Morneau (the latter two were drafted as catchers and then moved to 1B). I really think that the Reds did well here.

Photo by Dan Walk of the Punxatawny Spirit

White Sox bullpen

And you thought the Reds had it bad. Received this today as John Dewan's Stat of the Week:

About a month ago (on May 6th) the White Sox' bullpen pitched four shutout innings, enabling them to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win 4-3 against the Los Angeles Angels in 10 innings. At that point the ChiSox' bullpen had a 3.29 ERA, third best in the American League. What has happened since then? Here are the teams with the worst relief ERAs in baseball since May 7th.

Team	Relief ERA since 5/7
Chicago White Sox	9.11
Detroit Tigers	6.78
Baltimore Orioles	6.14
Houston Astros	5.83
Colorado Rockies	5.80

The Reds aren't too far down that list, of course, as they posted a 5.44 ERA in May. But wow, I can't imagine what it'd be like to be posting a 9+ bullpen ERA over a month's time.

...tough loss tonight, but that was a heck of an at-bat to end the ballgame.

May 2007 Reds Review - Part 2: Defense

As we saw in part one, the Reds' defense continues to be one of the largest problems facing the team. Tonight, I want to investigate that in more detail. Let's start with a figure comparing two measures of team defense: Dave Studeman's Runs Saved statistic (+-runs) and Michael Lichtman's UZR fielding stats, summed across players on each team. Stats current through May 31st for this season for NL Teams:
Comparison of THT's Runs Saved statistic and total UZR Runs Saved for teams. The latter was calculated by summing UZR scores for all Reds. Both statistics report runs saved above average, and assess the combined effect of range and sure-handedness. More than 70 runs separate the best and worst teams, which accounts, by itself, for 7 wins in the first ~55 games. The diagonal line indicates a perfect match between THT and UZR.

The story is not pretty. The Reds' defense is clearly among the three worst teams in the National League. And given that UZR is based on more detailed data than the THT data, there's a legitimate argument that the Reds have the worst defense in the league. The average of these two estimates puts the Reds at -27 runs below average. Already.

A quick thought exercise: If the Reds "just" had an average defense this season, that would mean that they would have given up 259 runs this season (instead of 286), or 4.7 runs per game. This would rank them 10th in the league in runs allowed, up from their current ranking of dead last, and would improve their PythagoPat record to 27-28. And with a top-flight defense, saving 40 runs above average like the Cubs (UZR) or Mets (THT)? That's 77 fewer runs, giving 3.8 runs allowed per game, which would be second only to San Diego (PythagoPat improves to 32-23). Defense matters.

I'm surprised by how bad the Reds defense has been. Shocked might be a better word. I expected the Reds to be better this year on defense than in 2006. Gonzalez taking over SS from Lopez and Clayton, Griffey's move to right field, and Ryan Freel (who was stellar in CF last season) and/or Josh Hamilton in center field all should have improved the defense, while the other players remained constant.

Instead, it appears to have actually gotten worse, at least so far this season. According to THT's +- runs stat, the Reds' defense was -20 runs below average all of last year combined. Here, it is only in early June, and they have already surpassed that mark. What on earth is going on??

Thanks to MGL's extremely kind decision to release his UZR statistics through May 31st of this season, we can look more closely at team defense. I don't have full details on how UZR is calculated, but you can think of it as normal zone rating, just adjusted for a variety of important effects such as park factors and (I think) handedness of batters. Since THT isn't yet able to post its ZR stats, I don't have a good fielding stat to compare UZR to right now (the ZR reported by ESPN isn't a very good version of ZR), so I'm just going to report the data as a table:

Name	POS	Team	Runs Saved (Range)	Runs Saved (Fielding Errors)	Runs Saved (Other Errors)	Total Runs Saved	G
Conine, Jeff	3	cin	0	0	0	0	15
Hatteberg, Scott	3	cin	1	-1	0	0	16
Phillips, Brandon	4	cin	2	1	0	3	38
Freel, Ryan	4	cin	0	0	0	0	1
Keppinger, Jeff	5	cin	1	0	0	1	3
Castro, Juan	5	cin	-1	0	0	-1	3
Freel, Ryan	5	cin	0	-1	0	-1	11
Encarnacion, Edwin	5	cin	-7	-2	0	-9	21
Castro, Juan	6	cin	0	0	0	0	4
Gonzalez, Alex	6	cin	-2	1	0	-1	37
Hopper, Norris	7	cin	1	0	0	1	5
Hamilton, Josh	7	cin	0	0	0	0	3
Dunn, Adam	7	cin	-4	-2	0	-6	31
Hopper, Norris	8	cin	0	0	0	0	5
Freel, Ryan	8	cin	-6	0	0	-6	27
Hamilton, Josh	8	cin	-6	0	0	-6	20
Hamilton, Josh	9	cin	-1	0	0	-1	12
Hopper, Norris	9	cin	-1	0	0	-1	1
Griffey, Ken	9	cin	-3	-3	0	-6	33

Let's go position-by-position. Unless I mention otherwise, all fielding stats I mention are UZR, though you can look at my 2006 fielding review for more info on last year's fielding performances.

1B: Both Conine and Hatteberg have been average at first. Hatteberg, at least, was better than average last season, so we might hope for improvement there.

2B: Phillips is above average this season at +3 runs, which is a very nice improvement over last season. UZR has Phillips as below-average last year, though most other range stats pegged him as right about average.

3B: Ugh. Here's about a third of the Reds' struggles. For all the fuss about Eddie's tendency to make errors, those only are knocking his UZR rating down by two runs. The rest is bad range. Horrible range, in fact. Eddie is currently last among all third basemen in both his total rating of -9 runs and his range rating of -7 runs. He's on pace to smash his -20 runs rating of last season.

I really do think he's better than that--he did post a very positive UZR his first season with the Reds (2005). And he's young, so he can improve. But we can't wait forever. Fortunately, my impressions are that he's been better since his return from AAA--Marty certainly was pleased with him during the last home stand, and he's about as down on Encarnacion as anyone can be. I hope he can get himself to be at least an average 3B by the time 2008 rolls around.

SS: Gonzalez is currently rated a thoroughly average -1 runs saved. Interestingly, despite already making more errors this season than last, he's actually above average in error rate for his position and below average in range (both only slightly). Hopefully he can get back to the form that allowed him to save +9 runs above average last season, as he is a good defender, even if he's overrated by the media--he is clearly not anywhere close to being in Adam Everett's league. Nevertheless, he remains a significant defensive upgrade over Felipe Lopez (-17 runs last season).

Oh, a fun aside: you know how the media kept talking about how Boston was going to miss Gonzalez's glove this season? His replacement, the supposed lead-gloved Julio Lugo, has thus far saved +4 runs above average, five more than Gonzalez. ... 'course, he's hitting 0.226/0.289/0.330, so that part of the equation isn't working out well yet.

LF: Dunn, at -6 runs below average, is on pace to break his personal worst of -20 runs below average that he set last season. Dunn is far from the worst left fielder in baseball (Manny Ramirez is -13 runs below average already), but he doesn't help us much out there. He probably should be playing first base, but we have Joey Votto coming up at that position. So barring a trade, we'll just have to accept him and deal with it. I don't expect much improvement, at least not any better than his 2006 performance.

CF: WTH? The big surprise to me is Ryan Freel, who is rated at -6 runs below average. Last season, other metrics (THT's ZR and PMR) rated him well above average defensively in center, so I'm having a hard time knowing what to make of this. Freel was rated as +5 runs saved per 150 games last season (+1 run saved in 45 games) by UZR, so this is a major drop-off, even if UZR doesn't "like" him as much as other stats. Hopefully he can come back from his head injury, rediscover some speed or something, and start running down in fly balls.

Hamilton, as I discussed in my piece on him for THT, is probably playing out of position. His range is decent, but best suited to right field, where his arm can continue to help win the occasional game. I do support trying to trade Griffey sooner rather than later (more on that in another post), and that would open RF for Hamilton. But the Reds will likely continue to be shaky at center field for the foreseeable future.

RF: Griffey hasn't had a very good start to his time in RF. Encouragingly, though, his range is only -3 runs below average, which is certainly tolerable for someone as productive as he has been at the plate. The rest of his -6 runs has to do with his errors, which were notable earlier in the season but seem to have tapered off. I think he'll be fine.

In sum, the only players in the Reds' defensive lineup (catchers excluded) who seems to be performing at or above the level we expect of them are Brandon Phillips and (maybe) Adam Dunn. That's the bad news. The good news is that I expect all of those other players to be better over what's left of the season. Nevertheless, continuing to improve the Reds' defense over the long term has to be one of the biggest priorities for Wayne Krivsky as he looks toward this years' trading deadline and the Reds' return to greatness in 2008. :)

Catchers
I'm going to give them short-shrift, at least for now (sorry, past bedtime). But the primary way research has shown that catchers can consistently contribute to a teams' defense is via their ability to stop the running game. This season, Dave Ross continues to be a standout, throwing out 46% of all would-be base stealers. Moeller, on the other hand, continues to show a weak arm, throwing out just 14%. The surprise, however, is Valentin, who has yet to throw out a base-stealer in 11 attempts. Last year, he caught 8 of 18, and he has a career 32% caught stealing percentage, so this is very unusual for him. I almost wonder if he might be having arm problems. If so, it's the first good reason that I've seen for the Reds to carry three catchers...if only Moeller could throw out runners, he might actually be a good fit.

The amateur draft is approaching!

The Reds have the 15th pick in this week's Amateur Baseball Draft. Thanks to last years' success, the Reds don't have a shot at the upper-most tier of players like they did last year, which is why I haven't been paying much attention to the names expected to go in the top 10.

Nevertheless, first-round selections always tend to be interesting prospects...and it absolutely is the case that first-round selections (on average) outperform players chosen in subsequent rounds by a considerable margin. Furthermore, the Reds have two supplemental picks in the first round this season thanks to the departures of (if I remember correctly) Rich Aurilia and Scott Schoeneweis as free agents. This gives them three selections among the first 53 picks (#15, #34, & #53), so this could be a big draft for the Reds.

A couple of links to share as draft days approach.

Sickels Mock Draft
First, John Sickels over at minorleagueball.com ran his annual mock draft. The Reds were represented by user z4 landshark, who selected HS 3B Matt Dominguez of Chatsworth HS, California in the first round. Kevin Goldstein ranked him as among the top three high school 3B's this season, and said this about Dominguez last week: "Dominguez is viewed by many as a right-handed hitting version of Eric Chavez –-a big athletic third baseman with remarkable defensive skills and middle-of-the-order bat." Dominguez has been on the draft boards all season, so it's no surprise to see him going reasonably high in the first round.

Here are the other Reds selections through five rounds:
1st round, supplemental: #34) Nick Hagadone, LHP Washington
1st round, supplemental: #53) Jack McGeary, LHP, Mass HS
2nd round: Sam Demel, RHP, TCU
3rd round: Cameron Rupp, C
4th round: Jon Kaskow, 1B, Texas HS
5th round: Brandon Workman, RHP Texas HS

It's all in good fun, and is not really meant to be predictive. And who knows? Maybe they'll get it right. :)

Profile on Chris Buckley

Who are the Reds likely to take in the actual draft? The 15th pick is far enough down the list that I don't put a lot of credence into the forecasts you'll see around the web for the Reds (though at #8 last year, several publications did "call" the Stubbs selection). But we can get an idea of the sort of player the Reds will draft by looking at the past drafts of the Reds' Scouting Director in charge of the draft, Chris Buckley.

Bryan Smith of BPro profiled Buckley (along with other directors in the NL Central) a few weeks back. He notes that in four years worth of drafts with Toronto and Cincinnati, 85% of Buckley's top 5 picks have been college players. Furthermore, all four of his first-round picks have been college position players. College hitters tend to be more productive prospects than any other group, so this is not a bad strategy to have. Buckley's selections of Stubbs, Watson, and Valaika in the first three rounds last year are all looking pretty good this season, with all three potentially moving up to Sarasota by mid-season.

I think we can predict, based on past tendencies, that the Reds will choose a college hitter as the first pick this year once again. No idea who it might be, but here's a Kevin Goldstein article profiling the top college talent in this years' draft. Odds are that there's a sentence or two on him in that article, whoever he turns out to be. :) It'll be an interesting week, as always!

May 2007 Reds Review Part 1: Overview

May 2007 in Brief
May Record: 9-21 (0.300)
Series Record: 1-8-0
Runs Scored: 142 (4.7 r/g, 2nd in NL)
Runs Allowed: 177 (5.9 r/g, last in NL)
Team OBP: 0.327 (5th in NL)
Team SLG: 0.456 (1st in NL)
Team FIP: 4.51 (13th in NL)
Team DER: 0.670 (last in NL)

Season to Date
Overall Record: 21-34 (0.382), 9 games back
Series Record: 5-12-1
PythagoPat Record: 24-31 (0.436)
Remaining Record Needed for 81 Wins: 60-47 (0.561)
Remaining Record Needed for 90 Wins: 69-38 (0.665)
Runs Scored: 251 (4.6 r/g, 5th in NL)
Runs Allowed: 286 (5.2 r/g, last in NL)
Team OBP: 0.323 (9th in NL)
Team SLG: 0.428 (6th in NL)
Team FIP: 3.92 (3rd in NL)
Team DER: 0.667 (Tied for last in NL)

What happened

Well...I'll let the graph do the talkin':
Let's try to come to grips with how bad May was for the Reds:

• The Reds went from being an even 0.500 after the 11-2 win over Houston on May 1st to being 13 games below 0.500 after losing to Houston 10-2 on May 31st.
  
• The Reds didn't win a series--much less even tie one--until the very last of the month.
  
• Their longest winning streak was three games, which they reached twice during the month--once on the 1st, and once on the 30th.
  
• The only times they won back to back games during May was during the latter short winning streak.
• They went from four games behind the Brewers to nine games back. The only reason they were that close is that the Brewers (and Astros, and Cubs) were in a free-fall of their own.

The fact that their predicted win differential would put them three wins higher than they actually were is little comfort at this point, though it does indicate that the Reds wasn't as bad as their record shows...even though they still aren't that good of a team.

Here's how things fell out according to Win Probability for hitters, starters, and relievers:
As might be expected for a month as bad as this one, all aspects of the Reds look terrible in this figure. That tends to happen when you lose 21 of 30 games. But, in truth, the data aren't all bad. Let's look at each aspect of the team individually:

Offense
Despite showing a net negative WPA, the offense was actually quite good in May. In fact, its tally of 4.7 runs scored per game was the second best in the National League last month! This surge brought the Reds from 10th place in runs scored at the end of April to 5th place at the end of May. It's a great sign for what's left of the season.

Why did WPA drop so much with such a strong offensive effort? Well, for one thing, they did tend to score runs in bunches. They had run differentials of four or more in 5 of their nine wins on the month. When you keep adding runs onto a big lead, you don't get much of an increase in win probability. Furthermore, when the starting pitching is as bad as it was in May, and opposing teams immediately score a large number of runs early in the ballgame, it can take a lot of runs to cause a net improvement in win probability for the team, thus masking a lot of the scoring the Reds were doing. The Reds lost three games this past month in which they scored 7 or more runs...

Starting Pitching
While the starting pitching had been the strength of the Reds in April, it went to hell in May. Their ERA surged from 3.55 in April to a miserable 5.75 in May, while WPA dropped from +1.5 wins on May 1st to -1.0 wins on May 31st. Only a late surge during the Reds' 3-game winning streak prevented the starters from looking even worse by the month's end.

Interestingly, the FIP of the starters, a very respectable 4.40, wasn't nearly as bad as their ERA. This indicates that poor fielding and/or miserable luck may have played a role in how bad they were. It doesn't make those games disappear, but it might let us hope that they'll be better in the future.

Relief Pitching
The story in April was a combination of bad relief pitching and bad offense, particularly in high-leverage situations. In May, unfortunately, the relief corps continued to pitch poorly, posting a 5.44 ERA and a 4.80 FIP on the month. WPA indicates a drop of "only" ~1.25 wins on the month, however, indicating that they didn't have nearly as large a negative effect on games as in April...though my guess is that this is probably because so many games were out of reach by the time the relievers entered the game thanks to poor starting pitching that the relievers didn't figure much in a lot of games, even when the pitched poorly.

Defense
We'll cover this more in my May defensive review in the next day or two, but the Reds' defense continues to be a big problem--and perhaps, along with bad luck, has been their biggest problem on the season. The Reds' pitching, despite giving up an NL-worst 5.2 runs per game, currently has an FIP of 3.92. That's third in the National League. FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, predicts ERA based on the peripheral stats of strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed--things that fielders have no control over. When there's a major difference between FIP and ERA, like we're seeing with the Reds this season, it usually can be chalked up to either a) poor defense, or b) miserable luck.

Defensive Efficiency Ratio, or DER, is a measure of the proportion of balls hit into play that are converted into outs. By this measure, the Reds' defense is last in the league...and frankly, it's not even close. DER can be subject to some degree of random variation, however, and therefore I prefer to look at team defense via a statistic developed by Dave Studeman at THT, which estimates runs prevented above or below average based on batted ball types received by a defense. By this measure, the Reds defense isn't quite as bad, although it's still not good: -21 runs below average, which is good for 13th in the league.

Fortunately, MGL has just released his UZR fielding data for season to date (not to mention the 2003-2007 totals!), so we can look more closely at the Reds fielders and find out where the problems lie. Some of the names that pop up in those data as being well below-average surprised me. More on that in the next post.

May Transactions
Additions
Jared Burton (returned from DL - club couldn't hide him there any longer) - 5/9
Jeff Keppinger (from AAA - sub for Encarnacion) - 5/9
Bobby Livingston (from AAA - spot-start) - 5/12
Chad Moeller (from AAA - ...so Narron doesn't have to start Valentin) - 5/14
Marcus McBeth (from AAA - never pitched...) - 5/14
Brad Salmon (from AAA - human yo-yo) - 5/18
Jeff Keppinger (from AAA - human yo-yo) - 5/18
Aaron Harang (from bereavement list) - 5/20
Pedro Lopez (waiver claim, to AAA) - 5/21
Edwin Encarnacion (from AAA - time out over) - 5/22
Gary Majewski (from AAA - it's time for a reckoning) - 5/24
Bobby Livingston (from AAA - now the 5th starter?) - 5/28
Ryan Freel (to DL - head and neck -- let's hope he fares better than Corey Koskie) - 5/29

Subtractions
Jerry Gil (Tommy John surgery - was already on DL with elbow pain, out for season) - 5/4
Rheal Cormier (released - would briefly sign with Atlanta and then retire) - 5/9
Eric Milton (to DL - elbow, apparently has bothered him all season) - 5/9
Edwin Encarnacion (to AAA - time out) - 5/9
Brad Salmon (to AAA - make room for Livingston) - 5/12
Bobby Livingston (to AAA - human yo-yo) - 5/14
Jeff Keppinger (to AAA - human yo-yo) - 5/14
Aaron Harang (to bereavement list - grandfather) - 5/17
Marcus McBeth (to bereavement list, then to AAA) - 5/18
Josh Hamilton (to DL - tummy ache) - 5/22
Todd Coffey (to AAA - giving up too many HR's) - 5/24
Enrique Cruz (cleared waivers, removed from 40-man roster) - 5/24
Kirk Saarloos (to AAA - "three bad innings") - 5/28
DeWayne Wise (from AAA - the replacement-level outfielder is back) - 5/29