According to MLBTradeRumors, Joey Votto is nearing an agreement with the Reds on a long term contract. Votto is currently under team control through 2013, and he’s due $26 million over the next two years as part of the deal he signed last winter.

It will be interesting to see what kind of deal Votto ended up getting. Ryan Zimmerman, another quality player with the same level of service time, signed a six year, $100 million extension a little over a month ago, but Zimmerman is coming off a down year and has a lot of value tied up in his defense, which doesn’t generally pay as well as just hitting the ball really hard. Matt Kemp got $160 million over eight years, but he was also only under team control for one more season, so he had more leverage in negotiations than Votto did. Kemp is also coming off a monster season and plays an up-the-middle position, so you’d think his deal would be some kind of ceiling for Votto.

However, with the timing of the report coming so close to the massive sale price of the Dodgers, you have to wonder if the Reds got inspired to kick things into high gear after they saw what the new owners were willing to invest in Los Angeles. Votto almost certainly would have been a target acquisition for LA’s group, and Reds may have decided to get something done now before they have to deal with competition from rich new owners out west.

Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80 (50 representing league average) with extra weight given to 2012 and Revenue rankings.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York NL
#19 – Los Angeles
#18 – Colorado
#17 – Miami
#16 — Arizona

Cincinnati’s 2011 Ranking: #9

2012 Outlook: 57 (t-9th)

Coming off a disappointing 79-83 finish, Walt Jocketty decided to bring in some reinforcements in order to make sure his team could regain their status as legitimate contenders in the National League. It cost him a good chunk of his farm system, but he was able to bring in two dynamic arms in Mat Latos and Sean Marshall, both of whom will be critical to the Reds success this year. The team ended up skimping on upgrades for position players, though, and settled on an unorthodox right-right platoon of Ryan Ludwick and Chris Heisey in left field, and are vulnerable to injuries – they don’t have any real in-house alternatives if a guy like Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, or Jay Bruce get hurt. They exchanged depth for pitching improvements, which was a wise choice, but has also left them thin behind their core starters.

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The hits just keep on coming. Per Ken Rosenthal, Ryan Madson is the latest pitcher to need Tommy John surgery, and will be lost for the 2012 season. The falling dominos will push Sean Marshall into the closer’s role with the Reds, and Aroldis Chapman will move back to the bullpen to replace Marshall in the vacated lefty setup role.

Obviously, this is lousy news for both Madson and the Reds, and you can’t help but wonder how this might have changed the face of the National League race had things turned out differently this winter. Depending on who you believe, the Phillies were either considering or had already agreed to a four year, $44 million deal with Madson, but ended up going after Jonathan Papelbon instead. Had the Phillies finalized that deal with Madson instead of Papelbon, we might be talking about the Marlins or Braves as frontrunners for the NL East today.

Instead, this deals a significant blow to the Reds chances of taking the NL Central, and perhaps evens out yesterday’s news that the Cardinals have lost Chris Carpenter “indefinitely”. The Reds have enough talent to contend this year, but without Madson, their bullpen takes a significant hit. Cincinnati desperately needs Chapman to get back to his dominating 2010 form, rather than the inconsistent hurler he was last year.

I also wonder how this news will affect players willingness to bet on themselves by taking Scott Boras’ advice and going for a one year “pillow contract”. Madson took a one year deal to attempt to cash in big next winter, but this news is going to crush his potential for future earnings, and in reality, he may have missed his only chance to land a long term contract. It will be interesting to see whether players begin to decide that they’re better off taking the security of a multi-year deal when they have the chance, rather than deciding that they can do better in 12 months and betting on a one year deal.

With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Sean Marshall is not going to be a rental for the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds, who own Marshall’s last arbitration year at $3.1 million for 2012, pulled the trigger on a three-year extension that will pay the 29-year-old left-hander $16.5 million over the next three seasons.

As unpredictable as relievers can be, Sean Marshall has been one of baseball’s best bets over the last two seasons. Over the past two seasons with the Cubs, Marshall has thrown 150.2 innings with a 60 ERA- and 169 strikeouts to just 42 walks. He might be under the radar because he isn’t racking up the saves, but make no mistakes: Marshall has been in the elite as the Cubs setup man. Check out his ranks over the past two seasons among relievers with at least 100 IP:

2.45 ERA: 20th
60 ERA-: 15th
2.07 FIP: 1st
51 FIP-: 1st
4.02 K/BB: 15th
0.24 HR/9: 3rd
5.0 WAR: 1st

Marshall had success keeping runners off the bases and runs off the board despite the poor defenses routinely set behind him in Chicago. His fielding independent numbers speak for themselves, but the question remains, particularly with a move to Cincinnati: can he continue to keep the ball in the yard? Prior to 2010, Marshall had never posted a HR/9 below 1.0; since, he has allowed all of four home runs in 150 innings.

Not every pitcher is equally affected by the transition from starter to reliever (or vice-versa). In the case of Marshall, it may have saved his career. Marshall allowed 45 home runs in 311 innings as the Cubs first tried him as a starter. Even as Chicago continued to experiment with him in both roles, Marshall emerged as a far superior relief pitcher. Although he struggled in 2008, allowing four home runs in 26.2 innings, he would calm down in 2009, allowing just three in 39 frames (0.69 HR/9) before bursting onto the scene as a full-time reliever in 2010 and posting the 0.24 HR/9 over two seasons as noted above.

Particularly as a left-handed pitcher in front of Great American Ballpark’s incredibly short porch (having sat in the front row in left field, it’s even shorter than it appears on TV), it is likely too much to expect that he allows just one or two home runs per season as a Red. As such, he won’t be the single best relief pitcher in the league with Cincinnati, but that’s not what the Reds are paying for. He has the ability to be a very effective setup man who can move into the closing role should Ryan Madson depart after the season, and at a cost of just $5 million per season, the Reds are getting a fine deal on that skill set.

I was prepared to write all sorts of glowing comments about the state of Cincinnati’s minor league system… but then a funny thing happened. The organization acquired one of the top arms in the National League at the cost of three key young prospects. Even with the trade dust now settled, though, the farm system still boasts some high ceiling prospects, as well as a plethora of interesting sleeper prospects.

1. Devin Mesoraco, C
BORN: June 19, 1988
EXPERIENCE: 5 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2007 1st round, Pennsylvania HS
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 2nd

Mesoraco was a late-blooming prep star who stepped up his game at the right time and was selected in the first round of the 2007 draft. He had a slow start to his pro career, which began to extinguish his prospect flame but he threw some lighter fluid on the fire in ’10 and hasn’t stopped hitting since that time. The Pennsylvania native offers plus power and he may also hit for a decent batting average. Mesoraco isn’t just an offensive-minded catcher. He has a well-rounded game which includes solid throwing and excellent leadership. His receiving skills still need a little polishing. With his development the Reds’ front office was able to send fellow catching prospect Yasmani Grandal to the Padres in the Mat Latos deal, which nabbed the organization an outstanding young arm. Mesoraco should catch Latos in 2012 as he becomes the big league club’s starting catcher with Ryan Hanigan backing him up.

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It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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Reds GM Walt Jocketty is sick and tired of your Roy Oswalt rumors:

“It’s all rumors,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of it. We’ve had no serious talks. We’ve had no contact with the player.” (via John Fay, Cincinnati Enquirer)

These rumors Jocketty refers to include this piece by Ken Rosenthal from Monday’s wee hours, which claims the Reds were still in on Oswalt despite the 34-year-old’s inclinations to sign in either St. Louis or Texas. However, there’s more than just Oswalt’s preferences in the way — the Reds would both need to clear a space in the starting rotation and salary from the books in order to make it work.

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Silly monkey, BRAINS ARE FOR ZOMBIES.

Casey Kotchman is in many ways a man without a home — a player equal parts under-appreciated and over-valued, who irks both old and new schools at the same time. Old school analysts say his defense is amazing, but they cannot quantify it, and in 2011, they claimed his cleared vision meant he finally learned how to aim the ball “where they ain’t,” but he’s still a .268 hitter with little power. The new school says he’s worth about 7.6 runs per season defensively, but worth ~1.1 WAR per 600 PAs — not good — and his BABIP was high 2011, so he should not be able to repeat his success.

Despite his inability to build a consistent following of fans in the baseball outsiders communities, Kotchman seems to have some insider communities very much interested in him, as Tom Tango points out:

Kotchman’s last four teams: Redsox, Mariners, Rays, Indians. Can we say that a team that signs Kotchman is saber-leaning?

Indeed, after spending five and a half seasons on the Angels’ and Braves’ rosters, Kotchman has begun to shuffle around with the Nerdz, most recently signing with the Cleveland Indians. It makes sense too — Kotchman’s lack of power keeps him cheap, and his strong defense keeps him amorphous for the old school teams, while the new schools might have different valuations on Kotchman, they can at least quantify his contributions and better know how he fits.

Then, on Monday, the Houston Astros signed Justin Ruggiano, long-time Tampa Bay Rays outfielder who was never good enough to stick on the Rays’ roster, but who possesses strong defensive chops and above average patience. His lack of power and ~.290 batting average, however, must make him a mystery — or at least an undesirable asset — to the old school teams.

Upon Ruggiano signing with the Astros, a once highly old school team, my reaction was all: “Welp, that’s one more team to compete with” — and then it occurred to me! No only have the Astros entered the realm of, so to speak, saber-minded organizations, but so have the long-backward Chicago Cubs.

Suddenly the league looks very different.

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The Reds have made it very clear that they’re going all-in this offseason, presumably in an effort to maximize their chances of winning a title before Joey Votto qualifies for free agency after the 2013 season. GM Walt Jocketty opened up the prospect vault to acquire Mat Latos and Sean Marshall, then landed what could potentially be the bargain of the offseason by signing Ryan Madson to a sweetheart one-year contract. Those moves all improve the team, but at the same time the club sacrificed outfield depth.

Drew Stubbs and Jay Bruce are locked into the center and right field jobs, and Chris Heisey made a pretty good case for the left field gig by slugging 18 homers with a .233 ISO in 308 plate appearances last year. In 534 plate appearances over the last two seasons, he’s hit 26 balls out of the park. Beyond those three, the only other outfielder on the team’s 40-man roster is Denis Phipps, a 25-year-old that posted a .346/.397/.527 batting line between Double and Triple-A in 2011 after hitting just .250/.307/.377 in his previous 2,319 minor league plate appearances. The trades of Dave Sappelt (for Marshall) and nominal outfielder Yonder Alonso (for Latos) along with the free agent departure of Fred Lewis have left the club thin at the position(s).

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