Before the 2020 season, the Cincinnati Reds were a team on the rise. For two straight seasons, they’d built for the present, acquiring a dynamic pitching staff and attempting to rebuild their once-potent lineup. 2020 was going to be their year, the last year before Trevor Bauer’s free agency and the first with Mike Moustakas, Nick Castellanos, and Shogo Akiyama in tow.

The year didn’t work out particularly well for them, though. Their pitching was excellent, but the offense sputtered, and they scored a literal zero runs in their two playoff games, one of which went 13 innings. Just like that, the season was over. The team has been busy so far this offseason — they non-tendered Archie Bradley and Brian Goodwin, extended Bauer a Qualifying Offer before seeing him leave, and traded relievers Raisel Iglesias and Robert Stephenson. They’re also reportedly open to dealing Sonny Gray. Is the Reds’ brief run over?

I’m not so sure. Yes, the Reds have gotten worse this offseason. There’s no arguing that. Their Cy Young winner left in free agency (assuming he doesn’t return to Cincinnati, which seems unlikely). They traded their closer to save $8 million. They might be trading one of their other two great starters to save a little more money. That all sounds bad, no doubt.

Heck, though: you can make anything sound bad by describing it that way. The Cubs non-tendered two high draft picks who both contributed in 2020 to save a few bucks. The Cardinals declined an option on Kolten Wong that would have been a bargain — they explicitly stated that it was entirely to lower their payroll commitments for next year. The Brewers didn’t want to pay Corey Knebel, so they sent him to the Dodgers, who very much wanted to pay Corey Knebel. Read the rest of this entry »

After beefing up their payroll to the point of setting a franchise record, the Reds made the playoffs for the first time since 2013, but thus far this winter, they’ve gone into cost-cutting mode. Not only do they appear likely to lose Trevor Bauer in free agency, but they non-tendered late-season pickup Archie Bradley, have let it be known that they’re listening to offers for Sonny Gray, and on Monday traded closer Raisel Iglesias to the Angels for reliever Noé Ramirez.

Quite clearly, for the Reds it’s money driving this particular move rather than talent. Iglesias, who turns 31 on January 4, has saved 100 games over the past four seasons and is coming off a strong campaign — if 23 innings can be called a campaign — in which his 1.1 WAR ranked second among NL relievers behind Rookie of the Year Devin Williams. He’s due to make $9.125 million in the final year of a three-year, $24.125 million extension that he signed in November 2018. By contrast Ramirez, who turns 31 on December 22, has compiled just 0.4 WAR in parts of six major league seasons, including 0.1 in his 21-inning season with the Angels. As a Super Two, he’s heading into his second year of arbitration eligibility but is under club control through 2023; if not for the pandemic, he would have made $900,000 in 2020 (all dollar figures in this piece are full-season salaries, not prorated).

The Reds are sending an undisclosed amount of cash to the Angels, and will receive “future considerations,” either a player to be named later or cash sometime down the road. At best, that’s a minimal sweetener to offset the apparent imbalance in talent. Perhaps there’s something that Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson — whose reunion with Gray, whom he coached at Vanderbilt, helped him regain form, while pitchers such as Luis Castillo, Anthony Desclafani, and Bauer improved on his watch as well — sees in Ramirez, but given his low velocity (an average of 88.8 mph on his four-seam fastball, putting him in the eighth percentile) and underwhelming numbers, its unclear what that might be.

In other words, this is clearly a salary dump. Read the rest of this entry »

In the final 2019 standings, fourth-place teams in their respective divisions finished an average of 30 games behind the first-place team. In 2018, that number was about 22, and in 2017, it was about 25. The distance between your average fourth-place team and their division’s first-place team fluctuates a bit year-to-year depending upon how super that season’s super-teams are, but it’s never close. The worse team will sneak in a few victories against the superior team over the course of 18 or so matchups throughout the season, but the two really aren’t supposed to be on the same level. One of these teams has a good chance of hosting a playoff series, and the other is having trouble selling tickets in September.

Our preseason playoff projections tend to reflect that space. Before the season was postponed and the schedule still ran 162 games, our projected fourth-place finishers in four of the six divisions were given a 1% chance or less at finishing first. The Phillies, the presumed fourth-place finishers in the NL East, were given less than a 5% chance of winning their division. Then there was the NL Central, where the Cardinals were pegged for fourth but given a 17% chance to finish on top, with a projected record that was within four games of the first-place Cubs. That would have been the tightest grouping of the top four teams in any division since the AL East in 1988.

When the new 60-game season was done, just five games wound up separating the top four teams in the NL Central, and from the looks of our Depth Charts projections, the race figures to be incredibly tight again in 2021. While the Pirates lag far behind the pack, the top four teams in the division stand incredibly close in talent level.

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

Season Two of Operation: Win Now almost ended like the first one did — outside the playoffs looking in — until the Reds snuck into the postseason by winning 11 of their last 15 games, with all but a Pirates series coming against playoff teams. Cincinnati’s quick playoff exit served to highlight one of the fundamental reasons the team’s reach the last two years has exceeded its grasp. No, the offense isn’t going to be shut out for 22 consecutive innings all that often, as the Braves did in the teams’ Wild Card Series, but the lineup is actively hindering the team. This recent development is the opposite of the traditional 21st century Reds dilemma, but it’s a real issue; Cincinnati has finished 13th and 12th in the NL in runs the last two seasons while playing in a moderate hitters’ park.

In a lot of ways, Cincinnati’s problem is the mirror image of Colorado’s most pressing issue. The Rockies have two MVP candidates at the top of the lineup, but an appalling lack of depth. The Reds, on the other hand, have very few true holes and admirable depth all over the diamond, but a real lack of superstar upside. And without a lot of positions open for the taking without the team being extremely aggressive and giving up on decent players with guaranteed deals, it’s hard to see the Reds flipping that script.

The one exception here is the shortstop position, where Jose Garcia would likely be the starter if the season began today, but likely won’t be when the 2021 season actually gets under way. There’s an unusual amount of shortstop talent out there for the taking — Marcus Semien, Andrelton Simmons, Didi Gregorius, and Ha-seong Kim — that could drastically improve a position that doesn’t have an apparent long-term solution otherwise. In an offseason where other NL competitors like the Cubs and Phillies crying poor, this is a golden opportunity for the team to swim against the current and take a real financial risk to get into the second tier of NL contenders. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2018 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

“A hard-charging third baseman” who “could have played shortstop with more range than Cal Ripken.” “A no-nonsense star.” “The perfect baseball player.” Scott Rolen did not lack for praise, particularly in the pages of Sports Illustrated at the height of his career. A masterful, athletic defender with the physical dimensions of a tight end (listed at 6-foot-4, 245 pounds), Rolen played with an all-out intensity, sacrificing his body in the name of stopping balls from getting through the left side of the infield. Many viewed him as the position’s best for his time, and he more than held his own with the bat as well, routinely accompanying his 25 to 30 homers a year with strong on-base percentages.

There was much to love about Rolen’s game, but particularly in Philadelphia, the city where he began his major league career and the one with a reputation for fraternal fondness, he found no shortage of critics — even in the Phillies organization. Despite winning 1997 NL Rookie of the Year honors and emerging as a foundation-type player, Rolen was blasted publicly by manager Larry Bowa and special assistant to the general manager Dallas Green. While ownership pinched pennies and waited for a new ballpark, fans booed and vilified him. Eventually, Rolen couldn’t wait to skip town, even when offered a deal that could have been worth as much as $140 million. Traded in mid-2002 to the Cardinals, he referred to St. Louis as “baseball heaven,” which only further enraged the Philly faithful.

In St. Louis, Rolen provided the missing piece of the puzzle, helping a team that hadn’t been to the World Series since 1987 make two trips in three years (2004 and ’06), with a championship in the latter year. A private, introverted person who shunned endorsement deals, he didn’t have to shoulder the burden of being a franchise savior, but as the toll of his max-effort play caught up to him in the form of chronic shoulder and back woes, he clashed with manager Tony La Russa and again found himself looking for the exit. After a brief detour to Toronto, he landed in Cincinnati, where again he provided the missing piece, helping the Reds return to the postseason for the first time in 15 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I’ve been spending most of my time watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. From a workflow standpoint, it makes sense for me to prioritize and complete my evaluations of these prospects before my time is divided between theoretical fall instructional ball, which has just gotten underway, and college fall practices and scrimmages, which will have outsized importance this year due to the lack of both meaningful 2020 college stats and summer wood bat league looks because of COVID-19.

I started with the National League East, then completed my look at the American League West, AL East, and Central. Below is my assessment of the , covering players who have appeared in big league games. The results of the changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on The Board, though I try to provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team. Read the rest of this entry »

Though undersized by baseball standards — just 5-foot-7 and 160 pounds — Joe Morgan stands tall in baseball history. As the second baseman for the Cincinnati Reds during his prime (1972-79), he helped elevate an already-strong team that starred the more famous Pete Rose and Johnny Bench into a powerhouse for the ages, earning back-to-back NL MVP honors on the Big Red Machine’s 1975 and ’76 championship teams. Over the course of a 22-year major league career (1963-84) with five franchises, Morgan made 10 All-Star teams, won five Gold Gloves, and built a case as the best second baseman in the game’s history, less by attaining traditional milestones and awards than by standing out in ways that became more apparent with advanced statistics. In 1990, he was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility; he would leave a stamp on that institution later in life as well.

Morgan died at home on Sunday in Danville, California at the age of 77. According to a family spokesman, the cause was nonspecified polyneuropathy, a condition that affects the peripheral nerves of the body. He had endured other health woes in recent years, having received a bone marrow transplant in 2016. He’s the sixth Hall of Famer to die this year, after Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and Whitey Ford, the last two of whom passed away earlier this month. He’s also the third member of the late 1960s and early ’70s Astros to die in 2020, after Jimmy Wynn and Bob Watson. It’s enough to make any baseball fan cry, “Uncle.”

Justifiably hailed as “the game’s most complete player” in a 1976 Sports Illustrated cover story, Morgan had more tools in his belt than the standard five, including an off-the-charts baseball IQ that earned him the nickname of “The Little General,” and, by his own admission, a brand of arrogance. As he told Mark Mulvoy in that SI feature, “To be a star, to stay a star, I think you’ve got to have a certain air of arrogance about you, a cockiness, a swagger on the field that says, ‘I can do this, and you can’t stop me.'”

Morgan hit .271/.392/.427 (132 OPS+) for his career, racking up 2,517 hits, 268 home runs, and, thanks to his keen batting eye and compact strike zone, 1,815 walks (and just 1,015 strikeouts). His walk total ranks fifth all-time, while the 266 homers he hit as a second baseman rank fourth. While he only posted batting averages above .300 in his two MVP seasons, and never finished higher than fourth in that category, he drew at least 100 walks in a season eight times, and topped a .400 on-base percentage eight times as well, leading the league in four of those years, and finishing among the top 10 11 times. He also stole 689 bases, a total that ranks 11th; of his 11 times cracking the league’s top 10 in that category, seven times he ranked second, five of those behind Brock. His 81.0% success rate ranks 17th among players with at least 300 attempts since 1951 (caught stealing data was not consistently available earlier), but fifth among those with 600 ore more attempts. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s well-chronicled that the Twins have now lost 18 consecutive postseason games. What it isn’t is well-explained, and that’s for good reason. A streak this torturous is inexplicable. Getting swept in a short series is by no means uncommon, but having it happen repeatedly, at the worst possible time, is soul-crushingly rare.

Derek Falvey was asked about the failings when he met with the media following Wednesday’s elimination. Moreover, he was asked what can be done to reverse those fortunes in Octobers to come. Minnesota’s Chief Baseball Officer answered as best he could, but again, what’s beset his club is inexplicable.

I introduced that angle in a follow-up question near the end of Falvey’s session: Given the randomness of short series, is there truly anything that can be done to flip the postseason script? Are the Twins akin to the pre-2004 Red Sox in that they’ll only win once the Baseball Gods deem it time for them to win?

“I hear your perspective on trying to make sure we don’t overreact to some history,” responded Falvey. “We want to make sure that we assess this as objectively as we can… but I do think there is some reality that in a baseball season, over the course of two or three, or four or five games, things can go a little haywire on you — even if you feel you have a good foundation. Maybe if you played those games all over again, you might have a different result. I get that. That speaks to your question a little bit about randomness. Read the rest of this entry »

Cincinnati is named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a patrician of the early Roman Republic, and a historical figure to whom a few legendary tales have been attributed. The story goes that Cincinnatus was called into duty, exercised absolute authority as dictator, then gave up his power and went home quietly. If postseason baseball can serve as an homage, the baseball team representing his namesake city got the “quietly” part of it right at least.

The Braves completed their two-game sweep of the Reds in convincing fashion on Thursday afternoon, winning 5-0 and advancing to the National League Division Series to face the winner of the Marlins and Cubs. Luis Castillo wasn’t quite as sharp as Trevor Bauer was in his Game 1 masterpiece, but he threw effectively for 5 1/3 innings, striking out seven and allowing just a single run.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our preview of the Braves-Reds series, which ran yesterday, closed with the following words:

“This one looks fun, and it should ultimately come down to which team pitches best.”

This afternoon’s Game 1 neither proved nor disproved that prediction. In a matchup of two National League Cy Young contenders, both pitching staffs flat out shoved. Trevor Bauer and Max Fried combined to go 14 2/3 scoreless — with 17 strikeouts and no walks, no less — and the relievers that followed them to the mound were every bit as good. In the end, Atlanta prevailed 1-0 on a walk-off single by Freddie Freeman off Amir Garrett in the 13th inning.

Both teams came out swinging. Three pitches into the game, the Reds had runners on the corners, courtesy of base knocks by Nick Senzel and Nick Castellanos. The aggression-fueled early scoring opportunity went for naught. Fried proceeded to record three outs on six pitches, with an Eugenio Suárez liner to short sandwiched between a pair of harmless ground balls. Read the rest of this entry »