Archive for Reds

As the end of the regular season draws near, the Wild Card race in the NL is as tight as it comes. The Dodgers currently control the top spot, while the Padres, who held onto second for most of the year, have faltered in the face of adversity, going from 91.7% playoff odds on July 27 to 24.2% as of today. That has left the door open for the Reds and Cardinals, with the former riding a torrid August and withstanding a slow September for a 36.2% chance to make the playoffs (though the latter currently leads in the chase for the second wild card by half a game).

Cincinnati’s success this season is in large part due to contributions from players like Joey Votto and Wade Miley. One unit that hasn’t helped, though is the bullpen; Reds relievers carry the fourth-highest FIP (4.69) in the majors and account for just 1.0 WAR. But in the last month and a half, the bullpen has shown some improvement, albeit modest, with a 4.40 FIP since August 1 and a 4.02 mark in the month of September, which ranks 11th in baseball during that time. That improvement has been particularly noticeable in the late innings:

All that is despite a closer situation has been fluid, to say the least — one riddled with injuries and poor performance throughout the year. Back in the offseason, the Reds surprisingly sent incumbent closer Raisel Iglesias to the Angels for middle reliever Noé Ramirez, betting that their stock of young arms and less expensive veteran alternatives would make up for his departure. The plan backfired. Iglesias is following up his excellent 2020 with a career year in which he’ll challenge previous career highs in saves and strikeouts, and his WAR this season is nearly twice that of the entire Reds relief corps.

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I am not going to beat around the bush: Luis Castillo had a miserable start to the season. On Opening Day against the Cardinals, he allowed 10 runs (eight of which were earned) and recorded zero strikeouts in just three and a third innings of work. He bounced back about a week later against Pittsburgh, tossing seven innings with five strikeouts versus one walk without surrendering a run. But despite that showing, Castillo’s Opening Day struggles proved to be more than a blip on the radar for a pitcher who ranked among the top 20 in baseball over the three seasons prior to 2021. At the beginning of May, Castillo still had an ERA above six (6.07); it would not dip below that mark until his June 15 start against Milwaukee. His ERA peaked (apart from the stretch between his first and second start) at 7.61 on May 23. As of this writing, his ERA is 4.20; he has accumulated 3.0 WAR over 163 innings, placing him 26th in the majors among qualifiers.

So what has changed? Back on May 18, Justin Choi wrote about Castillo’s performance through his first eight starts, attempting to diagnose what plagued the Reds right-hander. Justin first looked at Castillo’s changeup, which had long been his most effective offering but which was generating far fewer whiffs than before. Justin found that the pitch was dropping more than it had in the past, though Castillo was still able to locate it just below the lower edge of the strike zone. The rest of Castillo’s repertoire (a sinker, four-seamer, and slider), on the other hand, was being placed right down the pipe. Justin concluded that the location of Castillo’s changeup were so different from that of the rest of his pitches that batters were either laying off the changeup or swinging at the few that landed closer to the heart of the zone.

Since Justin published his analysis, Castillo has compiled a 3.15 ERA and ranks 10th in WAR. Let’s try to locate the difference. Year-over-year, his pitch mix is largely the same:

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Bobby Dalbec is a bona fide music nerd. The son of a longtime Atlantic Records executive, the 26-year-old Boston Red Sox rookie not only plays piano and guitar, he’s an ardent fan of multiple genres. Growing up around the business influenced that. His father, Tim Dalbec, has worked with a diverse group of artists that include — to name just a few — Bruno Mars, Robert Plant, Smash Mouth, and the Zac Brown Band.

While he listens to everything from rap, to house, to Neo soul —“If it sounds good in my ear is all that matters” — guitar-based rock is clearly in his wheelhouse. Talking to the young power-hitter prior to a recent game at Fenway Park, I learned that he enjoys Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer — “a lot of people think he’s a pop guy, but his his guitar playing is pretty top-tier” — and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Another favorite is Goose, a jam-band out of Connecticut.

Somewhat surprisingly, Dalbec only recently began playing the guitar.

“My dad never pushed me toward music,” said Dalbec, whom the Red Sox selected in the fourth round of the 2016 draft out of the University of Arizona. “He was a drummer growing up, but I never learned drums. The first instrument I learned was actually piano, and that was three or four off-seasons ago. I was self-taught. Piano was kind of a gateway into learning guitar, which I really dove into after the first COVID outbreak.”

Why piano before guitar? Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we explored the roster depth of the American League playoff contenders, identifying the strengths and weaknesses that might prove decisive down the stretch for the teams whose playoff odds sit above 10%. Today, we’ll do the same for the National League squads with October ambitions.

National League East

Atlanta Braves
Strengths: Atlanta’s slow and steady climb into first place has involved a considerable amount of roster management. One side effect of all the maneuvers that have gotten them where they are is significant depth. During Travis d’Arnaud’s absence, the team learned that William Contreras is a capable big league catcher. They filled their considerable outfield holes with Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, and Adam Duvall, while Cristian Pache, who flamed out early in the season, has finally gotten hot at Triple-A Gwinnett and should be a nice September addition. The Gwinnett infield is packed with players who have big league experience, like Jason Kipnis and Ryan Goins. The return of Huascar Ynoa, with Ian Anderson not far behind, creates a sudden bevy of rotation options. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Luis Frías, RHP, Arizona Diamondbacks
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Reno Age: 23 Org Rank: 12 FV: 45
Recent News: Promoted to Triple-A Reno

Tall, thick around the middle, and with a few elements in his delivery that bear a passing resemblance to Jose Valverde’s, a body comp to Papa Grande is only natural here. Like his fellow countryman, Frías uses a split and comfortably reaches the mid-90s with his heater. The stuff comparisons end there though, as the 23-year-old has a deeper arsenal, one that suggests a future in the rotation remains a possibility. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds have been surging lately, but they’ll be challenged to maintain their momentum with the loss of one of their biggest bats. On Monday they placed Jesse Winker on the injured list with an intercostal strain, costing them the services of one of the league’s top hitters for at least 10 days and perhaps longer. The move does at least have a silver lining via the promotion of top prospect Jose Barrero, who could help shore up the infield, but the loss of Winker comes at an inopportune time, as the race for the NL’s second Wild Card spot is as tight as it’s been since late May.

The 27-year-old Winker was initially scratched from the Reds’ lineup on Friday with what the Reds called lower back tightness, and he didn’t play on Saturday, either. He returned to the lineup on Sunday, but after flying out in each of his first two plate appearances, he left the game in the third inning. Afterwards, manager David Bell told reporters that Winker was actually dealing with an intercostal strain:

David Bell said Jesse Winker reaggravated his intercostal strain. "Felt it right at the end of the last swing he took. We'll have to start over tomorrow with having it looked at again." #Reds

— Bobby Nightengale (@nightengalejr) August 15, 2021

Winker underwent an MRI on Monday and was placed on the IL, after which Bell told reporters that the team doesn’t consider the injury “a long-term issue.” The Reds hope he can return in 10 days, but his landing on the IL is at least somewhat ominous. Per Derek Rhoads’ Hitter Injury Dashboard, position players who landed on the injured list with an intercostal strain from 2010-20 averaged 29.2 days missed, with a median of 27 days. Via MLB.com, even Grade 1 strains, the least severe, typically require two to three weeks to recover. Read the rest of this entry »

Eugenio Suárez is not a major league caliber shortstop. That’s no knock on him — pretty much no one in the entire world is, and he picked the position up out of necessity rather than because it was in his range. The Reds simply had no one to play there, and he looked like the least terrible option. The experiment didn’t last long — 32 games was enough to say that he was better suited for third base — but the team’s changed infield construction gave Jonathan India a big league shot, so it wasn’t all bad.

The hitting, on the other hand? That’s been all bad. Suárez has been restored to his natural spot at third base, and the Reds are mounting a playoff charge — but they’re doing so despite an absolutely abysmal season from the player we projected as their best before the season started. He’s hit .172/.259/.373, good for a 68 wRC+, and it’s worth asking whether this is just a blip on the radar or the beginning of the end for one of the sneakiest power hitters of recent years.

Let’s start with something that doesn’t seem to have gone wrong: Suárez is still hitting home runs at a solid clip. A full 18.3% of his fly balls have turned into homers this year, and while that’s not quite the rate he managed in 2019 or 2020, it’s still an excellent number, one that makes sense given how hard he hits the ball and the bandbox park the Reds call home. And he’s doing so despite a nagging shoulder injury that has plagued him since the start of the 2020 season.

In 471 plate appearances so far this year, Suárez has cranked 23 bombs. Plug those home run numbers in and use previous career rates to fill in the rest of his statistics, and he’d be doing just fine; he’d be hitting roughly .263/.344/.480. There’s all kinds of absurd math in there, and I’m not claiming that’s a reasonable projection for the season, but the power certainly hasn’t been the problem this year — at least at first glance. Read the rest of this entry »

Francisco Urbaez wasn’t sure what to expect when he reported to spring training. Signed by the Cincinnati Reds as a non-drafted free agent in June of last year, the 23-year-old infielder knew only that he was being given an opportunity. To say he’s made the most of it would be an understatement. In 275 plate appearances with the High-A Dayton Dragons, Urbaez is slashing an eyebrow-raising .332/420/.454.

A native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Urbaez didn’t come to the United States solely to play baseball. The son of a mechanical engineer and a psychologist, he came to earn a degree.

“That was my family’s plan,” explained Urbaez, who spent two years at Chipola Junior College, and two more at Florida Atlantic University. “They were like, “Go to the States and play ball, and whatever happens happens, but you need an education first.”

Already fluent in English when he arrived in the U.S. at age 18, Urbaez was initially an Accounting major, but then changed to International Business, and ultimately to Business. And while baseball wasn’t the priority, it did serve as a catalyst. Former Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is involved with a foundation that helps Latin American student-athletes come to the U.S. via scholarships, and Urbaez was one of the beneficiaries.

Unlike many Dominicans currently playing professional baseball, Urbaez hadn’t attracted a lot of attention while on the island. He received only one offer from an MLB organization, and that was after he’d committed to come Stateside to begin his studies. Teams didn’t exactly knock down his door during his JC tenure, either. It wasn’t until his junior year at FAU that scouts began to take notice. Prominent among them was Andrew Fabian, whose familiarity with Urbaez dated back to his time as a coach at Hillsborough Community College. Now an area scout with the Reds, Fabian saw potential in the under-the-radar second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Eric’s Notes — Games on 8/4

Chandler Redmond, 1B/2B/3B/LF, St. Louis Cardinals
Level & Affiliate: Hi-A Peoria Age: 24 Org Rank: 34 FV: 35+
Line: 2-for-3, 2 HR, BB

Notes
It’s time for Redmond to be promoted. He’s hit .245/.361/.520 since June 22 and owns a career .259/.368/.508 career line, but he’s done so as an old-for-the-level prospect. Redmond was a 32nd round pick out of Gardner Webb, so it made sense to begin his career in the Appy League even though he was already 22. Now 24, he’s not seen a plate appearance above A-ball. Redmond has big, all-fields power and has played all over the field. He could be a bat-first piece, hidden on defense wherever the opposing club is least-likely to hit one that day. Visually, his swing is kind of grooved, and I’d like to see Redmond’s contact skills stress-tested against more advanced arms. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »