This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.
Even against the backdrop of a slow offseason, watching the NL Central this winter has been an exercise in hot stove drudgery. Until the mini-flurry of activity that saw Adam Wainwright and Joc Pederson join the Cardinals and Cubs, respectively, the division’s top signed free agents, at least by ZiPS’s reckoning, were Daniel Robertson and Jace Peterson. Figuring out which team has been the most disappointing has been like an Agatha Christie novel: Bar the doors, everyone’s a suspect!
St. Louis has largely presented a convincing alibi with the Nolan Arenado trade and bringing Wainwright and Yadier Molina back for one last caper. So, whodunit? Was it the Pirates, a team that has become the baseball equivalent of a farm that is paid not to grow crops? Is it the Cubs, a team burdened by the apparent transformation of Chicago from a large-market megalopolis to a tiny town (or so they would have us believe)? Is it the Brewers, who, with Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain at their core, ought to be in full win-now mode? My pick, though, is the Inspector Cincinnati Reds — the division’s hero in the previous two mysteries — going rogue.
The Reds of the last two winters were among the few teams that made an effort to push forward to a division title, acquiring Sonny Gray, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Matt Kemp, and José Iglesias. Not all of these players were good additions, but this initial flurry represented a genuine desire to compete. And when this group wasn’t enough, the organization doubled-down instead of folding, picking up Trevor Bauer from Cleveland and signing Mike Moustakas, Nick Castellanos, Wade Miley, and Shogo Akiyama. The result wasn’t an overwhelming success, but it was enough to get the team over the .500 mark and sneak into the playoffs, both things Cincinnati hadn’t done since 2013.
Last year’s playoff run ended ignominiously, with the Reds failing to score a single run in 22 innings against the Braves. It seemed inevitable that Bauer was headed to another city for an enormous raise (and he did), but free agency left the rest of the team’s core intact. With nobody in the division apparently possessing any burning desire to actually win the division — or so it appeared back in November — surely Cincinnati would find other options than Bauer to fix team holes!
After breaking apart their bullpen in an effort to cut costs, the Reds took a step towards rebuilding it on Tuesday, agreeing to terms with 34-year-old lefty Sean Doolittle on a one-year deal with a base salary of $1.5 million plus as-yet-unspecified incentives. For as modest an expenditure as it is, Doolittle is just the second major league free agent the Reds have signed this winter from outside the organization (Kyle Farmer was signed to a new major league deal after previously being non-tendered). The two-time All-Star has ample experience closing, something in short supply on the Reds’ current roster, but in order to return to any kind of high-leverage duty, he’ll need to rebound from what was largely a lost season.
Doolittle, who spent his past 3 1/2 seasons with the Nationals, made just 11 appearances totaling 7.2 innings in 2020. He landed on the Injured List twice, first missing nearly three weeks in August due to inflammation in his right knee, and then being shelved for the remainder of the season after straining an oblique muscle in mid-appearance on September 10. For what it’s worth — perhaps not much given the sample sizes, though it merits a look to compare to his track record — his average fastball velocity and performance had been trending upwards after the first IL stint, as you can see here:
Doolittle didn’t allow a run over his final six appearances, after being scored upon in four out of five previously, so there’s that, a point to which we’ll return. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the last two days, the Reds have made a couple of small trades — acquiring Hector Perez from Toronto for a PTBNL or cash and Cionel Pérez from Houston for former South Carolina catcher Luke Berryhill — to bolster their bullpen depth. These are the latest in a series of transactions that are part of an obvious effort to pick up change of scenery candidates (Jeff Hoffman, the Perez(s), Art Warren), or players falling off the bottom of other rosters (Edgar Ernesto Garcia, Brandon Bailey) to try to create an above-replacement injury/COVID safety valve at the bottom of Cincinnati’s active roster and in the upper minors. This might prove especially important if the team’s 2021 innings are spread across more pitchers to prevent huge workload increases after the shortened season. Read the rest of this entry »
Lucas Sims was one of Cincinnati’s best pitchers in 2020, and his slider was a big reason why. The Reds right-hander threw the firmer of his two breaking balls 34.1% of the time while registering a 2.45 ERA, and 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings, over 20 relief appearances. Per StatCast, opposing batters slugged a paltry .133 against the pitch. The story behind it reflects the vagaries of the art of pitching itself.
“I learned my slider from from Sonny [Gray], but it’s Sonny’s curveball grip,” explained Sims. “I was toying around with it one day — this was in 2019 — and when I threw it, it swept a lot. His is a downer curveball. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a little bit different.'”
So was the manner in which he unveiled the pitch. Sims spent a few days experimenting with Gray’s grip, but only on flat ground. It wasn’t until he toed the rubber in a game that he delivered one off a mound. The Reds were playing Pittsburgh, and Starling Marté at the plate with a two-strike count.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I might as well try it,’” recalled Sims, whom the Reds had acquired from Atlanta the previous year as part of the Adam Duvall deal. “I didn’t want to hang it — I wanted to make sure it didn’t get deposited — and ended up spiking it in the [left-handed] batter’s box. But then I threw another one and got a swing-and-a-miss. I decided, ‘All right, this is going to be a new pitch for me.”
Which brings us to the offering itself. Is Sims throwing a slider with Gray’s curveball grip, or does Gray throw a curveball with a slider grip? Read the rest of this entry »
Eric Jagers is on the fast track in the pitching world. Little more than seven years after discovering Driveline during his freshman year of college, the 25-year-old Iowa native is now the assistant pitching coach for the Reds. Promoted to the position last month — he replaced Caleb Cotham, who is now the Phillies’ new pitching coach— Jagers spent last season as the club’s assistant pitching coordinator. Previously Driveline’s Manager of Technical Development, he remains with the Seattle-area training facility in an advisory role.
Jagers touched on a handful of pitching-related topics, and a pair of Cincinnati hurlers, earlier this week.
———
David Laurila: What do many people not really understand about the technological aspects of pitching development?
Eric Jagers: “That’s a good question. With all the pitch-tracking technology — and there are a lot of people who do understand this — it’s all the pieces together, as opposed to the segmented ways we tend to look at things: a pitch has got this movement, and it’s also got this location. But really, those things morph together. The location piece adds to the movement piece. A fastball with a lot of hop that’s also up in the zone is maximized. Same with a sinker that’s at the bottom of the zone. Conversely, with a sinker at the top — when we’re looking at short-form movement — it’s easy for the data to fool you into thinking it’s something it’s not.
“I think a lot of people are pretty comfortable viewing movement on TrackMan, Rapsodo, and now Hawk-Eye. But those are just giving us a piece of the equation. We need to factor in all the variables.”
Laurila: Can you elaborate on what you mean by data fooling you into thinking it’s something it’s not?
Jagers: “It’s easy to come up with an answer, and the easiest person to fool is yourself. It’s like the Richard Feynman quote. Basically, it makes it really easy for us to tell us the story that we want to tell, and we don’t have a full understanding — at least on surface-level stats — of what a complete pitch is. Going back to location and movement, in order to get a true vertical-break number, it’s not just 18 inches of spin-induced vertical movement. It’s that, plus where it was released from, plus where it entered the zone. All of those things together equate to one true number. Read the rest of this entry »
Taijuan Walker is coming off a strong 2020 season that followed a pair of lost seasons. The 28-year-old free agent fashioned a 2.70 ERA in 11 starts — five with the Seattle Mariners and six with the Toronto Blue Jays — after tossing just 14 innings in 2018-2019. We’ll hear from Walker on his return from Tommy John surgery and shoulder woes, as well as his pitch-design efforts, in the near future. Today we’ll touch on some of his career highlights. Earlier this week I asked the 2010 first-rounder for a ranking of his top performances to date.
“Numbers-wise it wasn’t my best, but I pitched a must-win game in Toronto,” recalled Walker, who was with the Mariners at the time. “This was [September 24, 2014] and while we didn’t end up winning, I feel like my fastball was the best it’s ever been. My breaking ball and my changeup probably were as well. We ended up losing 1-0, but stuff-wise I felt it was my best game.”
Out-dueled by Mark Buehrle in a contest that flew by in a crisp 1:59, Walker went eight innings and allowed four hits, one walk, and the game’s lone run. Six Blue Jays went down by way of the K.
Walker went on to cite his “two best games numbers-wise,” each of which was an 11-strikeout effort in a Mariners win. On July 31, 2015, he allowed just one hit — a solo home run by Minnesota’s Miguel Sanó — and a single free pass. On September 13, 2016, he threw a three-hit, no-walk, shutout against the Angels. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been altered begin by telling you so. For the others, the blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside the org than within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there. Lastly, in effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both in lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.
For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.
All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.
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 »
