Last fall, Andrew Miller pitched 19.1 innings in 15 postseason games. Extrapolated out to a full 162-game season, that would equal 209 innings. That is basically an impossible load for the modern reliever. Consider, for context, that the only relief pitcher since World War II to top 170 innings is Mike Marshall, who did it twice, including 208.1 innings in 1974. The last major-league reliever to top 150 innings was Mark Eichhorn in 1986. Since the strike in 1994, Scott Sullivan’s 113.2 reliever innings in 1999 represents the majors’ highest mark. No reliever has crossed the 100-inning threshold in the last decade.

All indications suggest that, if a bullpen revolution is really to occur in baseball, it isn’t simply going to be a matter of a single pitcher recording a ton of innings. Exhibit A in an argument against the reality of an Andrew Miller Revolution is that Andrew Miller himself is only on pace for around 88 innings this season. What Miller did in the postseason last year is likely to remain a product of the postseason.

There might be a different sort of bullpen revolution occurring in Ohio, though. Only, this one isn’t happening in Cleveland. Rather, it’s unfolding about four hours southwest on I-71. If there is a bullpen revolution brewing, it’s happening in Cincinnati.

Consider: if a team were starting a bullpen from scratch and trying to create an ideal bullpen, they would likely abide by three basic principles.

1. Put the best pitchers in the most important situations.
2. Ignore the save statistic.
3. Use the best pitchers for multiple innings.

Let’s evaluate the Reds’ bullpen usage this season so far by each of these three principles.

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Joey Votto is up to something.

One of the game’s most selective hitters — perhaps the game’s best at discerning balls from pitches he can damage over the last decade — is hacking in 2017.

Through the first week of the season, Votto’s zone-swing rate is 90.2%. For his career, however, it’s a much more modest mark of 68.5%. Last season, it was 68.6%. Votto’s out-of-zone swing rate rests at 28.1%, up from 20.8% last season. A graphic featuring the location of pitches against Votto confirms his more liberal approach.

So, what the hell is going on here?

Intrepid Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Zach Buchanan investigated and demanded answers.

“P Double-i P” read the shirt that Cincinnati Reds assistant hitting coach Tony Jaramillo wore around the clubhouse Monday at PNC Park. It was a gift from first baseman Joey Votto, and it translates to “Put it in Play.” …

So, is he doing it on purpose? Or is it just a small-sample aberration? Votto, exceedingly secretive when it comes to his plan at the plate, fouled those questions off.

“You’re asking me about my approach and my tactics,” Votto said. “That’s kind of personal. I wouldn’t want to share the specifics when that could benefit the opposition.”

Is Votto simply employing a tactic to go against scouting reports early in the season? Is he trying for a few April ambushes when last year’s data is what everyone has had all winter to evaluate? Is he — gasp — losing bat speed and/or visual acuity?

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With the switch from the standard PITCHf/x pitch-tracking system to Trackman, a few missteps are to be expected. Dave Cameron, for example, recently pointed out that we have to be careful about reporting velocity right now. Jeff Zimmerman gave us a way to convert old velocities into today’s reality, and Tom Tango offered up way to use current readings to approximate velocities as they were calculated by the previous methodology. For those interested in the simplest possible method, it appears as though subtracting three-quarters of a mile per hour from a pitcher’s reported velocity arrives at roughly the same figure as the previous system would have produced.

But that doesn’t account for the situation in its entirety. If we look at what Brandon Finnegan did in his first (excellent) start, we’ll notice that the movement numbers are also a little off right now. It’s enough to want to throw your hands up and just emote, as I did on the latest episode of our Sleeper and The Bust podcast.

It’s okay to express frustration. It’s cathartic and release is good. Breathe deeply through the nose.

But we also need to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. Finnegan did not, as the leaderboards suggest, just record the ninth-most ride on a fastball that we’ve witnessed over the last 15 years. That’s not what was so impressive about the movement and velocities of his pitches in his 2017 debut. But discovering what was impressive can help us better navigate the suddenly unsteady waters of pitcher analysis.

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A couple weeks ago, Zach Buchanan wrote an article with the following headline:

Can Michael Lorenzen be a two-way player?

Spring training is full of headlines that begin with words like “can” or “will” and that end with a question mark. The regular season is for settling. It’s still that early part of the regular season where people will watch a game between the Phillies and the Reds on purpose, and, because I was doing that, myself, let me give you an update, by switching some words and punctuation.

Michael Lorenzen can be a two-way player.

It’s happening. And I can say that because it happened.

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Two years ago, the Cincinnati Reds finished the season by starting rookie pitchers in 64 straight games. Overall, rookies made 110 starts for the Reds that season, third most in history behind the 1998 Florida Marlins and the 2009 Oakland Athletics. The ’98 Marlins team featured the dismantled remnants of the previous season’s World Series title team and lost 104 games. The A’s team finished .500, as Brett Anderson and Gio Gonzalez made solid debuts while Trevor Cahill, Vin Mazzaro, and Josh Outman also pitched. As might be expected, the 2015 Reds were bad, but given their reliance on rookies, we might think the staff might prove to have more veterans in 2016 and 2017. That hasn’t been the case at all.

After getting 110 rookie starts in 2015, the Cincinnati Reds followed up with another 56 rookie starts last year. In the last 100 seasons, only 24 franchises have ever had 81 games or more started by rookie pitchers. Of those teams, the 1934 Philadelphia A’s, the 1936 Philadelphia A’s, the 1978 Oakland A’s, the 2009 Baltimore Orioles, and the 2015 Reds were the only ones to follow up the season questions with another 50 starts by rookies. For the Orioles, Brian Matusz barely avoided losing his rookie status in 2009, so his 32 starts in 2010 comprised the bulk of the Orioles’ 50 rookie starts, with Jake Arrieta nabbing the other 18.

As for the A’s, there have been 234 team seasons over the past 100 years in which rookies started at least 50 games; the A’s alone are responsible 12% (28) of them. Whether in Philadelphia, Kansas City, or Oakland, the organization has almost always been a spendthrift operation, and from 1935 to 1967, the club finished in last place or second-to-last place 25 of 33 seasons, never placing higher than fourth. Only 30 times in history has a team started rookie pitchers in 50 or more games at least two seasons in a row, and the A’s organization is responsible for seven of those times, encompassing 19 seasons.

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Previous editions: AL East / AL Central / NL East.

The World Baseball Classic is in its final stages, meaning that both the end of spring training and the start of the regular season are in sight. We’d better get through the remaining installments in this series quickly.

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The Reds’ pitching staff was absolutely dreadful last year. Their rotation and bullpen were both the worst in baseball. With a ghastly -0.5 WAR, their staff was the worst since the 1800s, which basically means it was the worst of all time.

Not much has changed since last year. Here’s the current depth chart for the Cincinnati rotation:

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Brandon Finnegan	171.0	8.2	3.9	1.4	.297	73.0 %	4.42	4.66	1.4
Anthony DeSclafani	136.0	7.7	2.4	1.2	.305	72.8 %	4.06	4.14	1.9
Scott Feldman	133.0	6.1	2.6	1.3	.305	69.6 %	4.65	4.65	1.1
Robert Stephenson	119.0	8.9	5.5	1.5	.301	71.8 %	5.07	5.25	0.5
Bronson Arroyo	117.0	5.0	2.2	1.8	.299	68.8 %	5.34	5.44	0.1
Homer Bailey	93.0	7.6	2.8	1.2	.309	70.7 %	4.37	4.27	1.1
Cody Reed	81.0	8.3	3.1	1.3	.306	72.8 %	4.24	4.38	0.9
Tim Adleman	37.0	6.6	3.0	1.5	.300	70.3 %	4.90	5.03	0.1
Austin Brice	19.0	8.0	4.2	1.3	.306	70.8 %	4.79	4.88	0.1
Amir Garrett	9.0	7.9	4.7	1.3	.303	71.6 %	4.77	4.94	0.1
Keury Mella	9.0	6.4	4.2	1.4	.306	69.1 %	5.27	5.32	0.0
Nick Travieso	9.0	6.4	4.0	1.4	.301	69.4 %	5.12	5.23	0.0
Total	933.0	7.4	3.3	1.4	.303	71.3 %	4.62	4.72	7.4

Brandon Finnegan is at the top, which is fine, I guess. After that, however, things go downhill in a hurry — especially with Homer Bailey and Anthony DeSclafani slated to open the year on the DL. For example: both Bronson Arroyo and Scott Feldman are apparently not only still pitching, but are penciled in for 250 innings in Cincinnati’s rotation. The rest of the list is made up of unproven youngsters. Each of them has some promise, but none have had much success in the major leagues, either. Hence their middling projections.

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A few weeks ago, Cincinnati Reds general manager Dick Williams was one of several executives to weigh in on the question: “How necessary is it for an MLB front office to pick a direction and stay the course?”

Williams gave an expansive answer, addressing the fact that he leads a small-market team in full rebuild mode. But while he covered a lot in his four-paragraph contribution, much was left unsaid. A lot has changed since he replaced Walt Jocketty as the Reds’ general manager 15 months ago. Many of the particulars have flown well below the radar, so I followed up with the former investment banker to get a deeper look at what’s been happening behind the scenes in Cincinnati.

———

Williams on rebuilding in a small market: “Rebuilding in a smaller market has its challenges. Because of that, we’re being extremely prudent with our investment dollars. When some of the bigger-market teams are going through a rebuilding phase, they can do a one-year signing of a guy making $8-10 million. He’ll be a good contributor to that club, then be a flip candidate to bring back prospects at the trade deadline. Smaller-market teams can’t go out and do a bunch of those deals when they’re in a rebuilding phase.
 
“Attendance tends to drop off more quickly for small-market teams in a rebuild period and that can have a big effect on revenues. Bigger-market teams… usually have a higher and more solid attendance base, so they can sort of weather the down times a little better.
 
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Drew Storen’s breaking ball is probably a slider, but for the purposes of this piece, let’s imagine he has a curveball. Sometimes called a hammer, or a yellow hammer, the curveball’s downward trajectory and velocity gap off the fastball serves to elicit balls that pound the ground.

Storen also has a literal hammer, designed to pound… gloves.

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It might be surprising, but there’s one thing Joey Votto isn’t good at. Well, to be more precise, there’s one thing that Joey Votto doesn’t think he’s good at. He’s done a lot of work, and it looks like he’s good at it. When it comes to defense, though, he credits the work and not any natural ability. And then last year happened, so maybe he’s not so good at it, after all.

That’s Votto’s rolling UZR per 150 games since 2008. UZR requires a large sample to become reliable, so any single year of data needs to be regressed heavily. But there appears to be a trend here. In any case, I’m apparently not the first to notice a downturn in Votto’s defensive ability last year, nor to mention it to him. “It’s hard to ignore when people ask you on a consistent basis about it,” he grimaced when I asked.

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