When Cody Reed takes the mound on Saturday he’ll likely be wearing the same pair of rec specs he’s worn since his sophomore year of high school. Reed donned the glasses after he had a hard time picking up signs from his catcher — especially during night games — as a freshman and has continued to wear them as a pro. Though, when Reed is pitching well, it’s opposing hitters who look like they could use a pair.

Reed was a late second-rounder out of Northwest Mississippi Community College in 2013. At the time the industry thought there was a good chance he’d just end up as a reliever. There was arm strength, there was an above-average slider, but the strike-throwing and changeup were both behind, and Reed’s firebrand mound presence had many considering him a potential closer. Now the velocity remains but the slider, and Reed’s usage of it, has improved — as has the changeup. He still has some issues throwing strikes, but things have progressed enough in that area that instead of his control dictating whether or not he starts or relieves, it’s going to dictate just how good of a starter he’s going to be.

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Collectively, Reds pitchers have been all sorts of terrible this year. Their team ERA (5.45) and FIP (5.62) are both easily the worst in baseball, as injuries to Homer Bailey, Raisel Iglesias and Michael Lorenzen have left their rotation painfully thin. It’s about to get better, though, as top prospect Cody Reed is set to make his big-league debut tomorrow. Since we’ve likely passed the Super Two deadline, he should be up for good.

Reed enjoyed a breakout season in 2015, when he posted an impressive 24% strikeout rate and 2.93 FIP between High-A and Double-A. That was enough to make him a fixture on prospect lists last winter. He placed in the middle third of most top 100 rankings.

Reed built on last year’s success at the Triple-A level this year. Although he’s faced better competition, his strikeout and walk rates have remained on par with last year’s numbers. The end result has been a 3.20 ERA and 3.37 FIP. Not bad at all for a 23-year-old facing borderline big-league hitters.

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If you woke up this morning, looked at the WAR Leaderboards for position players and saw Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, and Manny Machado near the top, you might have had an inclination that all is right with the world. After all, those three players are some of the very best in major-league baseball, and we would expect to see them at the top of the list. Of course, when you look closely at the leaderboard, it’s important to note that there are 171 qualified players. To regard the WAR marks as some sort of de facto ranking for all players would be foolish. For some players, defensive value has a large impact on their WAR total, and it’s important, when considering WAR values one-third of the way into the season, to consider the context in which those figures.

“Small sample size” is a phrase that’s invoked a lot throughout the season. At FanGraphs, we try to determine what might be a small-sample aberration from what could be a new talent level. Generally speaking, the bigger the sample size, the better — and this is especially true for defensive statistics, where we want to have a very big sample to determine a player’s talent level. Last year, I attempted to provide a warning on the reliability of defensive statistics. Now that the season has reached its third month, it’s appropriate to revisit that work.

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It doesn’t take much with the bat for Billy Hamilton to be a great player. He’s a world class defensive center fielder. Of course he’s a world class base-runner. Just between his defense and base-running, Hamilton can be worth like something up to three wins without adding anything at the plate, and the list of major-league players with that kind of ability is a short one.

Problem is, Hamilton hasn’t just added nothing at the plate, he’s subtracted, and last year he took those subtractions to a nearly unbearable level. Hamilton was one of the very worst hitters in 2015 with a 52 wRC+ that’s either right at or perhaps even below the lowest acceptable level for any hitter, regardless of what other contributions he offers. Hamilton was teetering on the verge of wasting his preternatural athletic abilities due to what he could (or rather couldn’t) do at the plate.

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If you hit 10 home runs in 15 games for an awful, last-place team, will anyone notice? What if you hit 10 home runs in 15 games after entering the season with just eight major-league homers to your name — will anyone notice then? These are the questions Adam Duvall is asking the baseball world right now. While spending his first season as a major-league regular in the relative baseball obscurity that is 2016 Cincinnati, the 27-year-old Duvall is suddenly begging the baseball world to take notice. Well, we see you, Adam, and we want to get to know you better.

Power has always been the key component to Duvall’s game. He has 130 career minor-league home runs, most of which came during his time with the Giants organization. In June 2014, during Duvall’s major-league debut, he homered off Reds pitcher Mike Leake. Just over a year later, the Reds traded Leake to the Giants and in return received none other than Adam Duvall in return. As a September call-up for Cincinnati last fall, Duvall made an early case for the 2016 everyday left-field job, recording five home runs in just 72 plate appearances. This spring, he officially won the job over guys like Jake Cave, Scott Schebler, and Kyle Waldrop. So far, it sure looks like the Reds made the right decision.

Duvall’s current hot streak is part of a larger season-long trend of tremendous power-hitting — historically tremendous power-hitting, even. Of his 50 hits this season, 31 have been of the extra-base variety — 17 home runs and 14 doubles – which gives Duvall a 62.0% extra-base hit rate. In the modern era (since 1901), only two players have posted a higher XBH/H% over a full season: 2010 Jose Bautista (62.2%) and, naturally, 2001 Barry Bonds (68.6%).

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Out of all the sports, it’s got to be toughest for a baseball fan to endure a rebuild season. During a baseball rebuild season, the suck lasts 162 games. Every fan of every team begins the year with enthusiasm — it’s meaningful baseball again, all the teams are tied, and there’s both fresh faces and the ones you’ve grown to love — but for fans of those rebuilding clubs, the enthusiasm wears off the quickest, and the suck grows exponentially as the season goes on.

The enthusiasm has well worn off for fans of the 2016 Cincinnati Reds. They’re 22-36, better only than the Braves and Twins. Their playoff odds officially flatlined back on April 30. Their best player, Joey Votto, hasn’t even brought much in the way of excitement, and perhaps worse than all that, they’ve played 58 games, and 57 times they’ve had to endure a historically bad bullpen.

Not much to cheer for in Cincinnati this year! Cincinnati fans: I’m sorry I just made you relive all that. But I’ve got good news! In this one way, your team’s season can actually be a success! I’m serious! See, in years like these, with the 162 games of suck and whathaveyou, you’ve got to maintain perspective. This season was never about winning games. It was never about being better than the Braves and the Twins, or having playoff odds, or not having a bullpen that makes your eyes bleed. It was about learning, and it was about acquiring future assets.

The Reds have learned. Oh, the Reds have learned. The Reds have learned that nobody in their current bullpen will be in their next good bullpen. You’d prefer to learn positive things about your team, but there’s value in knowing ahead of time which fat to trim. For a positive thing, the Reds have learned that Adam Duvall might really be a player. There’s value in knowing which pieces might be here to stay.

But beyond just some learning, this Reds’ season has gone to plan in that their two most encouraging comeback stories just so happen to be their two most sensible trade chips.

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For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If we can take some liberties with this, let’s describe the Cubs as an action. An extremely powerful and overwhelming action! It’s an action that seems borderline unstoppable. With that in mind, the opposite of the Cubs is the Reds. The Cubs have been good at pretty much everything. The Reds, meanwhile, have been bad at everything.

You can stop there if you want. You already have the idea, and what follows below is just filling out the picture. Cubs good, Reds bad. I’m just fascinated by the magnitude and diversity of the bad. Before the year, I had the Reds pegged as the seemingly bad team with the best chance of being a decent team. I stand by what I believed, but that’s just not how it’s playing out. The Reds have been a spectacular mess, and though the Braves and perhaps the Twins have commanded the everything-sucks headline genre, the Reds have probably been worse. The Reds have been the worst.

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Cuban righty Yadier Alvarez was the $16 million crown jewel of the Dodgers’ 2015/2016 international free-agent class. It was the second-highest bonus ever given to an international amateur and reports on Alvarez prior to last July were so good that I ranked him #1 on my J2 board at the time. Alvarez ventured stateside this spring and has consistently pitched every fifth day, only missing one start to attend the birth of his child. Reports coming out of Camelback Ranch have been superlative. On Monday, I got to see it for myself along with a number of other interesting prospects.

Yadier Alvarez, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers

Current Level: Extended Spring Training, Age: 20.2, Height/Weight: 6’3/180
Signed: IFA at age 19 on July 2, 2015 out of Cuba by LA for $16.0 million bonus

Alvarez was electric. After opening his start with a few fringe fastballs, he began to loosen up and was sitting 92-97 before long. He has been up to 100 this spring, which is especially notable given that there were rumors over the offseason that his velocity had been down. Mixed in along with the fastball was an 82-86 mph slider with late, two-plane bite. It flashed plus, but the line between that pitch and his 76-82 mph curveball was sometimes blurry. The curveball is a bit more vertically oriented than the slider and Alvarez decelerates his arm a bit to throw it, but it flashed average and it should solidify there once he becomes more comfortable with its release.

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It’s important to remember that most everyone is trying their hardest. (Goodness, is this a sad start to a blog post about professional athletes). Disgruntled fans are quick to accuse Player X who’s making a ludicrous Y number of dollars to “play a kid’s game” of “just going through the motions,” but almost always, every player on a major-league baseball field is either giving it his all, or at least something that’s very close to maxing out his physical capabilities at that moment. They’re all making good money, some even unthinkable money, but we’re all motivated by the prospect of more money, and if not that, we’re at least motivated by the prospect of success, or of not feeling ashamed of ourselves in front of our peers and tens of thousands of onlookers, or at the very least, of not totally embarrassing our family. Nobody is out there trying to lose, individually.

The Reds bullpen is trying its damnedest to get batters out. They really are. Even if the front office isn’t motivated to field a competitive team, these guys all want to eventually earn a contract that sets their family up for life, and they want the spotlight, and they want to not get booed, and they want their loved ones to be even more proud of them, beyond the pride that comes with achieving their dream of making it to the highest level of organized baseball. Each and every one of them. It’s just, well:

Reds bullpen stats and ranks, 1961-present

• ERA: 6.44 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• FIP: 6.09 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• HR/9: 2.04 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• BB%: 11.6% (1,390th out of 1,476)

What the Reds can hang their hats on, at this moment, is that they don’t have the single worst walk rate of any bullpen in the post-expansion era. Just the 1,390th-best! Beyond that, though, they’re running literally the worst bullpen ERA ever, literally the worst bullpen FIP ever, mostly because they’re running literally the worst bullpen home-run rate, ever. Since baseball is currently going through an extremely pitcher-friendly run environment, things get even worse when you adjust the numbers for era, but they’re bad enough as is, so let’s take it easy on Cincinnati.

In fact, let’s take it even easier on Cincinnati. This is a rebuild year, so it’s not like the losses to which the bullpen is contributing are really hurting the franchise in any way. In the long run, it might even be for the better. It’s not the wins and losses that matter in a rebuild, it’s the potential seen. This year is all about finding out which players on the roster might be a part of the next winning team in Cincinnati. It’s hard to see much potential in a 6.44 ERA and 6.09 FIP through 38 games, but there’s got to be something in here worth rooting for, right? It feels like piling on to write a negative article about something that’s so obviously negative, and these guys are all trying their hardest to succeed, so let’s ignore the nasty numbers for a minute and try to find some glimmers of hope in the Cincinnati bullpen. Everyone has redeeming qualities!

Tony Cingrani

• Who is he? A 26-year-old left-handed pitcher, currently serving as the closer for the Cincinnati Reds. A third-round draft pick in 2011. Lots of promise, dating back to his rookie year! (2.92 ERA, 3.78 FIP, 104.2 innings, mostly as a starter.)
• What are his numbers this year? 3.18 ERA! Don’t worry about the rest.
• Redeeming qualities? Fastball velocity is up two ticks from last year, when he was also serving (almost) exclusively as a reliever! Is also throwing a slider 21% of the time — a career-high rate. When Cingrani debuted, scouts had concern that his lack of, well, any other pitch beside the fastball would limit his upside. He’s attempted to incorporate, and subsequently scrapped, a changeup, so he’s still a two-pitch pitcher, but he’s throwing the slider more this year than he’s ever thrown any one secondary pitch in the past, suggesting increased confidence. And it’s getting whiffs on nearly half its swings! Good pitch!

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It’s always a little dicey writing negative articles. Pointing out deficiencies simply isn’t as fun as pointing out strengths, and there’s something that just feels, well, a little wrong about basing work on something a player is trying so hard to do well. That doesn’t feel like it pertains to this article about Joey Votto, however, mostly because he’s always been extremely good at baseball, and will almost certainly be extremely good at baseball in the near future. Votto has a great contract, an incredible career under his belt, and the prospect of many more wildly successful seasons. The dude is smart and awesome, and we’re simply not too worried about him. However — and the however is important — for really the first time in his career, Votto has been terrible at the plate for almost a full month. That’s at once unbelievable and utterly fascinating, and it’s the reason why we’re here.

So let’s start with a chart. Here’s a readout of Votto’s monthly wRC+ figures since he was called up to the majors in September of 2007. We could have gone with a rolling average, but the monthly delineation gives us a few clear reference points. Mouse over the chart for more information:

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