Hi! You read FanGraphs, so you probably like Joey Votto. As such, you’re probably aware that, two seasons in a row, now, Votto has gone crazy in the second half. Last year, he boosted his game by increasing his hits, his power, and his walks. He ran a second-half wRC+ in the neighborhood of 200. This year, Votto is again running a second-half wRC+ in the neighborhood of 200. Once again, he’s increased his power. Once again, he’s increased his hits. Yet this time, the walks have stayed where they were. Votto isn’t earning free pass after free pass. Rather, somewhere around the middle of this season, Joey Votto just decided that he didn’t like striking out anymore.

So he stopped. Votto, earlier, was more strikeout-prone than ever in his life. More recently, Votto has been less strikeout-prone than ever in his life. That graph seems like it should be impossible — where first-half Votto struck out a quarter of the time, second-half Votto has struck out a tenth of the time. To put it another way, while second-half Votto again has one of the highest walk rates in the league, he’s also managed a lower strikeout rate than Jose Altuve. You just can’t get the ball by Joey Votto anymore. He doesn’t allow pitchers to do it.

Perhaps just as amazing — second-half Votto hasn’t done any better in terms of avoiding two-strike counts. In the first half, Votto saw 29% of his pitches while in a two-strike count. In the second half, that’s risen, ever so slightly, to 30%. Votto is still disciplined, and, clearly, Votto is still letting counts run deep. And even when swinging in two-strike counts, Votto hasn’t necessarily gotten more aggressive or better at hitting the ball fair. His swing rate has risen just a couple points, and the same could be said of his in-play rate. That’s not where you can find an explanation for the whole drop-off.

The answer involves foul balls. When Votto swung with two strikes in the first half, he hit 38% fouls. That ranked him in the 39th percentile. When Votto has swung with two strikes in the second half, he’s hit 49% fouls. That ranks him in the 98th percentile, or, put differently, it puts him in second place. Votto has replaced two-strike whiffs with two-strike fouls, and there’s no penalty for a two-strike foul for a hitter. If you foul off a tough pitch, you earn the opportunity to see another pitch. Votto has fought pitches off and earned himself additional looks, and that’s how he’s maintained his sky-high walk rate while also keeping the defense on its collective toes. He’s refused to strike out, and he’s remained really good at everything else.

I don’t know why it would just click like this, and I don’t know why Votto wouldn’t have done this before, given how well it’s worked. I’m sure there’s a little bit of a hot-streak factor involved. But it’s not like there’s ever been any question that Votto is outstanding, and while there’s limited evidence that hitters overall are able to fight pitches off consistently when they need to, it makes sense that Votto could be an exception, given his almost unparalleled bat-to-ball skills and knowledge of the strike zone. At some point this year, Joey Votto didn’t want to strike out so much anymore. So he quit striking out so much. Everything else, he’s mostly maintained. You can’t say it’s mattered very much for the Reds, in the bigger picture, but at least Votto’s been able to have himself some fun.

Last September, a starting pitcher emerged who would go on to be one of the more popular under-the-radar “breakout” picks of the winter. Acquired from Miami in the Mat Latos trade, Anthony DeSclafani was a 24-year-old with middling results across his 31 starts last year, including a 4.05 ERA and a 12.2-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%). The results on their own were more than serviceable for an innings-eater type pitcher, but they weren’t exactly exciting. Until you looked at September, that is.

In September, his ERA clocked in at an unappealing 4.93, but the underlying peripherals were fantastic. He struck out 24.8% of batters while walking just 3.4% and maintained a solid 47.1% ground-ball rate — all of which left him with a 2.27 FIP for the month. A bit of bad luck in batted balls and sequencing made it possible for numbers-friendly fans to uncover what really happened with DeSclafani that month and feel like you were unearthing a great secret, because not only was DeSclafani putting on a hidden great performance, it was accompanied by the always enticing logical explanation.

Take a look at DeSclafani’s pitch-usage chart from 2015 and you’ll find that, at the end of the season, he largely scrapped his changeup and dramatically increased his curveball usage. Additionally, he decreased his reliance on the four-seamer. Great run-prevention numbers may not have initially accompanied the adjustment, but the peripherals indicated that DeSclafani had taken a step forward and could be in store for a strong 2016 campaign. And, as it turns out, that’s exactly what’s happened.

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“This is a great time to be a baseball player and have all this info,” Reds starting pitcher Dan Straily told me last month when his team came to town. Minutes later, I was talking with a member of his front office who lauded the pitcher as “maybe the most dependable” of his squad. These things are related. It’s taken all that info for the pitcher to mold himself into the useful arm that he is today.

That info has helped Straily refine not only his approach, but also the movement on his pitches and the mechanics that created them. And it helped him when things were dire. His velocity dipped into the low 80s at one point, and he was released by two teams in a one-season span. “When I lost my velo, I had to learn how to pitch,” the righty remembered. “Now that I got my velo back, I’m still pitching the same way, but with better stuff.”

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In June, I talked to Jesse Winker following a 2-for-3 game that included a double and a walk. At the time, a big-league call-up seemed almost imminent. The top outfield prospect in the Cincinnati system was performing well for Triple-A Louisville, and with the Reds in rebuild mode, Great American Ballpark loomed right around the corner.

I wrote up the interview, then decided to hold it until the call-up came. Days later, Winker hurt his wrist and missed the next three-and-a-half weeks. Upon his return, he went 20-for-50 — albeit with limited power — while, 100 miles north, the big-league club continued to swim against the tide.

August came and went, and Winker went nowhere. As Reds fans scratched their heads, he remained in Louisville where he celebrated his 23rd birthday and finished the season with a .303/.397/.394 slash line. Winker went deep just three times in 448 plate appearances — he had 13 long balls last year in Double-A — and walked and struck out an equal number of times (59).

As of today, Winker is still awaiting his first big-league call-up. Three months after it was conducted, the interview won’t wait any longer. Here is what Winker had to say following the June game.

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Winker on his game against the Syracuse Chiefs: “I didn’t know too much about their starter [Paolo Espino]. We did have a scouting report, and I was talking to Hernan Iribarren about how he likes to attack left-handed hitters, but the game kind of dictates itself. With a certain amount of outs and a certain number of guys on base, pitchers are going to attack you a certain way.

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A friend was asking a question about matchups in the coming month, and was talking about lefties and how Houston has done against lefties and maybe he should start A.J. Griffin against them and so on. I was playing along, pointing out that maybe it wasn’t a great matchup because Houston has a good lineup and they’re in a park that’s good for offense and all that. I didn’t even blink.

Of course, Griffin is a righty. No idea why we both thought he was a lefty, but we’re not alone. A quick Twitter poll — results below! — revealed Griffin as a top contender for “righty we most think is a lefty.”

Unfortunately, none of us know why we mentally mistake hands on some players. Or at least, we don’t have a quick answer to that question, other than vague references to arsenal (“crafty”), temperament (“different personalities”), or television time (“I don’t see them much”). Most responses to the poll included an “I don’t know why” of some sort.

Still, it’s something we do. And it’s sort of fascinating, because lefty starters do actually do things a little differently than righty starters — things we can actually define objectively. Which means we can apply the statistical definition of a lefty starter to the righty-starter population. And we can answer this question with stats!

So… which righty really acts the most like a lefty? Which righty is the most lefty-like? Turns out, it’s not Griffin, but the wisdom of the crowd was not far off, really.

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Excuse me there. May I have just a minute of your time? Maybe five. I know there’s a playoff race going on. I know Gary Sanchez is hitting all of the home runs and Rich Hill is back. I know the Royals are surging and the Giants are freefalling, and that’s all well and good, but would you mind if I spent some time this afternoon talking about a game played by a last-place team three weeks ago? I’m bringing it up now because I’m afraid we all missed it when it happened, and I can’t let that go on any longer. You see, since the start of June, Joey Votto’s been safe more than he’s been out, and in the midst of this ridiculous run, he had what may be the most Joey Votto game of all the Joey Votto games, and that seems like the sort of thing of which we should all take note. I’m glad I have your attention. Let’s begin.

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Just six months ago, Raisel Iglesias was everyone’s favorite starting pitcher breakout candidate for 2016. The 26-year-old Cuban, signed for seven years and $27 million by the Cincinnati Reds in 2014, was coming off an impressive rookie campaign in which he struck out more than a quarter of all batters faced as a starter while exhibiting above-average command and a knack for getting ground balls, and he only got better as the year went on. Iglesias, alongside Anthony DeSclafani and John Lamb, was perhaps the most enticing pick of a trio of young Reds starters who have all provided us a painful reminder of the fickle and painful nature of choosing pitching as a profession.

DeSclafani spent the first two months of the season on the disabled list with a strained oblique. Lamb’s experienced decline across the board. And Iglesias hasn’t made a start since April, and last week earned his first career save.

Iglesias’ status update informs us of two important developments. The first being: everyone’s favorite starting pitcher breakout candidate for 2016 has been a reliever for the last two months. That’s disappointing, because fans want their exciting young starting pitchers to be start. The bullpen is rightly viewed as a downgrade. The fact that Iglesias earned a save, though, at least suggests that he’s been effective out of the bullpen, and effective might be an understatement. In 28 relief innings this season, Iglesias has allowed just two earned runs — good for a Britton-like 0.64 ERA — while striking out nearly 30% of the batters he’s faced.

The Reds made the switch in an effort to keep Iglesias healthy by limiting his workload, and also to provide stability to a bullpen that’s still among the worst the expansion era has ever seen. Thus far, Iglesias has thrived. He’s thrived, and beyond that, he’s expressed satisfaction with his new role. In early July, Iglesias told Cincinnati reporters through a translator that he “thinks [he doesn’t] want to go back and be a starter again” and that he wants to “start thinking about continuing [his] career as a closer.” Now, that time is here, and so the Reds have an interesting decision to make.
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Exit velocity! We love it! Sorry for shouting. But we do! We love to sort the leaderboards, and we love to write articles using the information gleaned from those leaderboards. This is one right here! Beat writers love to tweet the exit velocity when a player they cover dongs a dinger, and even the folks who don’t always love the application of exit velocity in the public sphere agree that its tracking can only mean positive things for the future of our understanding of the game. Exit velocity: it’s for the people. Can you believe just a few years ago we didn’t have this stuff?

We have it now, and for as little as we have grasped about the subject, it’s intuitive that the higher the average exit velocity, the better. Hard-hit balls can go for home runs, and home runs are the best. In first place on this year’s average exit velocity leaderboard is Nelson Cruz. Good hitter. In second place is Giancarlo Stanton. Good hitter. Third place? Mark Trumbo. I’m on a word count, so I’ll stop here. You get the point. Good hitters having good seasons are hitting the ball hard, and that should surprise no one.

There’s a flip side to that leaderboard. Some bad hitters are having bad seasons and hitting the ball not-hard. The guy with the lowest average exit velocity and more than 200 balls in play is Billy Hamilton, who’s averaged just 83.3 miles per hour on his batted balls. Hamilton’s having a fine season, overall — he’s projected to finish the year right around +3.0 WAR thanks again to his elite defense and baserunning — but we’re now nearly 1,500 plate appearances into Hamilton’s career, and it’s beginning to look like the bat might wind up being more Alcides Escobar than the league-average production we all dreamed on when Hamilton broke into the league.

But that’s not going to stop me from writing about Hamilton. Because even though we might like to see what happens were he to hit the ball harder, there’s a lesson to be learned from when he hits it softly. Kudos to you if you already see where this is going.

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I’m not really in the business of piling on. We know the Reds haven’t been very good, and we knew the Reds weren’t supposed to be very good. They are openly rebuilding, and while rebuilding teams don’t get to completely neglect the big-league product, it’s not really the priority. We all know how this works. And, say, wouldn’t you know it, but since the calendar flipped to July, the Reds have actually won more games than they’ve lost! Good for them. It would be nice to see the bad teams rise perhaps quicker than they ever thought possible.

There’s just something I can’t let go by, not without calling attention to it. The Reds, overall, have been bad. They’ve been bad in large part because their pitchers have been bad. Here are the month-by-month WARs for the Reds’ collective pitching staff:

• April: -1.4 WAR
• May: -1.3
• June: -0.8
• July: +1.8
• August: +0.1

They don’t seem to add up so cleanly, but if you look at the full-season statistics, Reds pitchers have combined for -2.1 WAR. Unsurprisingly, that’s the lowest mark in baseball — the Angels are second-worst, at +3.0. It seems like the Reds might have last place sewn up. But let’s step beyond just 2016. Let’s look at forever? Here are the worst team pitching staffs since 1900, according to FanGraphs WAR and FanGraphs WAR alone:

WAR is just one measure. I know. It doesn’t get everything perfect. I know. It does do a lot more right than wrong. And according to WAR, these Reds could end up being the worst pitching staff in modern baseball history. No team yet on record has rated below replacement level. That’s where the Reds are, underwater by a couple of wins, and while July suggested they could pull themselves out of this and get a breath of fresh air, there’s work to be done. The Reds have 52 games to go, assuming they play them all. They don’t necessarily need to pitch well. They just need to pitch better, or else they could rank as the worst anyone’s seen. That’s something to avoid. That’s something to play for!

Homer Bailey has returned. That’s a plus for the Reds. Alfredo Simon is on the disabled list, and J.J. Hoover is in the minors, and those are both pluses for the Reds. Quietly, Anthony DeSclafani has been super effective. The Reds should have the arms they need. As I look, the Reds are projected the rest of the way for +3.7 pitching WAR, which would get them out of…the…red, so to speak. But if nothing else, just know what’s already happened. The Reds pitchers have been historically lousy. You might’ve suspected that to be true, but it always helps to confirm. Or, maybe, it helps nothing at all.

Seemingly every season, a baseball team scores noticeably more runs that we think they should. I’m not talking about teams that perform better than their preseason projections, but rather the teams that manage to score a lot more runs than their actual in-season numbers suggest they should. If we’re using the shorthand, I’m talking about teams who score more runs than their BaseRuns calculation supports.

Whenever you point this out regarding a specific team, you’re likely going to be met with skepticism. Some of that skepticism is very justified, as no single model (such as BaseRuns) can explain the real world perfectly. But some of the skepticism is less justified and devolves merely into a group of local fans suggesting that you don’t respect their team. At its core, this is usually going to be an argument about sequencing — or, as it’s sometimes known, clutch hitting. Is the team in question simply having a string of good timing or are they actually doing something to impact the order of their events?

History tells us that the answer is usually the former, but alternative hypotheses are always worth exploring. One of this season’s examples, the Reds, break the mold a bit. Instead of being a decent offense that’s scoring more than a decent number of runs, this year’s clutch kings are one of the worst offenses in baseball but are managing to look respectable given excellent timing.

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