We’ve already previewed the two western divisions, the NL and the AL. Today, we move into the middle of the country, and look at perhaps the most interesting division in baseball.

The Projected Standings

It’s a three team race at the top, with a couple of teams not quite willing to rebuild but also probably not good enough to contend. Let’s go team by team.

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“If you don’t get on base, then you suck. That’s basically what they’re saying.” So said Brandon Phillips to USA Today Sports on Tuesday, in a vehement defense of the way that he plays baseball. And to be sure, there are plenty of people who have said this (more or less). I cut my sabermetric teeth on Gary Huckabay and Joe Sheehan proclaiming that “OBP is life. Life is OBP.” But there are plenty of ways to skin a cat, and not focusing on on-base percentage has worked out just fine for Phillips. In fact, it’s worked out better for him than most players in baseball history.

In the FanGraphs glossary entry for on-base percentage, the rule of thumb for an average OBP is listed as .320. With a .319 career OBP, Phillips is basically right at that average mark. And that is a touch unfair to him. During his time in Cleveland, before he put it all together, he logged a paltry .246 OBP in 462 plate appearances. In his time in Cincy, his OBP has been .325, just a shade over average. He has had an OBP above league average in three of his nine seasons in Cincy. Last season, when he posted a paltry .306 OBP — his worst in his nine years in Cincy — it was still better than the average National League second baseman. Of the 11 NL second basemen who compiled at least 400 PA last season, Emilio Bonifacio, Kolten Wong, Aaron Hill and Jedd Gyorko all posted worse OBP’s than did Phillips. In other words, while Phillips isn’t the OBP messiah, he’s far from a pariah.

In fact, among his average or worse OBP peer group, Phillips is a top-20 player all time:

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Tony Cingrani is going to the Reds bullpen, having already been ruled out of the Cincinnati starting competition. If that’s a surprise, it’s only because after they shed Alfredo Simon and Mat Latos over the winter, the team might now actually start the season with one (or both!) of Paul Maholm and Jason Marquis in the rotation. As Dave Cameron laid out yesterday, that’s absolutely no way for a team on the fringes of contention to be operating.

Cingrani isn’t pleased about it, but let’s be honest and admit that he seemed like a future reliever from the day he set foot in the big leagues. In a short cameo at the end of 2012, he threw 90% fastballs. In 104.1 innings in 2013, he threw 81% fastballs, trying desperately to find a useable second pitch. Last year, he got that down to 73%, but he also missed a considerable portion of the season with a shoulder injury, not pitching at all after June 19.

Or, put another way: Read the rest of this entry »

Over the winter, the Reds remade their starting rotation, trading away both Mat Latos and Alfredo Simon, getting younger and cheaper players back in return for a pair of arms headed into their walk years. However, they declined to go into a full rebuild, keeping both Johnny Cueto and Mike Leake despite the fact that they’re also pending free agents; the Reds wanted to take one more shot at winning with their current core, especially given that they’re hosting the All-Star Game this year.

Now, the Reds actually pulling off this contend-while-kinda-rebuilding plan seems like a bit of a longshot. We currently have them projected for 75 wins, last in the NL Central, with just a 2.7% chance of winning the division and a 5.9% chance of capturing one of the two Wild Card spots. And it’s not like we’re out on a limb here; Bovada has the Reds over/under at 77.5. Baseball Prospectus is slightly more optimistic, pegging them at 79 wins, matching Clay Davenport’s projected win total.

So, in general, the pre-season forecasts peg the Reds as something like a 75 to 80 win team, meaning they need to find an extra dozen or so wins in either surprisingly strong performances or sequencing luck in order to sneak into a playoff spot. It definitely is possible, especially if the team gets strong bounce back performances from Jay Bruce and Joey Votto, but the Reds are going to need to get a few breakthrough performances from unexpected sources. When you’re starting from this position and trying to win, you need to take some gambles and have them pay off.

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Last year, Cincinnati’s two middle of the order bats both had back leg injuries that robbed them of much of their power. Because of the complicated nature of swing mechanics, maybe it’s not surprising that both sluggers were affected differently by left leg injuries. But they did suffer.

“I saw a lot of ground balls to the right side of the infield results last year and I had a difficult time hitting within my typical profile — power to left field,” said Joey Votto this week in Arizona. “The pain was a limiting factor.”

When pushed to describe exactly how his left quad strain affected his swing, Votto spoke of a lean in his stance. “Being able to lean heavily on my back leg and be able to rotate the knee through and also lean at an angle” was important to the slugger — “I think that I buy myself a little extra space on the back side of the strike zone by being able to lean.”

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The Cincinnati Reds face an uphill battle in 2015. The St. Louis Cardinals are heavy favorites. The Pittsburgh Pirates brought back most of its playoff team and could see improvement with a young roster. The Cubs have made improvements, and even the Brewers bring back many players who put them in first place for most of 2014. The odds of the Reds winning the division are not very good. The FanGraphs Playoff Odds are up, and the Reds have just a 3.0% chance of winning the division. That means out of 10,000 simulations, the Reds won the division around 300 times. Focusing in on the 3% chance side, it is possible to create scenarios where the Reds can win the division.

FanGraphs Playoff Odds are based on ZiPS, Steamer, and the Depth Chart Projections. Those projections are not very kind to the Reds. The projections currently have the Reds at 75 wins, last in the National League Central. For a frame of reference, here are the top five teams per WAR according to those projections.

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Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.

Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.

And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.

If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.

Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Oakland / Pittsburgh / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Texas / Washington.

Batters
For a club that was compelled to trade some useful major-league pieces this offseason, the Cincinnati Reds feature a remarkably competent and seemingly competitive group of hitters. Depending on how one chooses to determine such a thing, the star of team (per ZiPS) is either Todd Frazier (605 PA, 3.6 WAR) or Joey Votto (468 PA, 3.4 WAR) — the former for his overall WAR projection; the latter, for his projected WAR per plate appearance. It’s not surprising to find something less than full complement of games forecast for Votto: two of his last three seasons have been interrupted by injury.

So far as weak links, however, there’s little to be found among Cincinnati’s starting eight field players. The batting projections for Zack Cozart (.282 wOBA), Billy Hamilton (.310 wOBA), and Brandon Phillips (.303 wOBA) are all below average, but each of those players is also projected to save five or more runs at a position already on the more challenging side of the defensive spectrum.

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Now that football’s officially over for a while, countless sports fans are going to look ahead to the baseball season, with 2015 promising to be The Year Of Mookie Betts. This comes on the heels of 2014, which at one time promised to be The Year Of Billy Hamilton. And, to be fair, it was in a sense The Half-Year Of Billy Hamilton, but then Hamilton fell on harder times, losing a Rookie-of-the-Year race he once had all but locked up. Hamilton is now presumably older and presumably wiser, and he remains a player of unusual intrigue, along with being an important player for a Reds team that steadfastly refuses to tear down and start over.

Hamilton, naturally, has things to improve on. Every player in baseball has things to improve on — Clayton Kershaw has things to improve on — but Hamilton’s things are bigger than Kershaw’s things. Kershaw, for example, might want to polish his changeup a little more. Or maybe not. It’ll cross his mind. Hamilton, meanwhile, wants to not suck at hitting. His own manager has some ideas.

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The Reds have officially given four years and at least $28 million to Devin Mesoraco. The contract buys out what would’ve been Mesoraco’s first year of free agency, and this is a contract that would’ve looked a little weird to an observer a year ago. Through 2013, in the majors, Mesoraco owned a 70 wRC+, and against same-handed pitchers, it was a lowly 53. Before last season, Mesoraco was pretty much all potential. And then he tapped into that potential.

He wound up with a 147 wRC+. Against righties, 145. It’s not exactly new news that Mesoraco enjoyed a breakout season, and I’ve even written about this before, back in August. Everything from then remains valid, but I wanted to revisit Mesoraco’s season, to show in greater detail where he made adjustments, and where those adjustments paid off. Though Mesoraco’s remains far from a household name, he just completed one of the great breakout seasons of our time.

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