Matt Garza probably thought he was through the sixth inning of Tuesday’s game against the Reds when Miguel Cairo stepped into the batters box. He definitely thought he was after Cairo waved at a slider in the dirt with two strikes. But then all of this happened. In the box score and the play logs, it goes down as a simple dropped third strike, but clearly there is more to the story. Let’s break down perhaps the most “Chicago Cubs” play of the season so far.

Thanks to the commenters drew and Rick for pointing out a rule that I missed. Check out an update after the conclusion of the original story.

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Yesterday, in a game against the Houston Astros, Aroldis Chapman entered the game in the top of the 8th inning and faced four batters; he walked three of them and hit the other. That leaves Chapman with a league-leading 11.37 walks per nine innings, 16 walks and two hit batsmen in 12.2 innings. In his 15 innings last year (including the playoffs) he walked just five batters and hit one.

Obviously these are tiny samples of innings, but going from three walks per nine to over 11 is alarming. His BIS-reported Zone% is down from 43% last year to 38% this year. Here are the locations of his fastballs to right-handed batters in 2010 and 2011 to see where he is missing:

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The One Night Only game previews for this weekend will appear at 3pm ET. In the meantime, what follows concerns one of the starters for today’s only afternoon game — Edinson Volquez of the Cincinnati Reds (who play in Chicago at 2:20pm ET).

As any member of his eponymous support group will tell you, Cincinnati Red starter Edinson Volquez is an enigma.

On the one hand, the 27-year-old features a fastball that sits at about 94 mph, a whiff-making changeup, the ability to induce grounders at above-average rates, and an overall swinging-strike percentage that generally places among the league’s best. (The 11.6 SwStr% he presently sports is eighth-highest out of 113 qualified pitchers.)

On the other hand, there are glaring — almost tragic — flaws. Reds fans and Volquez’s fantasy owners are likely acquainted with the righty’s first-inning struggles this season. Whether the product of randomness or something more specific than that, Volquez has been miserable in the first, allowing more than twice as many runs in that inning (14 total thus far) than in all the 27.1 frames he’s pitched in innings two through six combined (just six runs allowed). His defense-independent stats back this up: Volquez has a FIP of about 13.90 in his six first innings compared to a ca. 4.10 FIP in all the other innings he’s pitched after the first.

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Last year, Joey Votto put up the kind of year that is hard to live up to, winning the NL MVP with a monster +7.4 win season and carrying the Reds to the NL Central title. He hit .324/.424/.600 and was essentially Pujolsian throughout the summer. He hit for average, hit for power, took his walks, and stole 16 bases to boot. If you wanted to find a flaw in his game, you’d have to nitpick at things, and maybe you’d start with his slightly elevated strikeout rate, which suggested that he probably couldn’t keep hitting .320+ while racking up 100 whiffs per year.

So, rather than watch his average regress, Votto has apparently decided to just do away with the strikeouts instead. Through the first ten games of the season, Votto has come to the plate 46 times, but struck out on only four occasions. While the sample is obviously too small to draw any firm conclusions, the zone data suggests that pitchers are being far more careful with Votto this year, and he’s adjusted quickly to being pitched around.

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After being ousted by the recent NL powerhouse Philadelphia Phillies in three NLDS games, Reds fans may be left wondering “what if?”. But 15 postseason-less and nine losing seasons later, the city of Cincinnati should be proud of their ballclub and can be assured that the organization is in good hands. The future has finally arrived at the Great American Ball Park while years of whiffing on player development appear to be over. GM Walt Jocketty has been able to anchor both the homegrown talent he inherited in 2008 and the talent the team drafted and acquired under his rule. Manager Dusty Baker received a two-year extension and will lead a team of seasoned veterans and promising young players, favorites for another NL Central crown.

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