The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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Continuing our Trade Targets series, here are five middle infielders who could be available at (or before) the deadline.

PLAYER: Jose Reyes
TEAM: Mets
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Giants, Reds, Brewers
CONTRACT STATUS: $11 million, free agent after the season
PROJECTED WAR: 3.3

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After a slow first month of the season – in which he hit .237/.306/.381 – Jay Bruce is absolutely on fire in the month of May. Even though Joe Pawlikowski recently wrote about the difficulty involved in evaluating Bruce’s season, we’re going to take a deeper look into Bruce’s current surge. During the month of May, Bruce has hit .337/.400/.721 with 9 home runs. There’s no doubt that Bruce has been spectacular as of late, but what (if anything) is behind Bruce’s latest surge, and is it sustainable?
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From the start, Jay Bruce has done just what every fan wants to see from a young player who just signed a contract extension. He started out on fire, going 15 for his first 30, with three doubles and four homers. Of course, a .500/.531/1.000 line wouldn’t last forever, but it put everyone at ease, especially after his .306/.376/.575 line in the second half of 2010. He has streaked and slumped a bit since then, as one might expect. After an 0-for-3 performance last night he’s down to .282/.349/.535, though those are still quite excellent numbers — a .386 wOBA, which ranks sixth among NL outfielders. If he catches fire again, he could start climbing that leaderboard again.

Only, that’s not exactly true. Yes, Bruce does have a .386 wOBA, and that does rank sixth among NL outfielders. But it took Bruce a while to get there. In fact, the streak described above is currently happening, while the slump, including that 0-for-3 performance, occurred a bit earlier in the season. It doesn’t change the end result, but it does change the narrative.

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After reaching the playoffs for the first time in fourteen seasons in 2010, the Cincinnati Reds entered this season with huge expectations. The main reason for optimism centered around the return of Edinson Volquez. Though Volquez technically pitched for the Reds last season, he was still recovering from the effects of Tommy John surgery. Finally expected to be healthy for the entire season, it looked as if the Reds finally had their ace. That hasn’t been the case, however, as Volquez has struggled mightily in his return. After only ten starts, the Reds have sent Volquez back to Triple A to see if he can work out his issues. On top of demoting their Opening Day starter, the Reds are also in the midst of a six-game losing streak. With all their recent issues, is it time to start worrying about the Reds? In a word, no.

The Reds were able to win the NL Central last season with a minimal contribution from Volquez. Due to his recovery from Tommy John, Volquez returned in late-July, and pitched only 62.2 innings for the Reds. Even if Volquez remains in the minors for the rest of 2011 – an unlikely scenario – the Reds can still contend for the division without him considering they already did it last season.

The loss of Volquez shouldn’t hurt the Reds all that much due to their strong pitching depth. As Albert Lyu chronicled before the season, the Reds had multiple starters competing for only five rotation spots. Even though Volquez and Mike Leake haven’t panned out, the Reds still have a decent four-man staff. While they haven’t announced who will take Volquez’s spot in the rotation just yet, Sam LeCure and Matt Maloney could be decent placeholders for the time being.

Their period in the rotation may be short-lived, however, as Volquez or Leake could return at any moment. The Reds voluntarily chose to remove both pitchers from the rotation due to their poor performances, not due to injury. Although they may have been demoted, they are not gone for the season. The Reds can still call upon Volquez or Leake whenever they deem it necessary.

If the Reds hope to reach the same heights as they did last season, their offense is going to have to remain strong. After finishing 1st in offensive WAR last season, the Reds have nearly kept up the pace in 2011. Instead of experiencing regression after his MVP season, Joey Votto may actually be getting better. With Brandon Phillips again turning in another fine season and Jay Bruce finally manifesting the power everyone expected, the Reds once again have a promising core of hitters. That’s true even without mentioning Drew Stubbs, who is currently experiencing a nice breakout season.

All told, there’s little reason to worry in Cincinnati. Despite the losing streak, the Reds are only 3.5 games out of first place. Since we know not to overreact to small samples, we should expect the Reds to turn things around soon. The temporary loss of Volquez shouldn’t alter our expectations, as the Reds were able to win the division with a minimal contribution from him last season. This current version of the Reds is much like the team we saw last season. Their pitching is good enough to keep them in games, but their offense (and defense) is what will ultimately propel them to a division crown. The Reds may appear more vulnerable than they did last week, but in reality little has changed.

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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