Archive for Reds

2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Candidate: Davey Johnson

Davey Johnson
Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

This post is part of a series covering the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, covering candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. For an introduction to the ballot, see here. The eight candidates will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024, along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

2024 Contemporary Baseball Candidate: Manager Davey Johnson
Manager G W-L W-L% G>.500 Playoffs Pennants WS
Davey Johnson 2443 1372-1071 .562 301 6 1 1
AVG HOF Mgr* 3662 1968-1674 .540 294 7 6 2.6
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
* Average based on the careers of 21 enshrined AL/NL managers from the 20th and 21st centuries

Davey Johnson

Like Billy Martin before him, albeit with far less drinking and drama, Davey Johnson was renowned for his ability to turn teams around. He posted a winning record in his first full season at four of his five managerial stops and took four of the five franchises that he managed to the playoffs at least once. But after six-plus seasons managing the Mets, he never lasted even three full seasons in any other job and never replicated the success he had in piloting the 1986 Mets to 108 wins and a World Series victory. Read the rest of this entry »


Job Posting: Cincinnati Reds – Multiple Trainee Openings

Baseball Analytics Trainee

Department: Baseball Analytics
Reports To: Baseball Analytics Leadership
Job Purpose: Assist Baseball Operations decision-making through the analysis of various sources of baseball information. The specific day-to-day responsibilities of this position will vary depending on current needs from our stakeholders along with the baseball calendar but will revolve around analyzing various sources of baseball data.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Learn and communicate analytical products across departments.
  • Build upon analytic initiatives by creating new statistical models, applications, and reports.
  • Introductory level player evaluation, including scouting and writing reports on assignment.
  • Iterate on existing products and processes already established by the Baseball Analytics Department.
  • Present analysis and research results to stakeholders with various levels of analytic knowledge.
  • Conduct ad-hoc research projects when requested.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

  • Bachelor’s degree or pursuit of degree or equivalent experience in a quantitative field that emphasizes technical and analytical problem-solving skills such as statistics, mathematics, engineering, and/or economics preferred.
  • Understanding of advanced statistical techniques is strongly preferred.
  • Demonstrated experience and proficiency with Database querying (e.g., SQL) and statistical software (e.g., R, Python) is strongly preferred.
  • Ability to learn other programming languages as needed.
  • Requirements:
  • Spoken and written fluency in English.
  • Willing to relocate to Cincinnati Ohio.

Experience, Education and Licensure:

  • Adhere to Cincinnati Reds Organization Policies and Procedures.
  • Act as a role model within and outside the Cincinnati Reds Organization.
  • Perform duties as workload necessitates.
  • Demonstrate flexible and efficient time management and ability to prioritize workload.
  • Meet department productivity standards.
  • Willingness to learn. Open to new methodologies.

Expectations:

  • Adhere to Cincinnati Reds Organization Policies and Procedures.
  • Act as a role model within and outside the Cincinnati Reds Organization.
  • Perform duties as workload necessitates.
  • Demonstrate flexible and efficient time management and ability to prioritize workload.
  • Meet department productivity standards.
  • Willingness to learn. Open to new methodologies.

Technical Questionnaire:
The Baseball Analytics Department of the Cincinnati Reds is requiring all applicants to complete a technical questionnaire hosted on Coderbyte to be considered for this role. The technical assessment has a time limit of 2 hours. Many prior applicants complete the assessment in 1 hour.
The URL to complete the required technical assessment is listed below (Please copy/paste into a new tab):
https://coderbyte.com/sl-candidate?promo=cincinnatireds-sqyjd:sql-assessment–4p1fe5jdfc

Equal Opportunity Statement:
The Cincinnati Reds are an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is the policy of the Cincinnati Reds to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion or creed, sex, age, military or veteran status, disability, citizenship status, marital status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by law.

Disclaimer:
The statements herein are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the employee in this position. The above description is only a summary of the typical functions of the job, not an exhaustive or comprehensive list of all possible job responsibilities, tasks, and duties. Additional duties, as assigned, may become part of the job function. The duties listed above is, therefore, a partial representation not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of a person in this position.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.


Baseball Operations Trainee

Department: Baseball Operations
Reports To: Director, Baseball Operations
Job Purpose: Provide support to all members of the Baseball Operations Department in a wide range of both administrative and baseball-related tasks and projects.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Perform qualitative and quantitative research and analysis in support of salary arbitration, roster management, player evaluation, player development, amateur draft, and trade deadline efforts.
  • Introductory level player evaluation, including scouting and writing reports on assignment.
  • Assist in preparation of advance scouting documents and video for players and coaches during season.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

  • Independent judgment and ability to multitask is required to plan, prioritize, and organize diversified workload.
  • Strong work ethic and willingness to work long, flexible hours including weekends and holidays.
  • High level of attention to detail.
  • Must be trustworthy and comfortable with managing sensitive information.
  • High level of interpersonal skills and be able to effectively communicate with wide range of departments, seniority levels and personalities.
  • Understanding of typical baseball data structures, plus knowledge of current baseball research and traditional baseball statistics and strategy.

Experience, Education and Licensure:

  • Bachelor’s degree or pursuit of degree or equivalent experience in a quantitative field, such as statistics, mathematics, engineering, and/or economics preferred.
  • Experience playing/working in college and/or professional baseball/softball preferred.
  • Demonstrated experience and proficiency with:
  • Database querying (e.g., SQL) and statistical software (e.g., R, Python) preferred.
  • BATS video system preferred.
  • Microsoft Office Suite (e.g., Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) required.
  • Requirements:
  • Spoken and written fluency in English.
  • Ability to travel within the United States and internationally.
  • Willing to relocate.

Expectations:

  • Adhere to Cincinnati Reds Organization Policies and Procedures.
  • Act as a role model within and outside the Cincinnati Reds Organization.
  • Perform duties as workload necessitates.
  • Demonstrate flexible and efficient time management and ability to prioritize workload.
  • Meet department productivity standards.
  • Willingness to learn. Open to new methodologies.

Equal Opportunity Statement:
The Cincinnati Reds are an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is the policy of the Cincinnati Reds to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion or creed, sex, age, military or veteran status, disability, citizenship status, marital status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by law.

Disclaimer:
The statements herein are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the employee in this position. The above description is only a summary of the typical functions of the job, not an exhaustive or comprehensive list of all possible job responsibilities, tasks, and duties. Additional duties, as assigned, may become part of the job function. The duties listed above is, therefore, a partial representation not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of a person in this position.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Cincinnati Reds.


For These Teams, Letting the Kids Play Has Paid Off

Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

The rookies took the spotlight this past Saturday in Baltimore, as the Orioles battled the Rays and clinched their first playoff berth since 2016 via an 8-0 victory. Leading the way on the offensive side was 22-year-old Gunnar Henderson, who led off the first inning with a first-pitch single off Tyler Glasnow and came around to score the game’s first run, then added a two-run homer in the second and an RBI single in the fourth, helping to stake rookie starter Grayson Rodriguez to a 5-0 lead. The 23-year-old righty turned in the best start of his brief big league career, spinning eight shutout innings while striking out seven and allowing just five baserunners. A day later, when the Orioles beat the Rays in 11 innings to reclaim the AL East lead, a trio of rookies — Shintaro Fujinami, Yennier Cano, and DL Hall — combined to allow just one hit and one unearned run over the final three frames.

Earlier this month, colleague Chris Gilligan highlighted the contributions of this year’s rookie class. With just under four weeks to go in the regular season at that point, rookie pitchers and position players had combined to produce more WAR than all but three other classes since the turn of the millennium. Collectively they’re now second only to the Class of 2015 (more on which below), and since the publication of that piece, four teams besides the Orioles, all heavy with rookie contributions, have made headway in the playoff races. The Dodgers clinched the NL West for the 10th time in 11 years on Saturday, while the Mariners and Diamondbacks are clinging to Wild Card spots, and the Reds are in the thick of the NL race as well. Read the rest of this entry »


TJ Friedl Has Hustled His Way Into a Breakout Season

David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

Baseball players who eschew the typical conventions of major league success hold a special place in my heart. As much as we sit in awe of those gifted with the imposing stature of an Aaron Judge or a Giancarlo Stanton, there’s something particularly appealing about the guys who seemingly have to fight to compete in the same league and manage to find a way to do so. One of the wonders of a sport like baseball is that there are myriad ways to contribute – as fans, it’s fun to marvel at those who get creative.

On a Cincinnati Reds roster full of pleasant surprises, TJ Friedl doesn’t stand out so much as he blends in. At 28 years old, he’s one of the oldest regulars in an exceptionally young lineup, this despite being in his first full season in the big leagues. Depending on how you set the plate appearance threshold, he’s not the Reds’ best hitter by any individual metric, nor is he the fastest runner or the flashiest defender – there’s an ultra-athletic 21-year-old phenom with the league’s fastest sprint speed and strongest infield arm that takes those distinctions. But by making his presence felt at the plate, on the bases, and in the field day in and day out, Friedl has managed to be the most productive player by WAR on a team that sits one game out of a playoff spot on September 21. That’s a generous way to frame his 3.4-WAR season, but it’s also an accurate one – Friedl has been a versatile everyday contributor, and there’s a case to be made that he’s been the Reds’ most important player in what has been a pretty important year for the franchise. Read the rest of this entry »


Finding the Best Bunters in Baseball

TJ Friedl
The Cincinnati Enquirer

In Tuesday’s missive on league-wide bunt tendencies, I ran out of time and space before I could single out some of this season’s standout individual bunters for special attention. As in every collection of ballplayers, there are a few outliers who skew the sample. To continue the metaphor that a bunt is baseball’s mid-range jump shot, these are your LaMarcus Aldridges. Read the rest of this entry »


The Ohio Teams Actually Did Something Productive

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

The Angels surprised everyone on Tuesday when they placed six veterans from their big league roster on waivers. Four of the players — Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, Randal Grichuk, and Dominic Leone — were recently acquired by the Angels at the trade deadline, while the final two — Hunter Renfroe and Matt Moore — had been picked up last offseason. The Yankees followed suit by placing center fielder Harrison Bader on waivers. With waiver claim priority going from the team with the worst record to the best, the teams at the back end of the playoff races got first dibs. The Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds, two teams that would miss the playoffs if the season ended today, scooped up five of these seven players, with the Mariners grabbing a sixth in Leone. Only Grichuk went unclaimed. Carlos Carrasco, José Cisnero, and Mike Clevinger also joined the waiver wire without attracting any interest.

The Guardians were the most active team, adding Giolito, López, and Moore. Giolito was one of the bigger names traded at the deadline, and the Angels thought enough of him at the time to give up Edgar Quero, our 51st-ranked prospect, and former second-rounder Ky Bush in order to bring him and López to LA for one last-gasp attempt to grab a playoff spot. Giolito was a disaster for the Angels. His ERA and FIP were both near seven, and he only managed quality starts in two of his six attempts. López fared somewhat better, but was rather adventure-prone, only throwing a clean 1-2-3 inning once in 13 games for the Halos. Moore had a solid year in Los Angeles, but he can be fairly tricky to use, as he doesn’t have the typical profile of a lefty reliever, with his changeup and his knuckle-curve significantly tougher for righties to hit than lefties these days. Read the rest of this entry »


Sunday Notes: Charlie Morton Will Decide When it’s Time To Go Home

Charlie Morton just keeps chugging along. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, and in his 17th big-league season, the right-hander is 12-10 with a 3.54 ERA over 24 starts with the Atlanta Braves. His most recent outing was especially impressive. Relying heavily on his knee-buckling bender, but also topping out at 96.9 mph with his heater, he dominated the New York Yankees to the tune of six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts.

How much longer can he continue to defy Father Time and excel against baseball’s best hitters?

“I don’t think about that,” Morton replied in response to that question. “I think about, ‘When am I going to go home?’ I always thought the game was going to dictate when I went home. If you look at my career, there was no reason why I wouldn’t think that. There was no reason to think that I was going to start having the best years of my career at age 33, or that my best years would be in my late 30s. There was no reason to think I would still be throwing the ball like I am now. It would have been illogical.”

Morton’s career has indeed followed an unforeseeable path. From 2008-2016, playing primarily with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he went 46-71 with a 4.54 ERA over 161 starts. Since his 2017 age-33 season, he has gone 82-40 with a 3.54 ERA over 185 starts. Morphing from “Ground Chuck” into more of a power pitcher played a major role in the turnaround, but whatever the reason, Morton went from mediocre to a mainstay in frontline rotations. Since his transformation, only six pitchers have started more games, and only two (Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer) have been credited with more wins. Read the rest of this entry »


Andrew Abbott Is Living the High Life

Andrew Abbott

The Reds are on the verge of their first playoff appearance since 2020 and their first real playoff appearance since 2013, when they lost the loudest baseball game in the history of Pittsburgh. (I go back and forth on whether 2020 counts as a real postseason, depending on what’s expedient for my argument. In this case, I think you have to score at least one run for it to count as a playoff appearance.) And in pursuit of that end, the Reds’ ownership and front office have elected… not to send reinforcements. They traded for Sam Moll at the deadline, but that’s it. The Reds are more relevant than they’ve been in a decade, and this poor team is getting Siege of Jadotville’d. Water is running low, and help is not coming.

So it’s all up to you, Andrew Abbott. Read the rest of this entry »


Overnight Trade Roundup: Athletics, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Reds, and Royals

Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

When trades occur that aren’t quite big enough to merit their own post, we sometimes compile our analysis into a compendium like this, where we touch on a number of transactions at one time. In this dispatch, I’ll cover the Reds’ acquisition of Sam Moll from Oakland, the Cubs’ trade for Jose Cuas from Kansas City, and the Diamondbacks’ trade for Jace Peterson, also from Oakland.

While the two teams tilted at Wrigley, the Cubs and Reds added interesting relief options to their managers’ toolkits. The Reds traded hard-throwing prospect Joe Boyle to the A’s for lefty Sam Moll and international pool space, while the Cubs traded outfielder Nelson Velázquez to the Royals for sidearm righty Jose Cuas. Read the rest of this entry »


The 2023 Replacement-Level Killers: Designated Hitter

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

With the trade deadline just a day away, at last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, making exceptions here and there, but for the designated hitters, I’ve lowered that to zero, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the second full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, five are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, and 10 are at 1.0 or above. DHs as a group have hit .242/.321/.419 for a 102 wRC+; that last figure is up one point from last year. This year, we’re seeing a greater number teams invest more playing time in a single DH; where last year there were three players who reached the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five, and the same is true at the 400-PA threshold (on pace for nine this year, compared to seven last year) and 300-PA threshold (on pace for 15, compared to 12 last year). That said, many of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »