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(10-03-2020 08:13 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  

(10-02-2020 09:24 PM)Bearcatbdub Wrote:  

(10-02-2020 05:43 PM)Bearhawkeye Wrote:  

(10-02-2020 02:33 PM)Lush Wrote:  

(10-02-2020 02:05 PM)OKIcat Wrote:  On a more positive note though, the Reds did rise up and it made for an exciting final two weeks down the stretch. Getting back into the postseason after a long absence was exciting.

The problem with a small market team remains. You only get the opportunity on occasion to have starting pitching such as this. I suspect Bauer can name his price and is long gone. And the lineup will need rebuilding after such a dismal display of hitting.

The Reds will be starting over after winning nothing more than a Wild Card "sweepstakes ticket" for two games of shutout baseball. Not very satisfying for loyal, long suffering fans.

meh... sixty game season

Yeah, I'm not so sure how much rebuilding they can do offensively. Literally nobody on the team had a good year offensively. Baseball is a funny game and this 60 game season only exacerbates it. A few examples tied to the Reds:

1. Remember when the Reds had to make a call between Galvis and Jose Iglesias for this year. I think that most saw them as fairly even but preferred Galvis thinking he'd probably have a little better bat going forward. Well Galvis goes .220/.308/.404 for an OPS+ of 86 in 159 PAs while Iglesias goes .373/.400/.556 for a 160 OPS+ in 150 PAs.

2. Or how about Adam Duvall? Anybody screaming what a big mistake it was when he was traded for 3 guys the Braves were pretty much finished with? Well he clubs 18 HRs and that carries him to a 113 OPS+ which is better than he did in any season for the Reds including his All-Star season. (Good news here is that one of the guys we got was Lucas Sims who is starting to look like a keeper.)

3. Or what about last off-season when the Reds go shopping for OF with pop with hopes of getting one of the last 2 standing: Castellanos or Ozuna. Castallanos had a 153 OPS+ for Chicago last year but it was down to 102 this year for the Reds (not to mention his -0.2 WAR. Ozuna hit .241/.328/.472 and had a 109 OPS+ for the Cards last year. This year he explodes to .338/.431/.636 with an OPS+ of 175!

Maybe the Reds can swing something to upgrade at SS or C as they've tried in recent years but even that gets complicated considering our 2 best position prospects are probably a C (Stephenson) and a SS (Garcia). So I'm guessing offensively it's going to mostly be about rebounding to levels closer to what is expected of them - probably with the help of a new batting coach.

I think the batting coach this year had only simple sagely words of advice:
“Try to hit home runs.”

Great points. Some of that is who they decided on and some of that is probably who is around them in the lineup. It’s never in a vacuum. Castellanos would have likely had a much different year if he was battling behind an MVP guy in Freddie Freeman rather than a guy who is on a 2 year downswing at the end of a long career. Facing more pitching out of the stretch than the windup is never a bad thing. Having guys around you who can hit and get on base helps in ensuring you get pitches in the strike zone. Duvall batted 7th in the lineup most of the year for the Braves and the guys in front of him got on base at a decent clip. I’m sure he saw much different pitching than he would have batting 4th with nobody on base.

Sometimes it’s how they fit together. Red’s lineup was a bunch of spare parts thrown together. It’s how they do.

We've discussed before how good hitting tends to beget more good hitting and you make good points about the "how" and "why" specifically. A big part of the problem for the Reds was nobody hit good for very long. Presumably that wouldn't have held for the full 100 more games that we'd normally play in a season. Think how much different some of these guys seasons might have gone had we had Iglesias leading off and Ozuna batting 3rd or 4th with the seasons they had (for about the same cost we had Galvis and Castellanos). But we didn't and everybody had the same rules so it was incumbent upon us to make those 60 count. Maybe/hopefully next year it will go the exact opposite way.

While I'd agree that output is impacted by how skills fit together, I'm not ready to call the Reds a bunch of spare parts offensively despite how poorly they hit this year. But I'll admit to being a bit of a homer so we'll see.

I did just read C Trent's interview with Williams and it sounds like he feels a lot like I suggested he would with him not really talking up them finding offense outside the organization - shortstop being the one possible exception. He also mentioned that he thinks Castellanos will be back based upon discussions with him and that they were still looking to do something with Bauer and/or Disco.

The one semi-surprise was he also said he anticipates the whole coaching staff will be back (which presumably includes hitting coach Zinter) although he did say they haven't really had full discussions yet.