Why I take Bailey over Chapman… for now at least

There is a raging debate in Reds land that involves 2 groups mainly. Group 1 absolutely can’t stand Homer Bailey and would rather have anyone but him as the 5th starter. Group 2 basically thinks that Chapman should either start or close for the Reds due to money and that he throws hard. The combining of these 2 groups creates something I find really hard to handle in a debate mainly because it’s all based off someone’s opinion. I don’t have a problem with either of these 2 sides it’s just incredibly hard to hold a meaningful debate when it’s driven by trying to prove someone else’s opinion wrong.

Dusty Baker actually said this

I normally want to have some substance to these blog postings but this has to be pointed out.

Source:

“He’s been working on it,” Baker said. “He’s been working on it ever since he got here. It just takes a couple of hits to get the confidence in it. I don’t know what it is but guys who are new to bunting, if they make an out bunting, they feel like they wasted an at-bat. Meanwhile, they’re hitting .250. They’ve got a 75 percent chance of making an out.”

That’s right everyone the Reds major league manager thinks a player gets out 75% of the time if their batting average is .250. Holy shit, I can’t be the only person embarrassed that my favorite team has a manager that has absolutely no clue what On-Base Percentage is.

It’s a good thing Dusty Baker is just a manager, because if he was a doctor he would probably still use leeches as a viable procedure.

Payroll with Votto in 2014+

Lots of people have been saying the Reds really have no chance of keeping Votto after 2013. That’s pretty easy and accurate to say, but I really want to show why they can’t keep him with out totally destroying their payroll.

Why I’m iffy and optimistic on Ludwick

It’s hard to get worked up about anything involving a player on a 1 year deal, that is unless that player is really really awful at everything he does, such as Edgar Renteria. That said Ryan Ludwick is a guy that makes me want to throw my statistical views of things out the window.

Silly numbers are silly

So news of the Reds signing Ryan Madson broke tonight. So now I’m going to post what I like to call stat sex. Excuse me while I shoot them at you.

Hypothetical Heisey

I’ve been seeing a lot of Reds fans and media guys acting as if Chris Heisey’s numbers last year could just be doubled and get you what he would do over a full season. I could go through the hassle and try to predict his RBI’s, and runs scored but honestly that’s just pointless because you never know how the game plays out. You can’t predict that he will hit a certain way during a handful of limited AB’s and how many of those guys that might be on base might actually score unless you have way too much spare time. I’ll leave that to Zips. For the sake of just trying to project what he would do over 600 PA hits wise next year I will do my best here.

Dumpster Diving Rankings

In my opinion the Reds only need to land 1 strike out relief pitcher for me to be pretty comfortable with the potential 25 man roster. Even still if they didn’t add that guy, it’s Kerry Wood btw, I would still be fine with it.

Now the Reds are in the stage of adding minor league free agents and potential 25th man roster types. Here is how I rank them as potential fits for the Reds.