Ennder

Urias slugged .600 last year in AAA, not sure how that is no power. I was never sold on Arcia because he never showed any ability to drive the ball and didn't ever show he could take a walk. Urias has shown both of those skills even it was more doubles driven when was in his teens.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/reds-slugger-eugenio-suarez-undergoes-shoulder-surgery-after-injury-in-swimming-pool/ If this lingers at all my guess is Moustakas has to work out at 3B in spring training when he really should be getting reps at 2B.

I get what you are saying but the reality is most teams don't have very good options past like starter #3. Most teams do not have deep proven rotations. Miller could have found quite a few other teams that would give him a path to playing time if somehow he is good.

I don't think this will happen at least in the first half of the season. They will want to ease Knebel back into things. I also think that Hader will push back on the idea because he seems to feel that the reason he isn't getting the money he wants this year is because he didn't have the saves some others did.

Has anyone said the Reds are clear favorites on this site? Not being snarky, I don't remember anyone saying that. The specific post I think he is referring too had this following quote very early in it and what caused most of the Reds discussion lately. Followed by this. That is why that post got out of hand, not because of people saying the Reds can't contend.

This just isn't a fair way to look at a season. You can pull out their worst 21 game stretch and it makes it look like they were one of the better teams in baseball too. They had two different 1-7 stretches during the year and two different 1-6 stretches. They just didn't happen to be back to back. Teams are going to have streaks, you can't just pull them out and say that is the only reason they did well.

If those people said the Reds were contenders they probably would get a different response. Instead they are saying the Reds were clear favorites and then insulted anyone who could think otherwise, all without adding any sort of reasoning for it to back up the opinion. Those are two very different things. I think the NL Central is going to be a giant clump this year with the Pirates feeding everyone wins. Some team will play better than expected, some team will get nailed by the injury bug. But I don't think any of the top 4 teams really projects to be any better than each other. There isn't any sort of clear separation. So for me yes the Brewers have done enough. I wish they would sign one more starter but it isn't like you can't find one during the season if you need to most of the time.

According to FanGraphs the Reds got 0.5 WAR out of 2B/LF combined in 2019. Nick & Moose combined for 5.6 fWAR/5.9 bWAR in 2019. So the Reds likely have added about 5-6 wins for 32 million bucks in 2020. Fair enough, I was wrong here. I didn't realize just how much their scrub backups dragged down Winker and Diedrich who both had positive seasons. I had only looked at the ZiPs projections for what was replaced so I was not expecting them to be so poor last year at those spots. I was expecting it to be more like 2-3 WAR. Some people seem to think it is more like 8 or 9 from what I can tell.

How many wins do people think Castellanos and Moustakas are worth over what the Reds put on the field last year assuming they are both healthy and productive? I think some posters are going to give a number that is at least double what the reality is if not triple. I think that is the core of how different people think about these moves.

I just think people don't look at new players realistically. Castellanos is a nice signing for the Reds but he is replacing someone that was projected to be roughly a 2 WAR player. Mouse is a great guy to have at 2B but they got pretty much Mouses stats from Dietrich last year for half a season, extrapolate him to mouses PA and he was just as good. These are upgrades but they are 1 or 2 WAR here, 1 or 2 there. It takes a lot to get from 75 to 90 when most of your upgrades are 1 or 2 WAR. They probably downgraded at SS. It is really going to come down to which rotation the Reds get. Take the best of what this bunch has done over the past 3 years and it looks like one of the better rotation in the NL and they probably make the playoffs, take the worst they have done in the past 2 years and it is a below average rotation. What is going to show up? Probably something in between which means that mid 80s wins and pray for a little luck to get in. No way to know. I will say this though. I look at that Reds team and I see a realistic path to the playoffs, that hasn't been the case for the past few years. It no longer would be a surprise if they make it. I just don't think you can just pencil them in as the favorites.

I don't usually respond to bulldogboy because I only see his posts when people quote him but I'll bite on this one. The Reds rotation has a lot of variance to it as well. Every one of the pitchers in their rotation has had a FIP over 4 in one of the past 2 seasons. Every one of them except Miley has had an ERA+ under 100 in one of their past 2 years. That could be a very good rotation but it also could be no better than the Brewers. These guys aren't locks of any sort.

You wouldn't have made that deal right now though right? We already have too many OF, where would Castellanos have played? He's like a 1 win upgrade over our current 1B if you are thinking there. Not spending that type of money for that. I mean I could see doing it instead of Garcia, but not after it.

I mean projection systems still don't have them as a clear favorite so I think that is projecting a little extra on them. They are right in the same range as everyone else now. Making up 15 games in the standings takes a lot more than people realize.

Most of their deals make sense though. There is a chance that the pieces just don't fit together but there is a chance that it works too. I think a lot depends on Trevor Bauer. If they get the ace version of him they could be scary. Thing is he has only shown that version once. So strange to see a pitcher with that long of a track record with only a single season under his career ERA line.

Didn't seem sure on contract yet. Gonna be an interesting season in the Central. Not sure how he fits in, kind of like our Avisail signing.

Reds and Brewers both have a lot of goofy players that could go either way. Guys like Sogard who has been really good twice and just awful once, who knows what he is going to be this season. Projection systems are going to have large error bands for both of those teams.

Lauer has 52 starts over the past 2 years, that is definitely a proven major league starter. Lindblom is trickier but he has thrown 363 IP over the past 2 seasons. We may not get amazing stats out of him but you can be pretty sure he is going to pitch a full season. Not like any of the guys we had last year were sure things either. As far as filling up all of the innings we need to fill this rotation is definitely more proven than last years was for me at least. I was very uncomfortable starting last year with 3 completely unproven rookies in the rotation. I do not feel like that at all this year.

Lindblom and Lauer are way more proven than Burnes or Peralta were. Woodruff is obviously way more proven in 2020 than he was in 2019. In 2019 you had 3 pretty proven guys and 3 complete unknowns. In 2020 you have 4 pretty proven guys and two somewhat unknowns. Then the next couples names in the list are the same only they have doubled their experience going into to 2020 than what they had in 2019.

I am a lot more confident in the guys going into 2020 than I was in 2019. 2019 was completely unproven guys who were always going to be on pretty strict innings limits. Maybe there isn't as much upside but I feel more confident in the floors. I would still love to see one more starter signed.

It is changing rapidly as well. The game is trending way younger than it used to. Hitters are a risk starting around age 31 now, they used to be a pretty solid bet into at least their mid 30s.

Search when does ERA become meaningful on the internet and you'll find tons of studies. It takes roughly 500 IP for ERA to actually mean something, it never reaches it in a single year much less a 40 IP sample. It also never truly becomes meaningful because after 500 IP you aren't the same pitcher you used to be. It is not a stat that tells how good a pitcher is. To give you a super easy example of using 40 IP. You take two pitchers who both are exactly as skilled as each other, each throws 39 1/3 innings with 15 ER. They both load the bases with 2 outs and are removed from the game. Pitcher A's RP gives up a grand slam HR, pitcher B's RP strikes the guy out. For the season Pitcher A has an ERA of 4.05 ERA, pitcher B has a 3.38. Without either of them actually doing anything at all differently one of them ends the season with an ERA 0.66 higher than the other. You may say that is an extreme case but stranded runners like this makes a huge difference for pitchers every year as does BABIP, variance in personal LOB, when they happen to give up HR, quality of opponent faced etc. Looking at Houser more closely what you see is once he breaks 50 pitches he starts to give up a ton of HR's and that seems to be the biggest issue. I don't know if that is something fixable, just a small sample, a problem with his pitch mix etc. The samples are probably too small to judge that from stats, it is more of a scouting thing. It probably comes down to whether or not he can develop a 3rd pitch that is a positive. Right now he is fastball/sinker and everything else was negative in value. Those samples are really small to try to judge with as well.

ERA is a completely worthless stat in those small sample sizes, the ERA difference means nothing at all about Houser. I don't have the time to look at the splits but at least try to look at something that has some sort of meaning in a small sample, ERA is just about the worst thing you could use.

Nobody has said the Reds can't be a good team, they just aren't assuming it is going to happen just because they sign a mix of free agents. They still almost all played better than expectations last year and still only managed 75 wins. Even if they improve by 10 wins they aren't even competing yet, they have to improve by 15-20 wins. It is certainly a possibility but it isn't a given.

Yeah I agree with this. It isn't about Jeter at all. The voting for this award has been a joke for a long time and shouldn't be held up as a defense for continuing to be bad. The guy who didn't vote for Ripken should lose their vote, they are not taking it seriously or are putting their own agenda over the process. Same with Jeter. Get rid of these guys.

I don't consider Jeter to be in the running for best SS ever but I still think the guy who doesn't vote for mortal lock players like this should lose his vote. There is no way a reasonable person is not voting in Ripken or Jeter etc and using some dumb well I don't want him to be unanimous excuse is abusing your vote. It is much worse than when LeBatard let public opinion be his vote.