The Official 2020 Cincinnati Reds Thread
- Thread starter Indiandad
- Start date
I don't care who wins, but as an NL fan, I'll probably pull for the Dodgers.
I'm just glad the Astros aren't in the World Series.
Omar
Well-known member
How can you not like watching them take down these Goliath like teams? Gerrit Cole makes more than their entire starting line up. I know it’s corny, but they’re just a bunch of kids having fun and it’s enjoyable to watch.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
Yappi only has a "like" button and that does not adequately express my love of this post. The Rays and the A's are the shining beacons of how to do it on a budget.
That Arozerena kid can hit!! Of course, we were all saying that about Aquino last year. I'm guessing the Rays are smarter and will actually let Arozerena play every day next year.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
That was game 5, obviously. "not ready to play" is a football thing. Glasnow was simply not sharp, it was not a matter of being fired up or ready to play. It's just baseball, some days the pitcher doesn't have their best stuff or control.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
Kevin Cash reminds me of Ding-a-ling Bell. Claims to be an analytics guy, but if 'by the book' translates to 'yank your ace, who is dominating, after 73 pitches so that he doesn't go through the lineup a thrid time", then it is time to burn that book. Flat out stupid.
I believe in numbers and analytics for the most part, but it needs to be balanced with baseball common sense. If your best pitcher is dominating and not tired, let him keep going. Jeeez. It's not hard.
14Red
Well-known member
Yes, an absolute head scratcher and everyone jumped on him immediately last night. That's hard to live with, who knows if the Rays ever get back to this point again. So what gives? The Reds kind of have this same situation with some of their pitchers. Castillo and Gray are routinely pulled out of games with 80 pitches in the 5th/ 6th innings. Bauer isn't because he simply wouldn't hand the ball over. Is Snell too young and under control that he can't buck the manager?
Now there's nothing to say that if Cash leaves Snell in he doesn't give up a couple more hits a possibly a homer. But at what point do you say, I'll lose with my best?
Omar
Well-known member
Why even hire a Manager if you’re just going to do everything based on Analytics? The whole point is that the mgr possesses some type of intuition that tells him what he’s seeing bucks the trends in the analytics. Analytics tell us Snell struggles the 3rd time through the order, so in a normal start that move makes sense. However, this wasn’t a normal start, it was an outlier. The failure to recognize this lost TB the game.
eastside_purple
Well-known member
If the analytics tell you to pull him before the 3rd time through the lineup every start, then the analytics aren’t very good. They need to know when certain measurables tell you when he can go longer— velocity, location, pitch count, etc. It shouldn’t be intuition, it’s a matter of applied logic based on the data.
brianwr112
Well-known member
Be interesting what would've happened had it gone to a Game 7 after Turner's positive test (before he celebrated with the team without a mask)
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
Exactly. And the analytics I would have applied would have been to check Betts' performance. His lefty / righty splits are crazy. He hits righties so much better. his OPS vs left is barely over .500, and vs. right is 1.1. His slugging percentage is TRIPLE (.677 vs righties and .218 vs lefties).
So he pulls the lefty ace for a RHP. So dumb.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
Well, the QO was $18.9M, and Trevor made $17.5M last year. Most of us would love a 9% raise but I suspect Bauer and agent are expecting more after his great year. However, given the COVID impact on revenues, we may see a lot of teams pinching pennies this year, and maybe 18.9 gets him signed. Here's hoping. But I'd be stunned if the Dodgers or Yankees don't bring a Brinks truck to him.
14Red
Well-known member
The elephant in the room is that analytics, why they may show some tendencies on performance (3rd time through the lineup, righties vs. lefties) is largely used to suppress player statistics. Baseball teams like the Rays, and other small markets can't survive (long term) in the current baseball structure where a few teams (Dodges, Yankees, Cubs, Phillies) have payrolls that are 8-10 times higher than other teams. With analytics, you can force platoons, drop innings pitched, an water down statistics. When it comes time to negotiate contracts, you've got a bunch of guys who are part time to semi-part time players and few who few who can command a big contract. The Rays hit lightening in a bottle this year. Sadly, many of their guys, as they hit their first big contract opportunity, will move onto other teams who can pay them more.
Baseball needs to adopt a salary cap and try to restrict player movement.
Baseball needs to adopt a salary cap and try to restrict player movement.
eastside_purple
Well-known member
Sounds like socialism.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
So you are saying they are intentionally using strategies that do not put winning first? And they do this so that they can try to keep salaries down? Yet you say that despite this nefarious plan, they will lose the players when they are up for their first big contract anyway?
What a rambling, incoherent mess that post was. And just plain wrong. I can guarantee you 100% that Kevin Cash thought that pulling Snell was his best chance of winning. Teams don;t lose World Series games on purpose so they can suppress salaries.
As for the payroll, no team has "payrolls that are 8-10 times higher than other teams". Do you have a clue? 2020 salaries are not meaningful but if you look at 2019 the MLB average team payroll was $138M. The highest was Boston at $229M. That is not even double the MLB average. Tampa was the lowest at 65M, so Boston was about 3.5 times higher than Tampa.
Wow - missed the mark 100% with that post. Spelling was above average though.
eastside_purple
Well-known member
It probably sounded good when Bob called in and described it to Lance the other day.
14Red
Well-known member
Believe it or not wolves, "success" is different depending on who you talk to. Many pro sports teams version of success is not losing a ton of money so they can stay operational. It would behoove the players union to do away with platoon players, all the shifting and specialization. No teams have 8 regular starting players anymore, and most of the analytical teams have about 3-4 regular starters. The rest are righty vs. lefties and utility players. In a regular season, if you can hold players at bats to around 200-300, rather than 500-600, it's much easier to keep their stats down when it comes to arbitration.
I'd had liked to seen Cash go out and get the ball from Bauer or Scherzer. He would have had to fight them to take the ball away.
eastside_purple
Well-known member
Actually, it’s probably better for the players association for payroll to be more evenly distributed among players because more players are contributing and playing.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
So you also don't understand business and labor unions.
There is not a business in the world who defines success as "not losing a ton of money" so that they can stay operational and lose "not a ton of money" next year. That is how businesses go out of business. They all have a goal of making money. Some businesses, like the TB Rays, have a lot less revenue (from ticket sales and local cable TV) than other businesses (like the Yankees and Cubs), so they have to spend less. But they still have the goal of being profitable.
As for the unions - you are wrong again. Every union wants more members with income more evenly distributed. If the union had their way, MLB rosters would be 35, not 26 or whatever. More MLB players means more dues paying members, which means more power. Just like every other union in the country. The most difficult thing for pro sports unions to manage is the disparity of the small number of superstar salaries versus the rank and file average salary; they have competing interests.
Hoping you find this informative. I'm here to help.
14Red
Well-known member
Not really, because comparing pro sports unions to the UAW or the steelworkers is an apples or oranges comparison. Actually worse than that. The pro sports union's only purpose is to negotiate collective bargaining agreements, after that their role is severely diminished. I've often wondered why we never hear from the union or the agent when players get into off field issues, as they have some skin in the game as well as the player. Pro athletes are not employees of their teams, they are contracted labor. They can, depending on who, be let go at any time and in some sports with no guaranteed money.
Also remember that owners of pro sports teams have already made their money. This is fun money and tax write off money so they many times are not fully vested in being "successful" regardless of how you define it.
My point...once again...is we're the fans. We like and digest sports. I could care less about who makes money and who loses money and what players make. The day they started publishing player salaries was the day this all started to unravel. I do still feel many players would still play pro sports if they made a fraction of what they make, simply because that's what they do, that's how they are wired. My feeling is major league baseball, for the good of the 30 teams, needs to adopt a salary cap and level the playing field for all teams. It should be embarrassing that a team like the Dodgers didn't win in over 30 years, because they don't have any financial constraints that 85% of the rest of the league. Heck, the Dodgers won the world series this year and projected started David Price opted out? How many teams in baseball could have one of the their top starting pitchers opt out and still win? The Rays 2020 payroll was estimated at about $74 million. Kershaw and Price made $63 mill between the two of them? Is that fair? The Dodgers/ Yankees/ Phillies and a few others can overpay many, many players and if they don't work out, they just go pay more players. Most of the rest of baseball cannot do that.
eastside_purple
Well-known member
Red14 has weird ideas.
14Red
Well-known member
Castellanos back for the Reds in '21...but is that a good thing? I would had been really ok if he moved on. He had a nice first few weeks, but then evolved into a high strikeout, feast or famine hitter that we have plenty of already. Hopefully he can revert to his normal numbers in 2021.