Duno has a really good stat sheet, and is moving up the prospect rankings quickly. Hopefully he can sustain what he’s doing, because he has great plate discipline. The team has a few exciting prospects, Burns of course, but I really like what Sal Stewart is doing as well.
As far as recent picks at catcher:
2018: 7th round, Jay Schuyler -Out of baseball (coach)
2019: 7th, Eric Yang -Played one game for the Reds last year, AAA 32 AB’s this year, 410 OBP
2020: 2nd, Jackson Miller - Out of baseball
2021: 1st, Mat Nelson - AA Chattanooga, batted .198 last year, .085 this year
2022: 2nd, Logan Tanner - A+ Dayton Bat .185 last year, .121 so far this year
2023: 5th, Connor Burns - A+ Dayton Bat .143 last year, .196 this year
Like I said, freaking terrible drafting of catchers. Duno is a good athlete with excellent power, who scouts believe will stay at catcher. He was an international signing.
Sal Stewart is their next good MLB hitter and should be called up sometime next year. He’s still only 21, hoping some of his doubles start becoming homeruns. His winter training partner is Manny Machado, who had this to say about Sal this spring:
“Hell yeah, that’s my protégé. I’ve been training with him for like eight years,” Machado said. “He’s the best hitter in the Minor Leagues, absolutely. I haven’t seen all of them obviously. And I know him personally. But I know swings. He hits the ball to right field like a lefty. He’s got a really good swing,” Machado said. “He can pull the ball, hit for average. And it’s not only that he has a good swing, his on-base is through the roof, something I can’t do. He takes his walks. He has a good eye, good awareness of the plate.”
One thing I can say from following the Indians through all the years is that a hallmark of his teams was great bullpens. He and Dusty both defied the statistical analysis guys on their idea on using your best relievers at the most high leverage situations, which is something I agree with them them very much.
Baseball players are no different than other human beings as they function best when they know what is expected of them, what their job is. They gain experience for that job and learn what works and what does not. So for those two guys, their closer knows he is coming in for one clean inning, the 9th. He knows exactly when and how to start loosening up and how many pitches to throw in the bullpen and how to get to the spot where he only needs to throw another 3 or 4 pitches to be fully ready or to shut it down and go back and sit down. He has already thought about the batters that he is going to face and looked at an I pad if he needed more information about one of the newer batters that he might face. He gets experience at being under the pressure of the game being on the line and how to handle that.
Every reliever has a similar understanding of how and when they will be used, but the job may be different. One guy might be the 8th inning guy and have a similar role as the closer, just in the 8th inning instead. If the closer has pitched 2 or 3 games in a row, the 8th inning guy has has been told he will be the closer today. Etc. Set up guys can anticipate when and how they will be used, same with long relievers, but they all know in advance; they gain experience at that role.
That works. Now sometimes Francona was able to start the season with much of that figured out in advance, but a few times it took him several months of experimenting before getting everything set. This has been one of those years as the Reds started the season not knowing who the closer was going to be, but I do think he had basically figured out his staff and who he has who is best suited for each role. I think the guys are also starting to settle in to those roles and the performances are pretty good now. It is one big reason why many times his teams did not really take off until June, July, or August. In this season, he has also been tinkering with the lineup all year, especially with all the injuries to key players. Hopefully the best is yet to come.
I appreciate that perspective, but it’s somewhat amusing after watching “pitching chaos” the last couple of years in Detroit. Last week, Beau Brieske pitched the first inning in one game as the opener and the tenth the next night. I’m not sure how AJ Hinch convinces his guys that it’s still comfortable no matter when you go in, but it seems to work. It also helps that Skubal gets the ball every fifth day; that’s much more predictable.
I share your sense that the Reds will probably be better in the second half. They’re 4.5 back in the NL wild card. As long as they don’t drift to nine or ten out by the all-star break, I think they could make a run.
I would say the two teams who have made that system work for a significant period of time have been the Rays and now the Tigers. I know the Rays train their pitchers that way coming up and almost all their staff is always minor league callups and I know almost all the staff for the Tigers are minor league callups, so I would guess the Tigers have spent years using that system throughout the minors the last several years.
I think there’s an emphasis in the Tigers’ farm system on teaching all of their non-starting pitchers to go three innings. You can always take someone who has been taught to pitch that way and narrow their pitch arsenal to become one-inning specialists or more traditional closers, but having a lot of guys capable of covering multiple innings maximizes flexibility for the staff.
It’s similar to how one of the track coaches I know out here starts by teaching all of his athletes to run the 800m to learn the proper balance between effort and pacing. Then some of them move down to 200m/400m, and some move up to 1600m/3200m. But he’s always got the best relay teams in the county.
Rather than pollute this conversation with BEISBOLCATS talk, I also should note that I watched the Reds last night on Detroit’s day off to get a preview for this weekend and facilitate conversations with Devil Mom (who watches all 162 Cincinnati games). They’ve got plenty of offense, particularly with some guys getting healthy, and should be able to score runs against just about anyone. Mom has been complaining about the bullpen for the past couple of years, and it seems like that’s still the weak link. Maybe that will come around as Francona settles on his sequencing.
The Reds’ offense is capable of scoring 24 runs or 0 runs. They cannot put together a decent string of offensive performances. Devil Mom is spot on about the bullpen. Growing up in a family where the women listened to every single Reds game, I love to hear this about your mom.
Other than a couple of late inning blown saves, the bullpen has been pretty good. Bullpen ERA is not a good measurement but they are 14th. Somewhat better is WHIP, where they are 7th. Best yet, is a Fangraphs calculation that takes everything into account, and they have the Reds 9th:
Reds offense has been poor all season. However, we now have back a bunch of important pieces and the last 4 games it has been very good. Fraley, Friedl, Stephenson, and McLain all missed a lot of time. In the last 2 weeks or so Benson and Encarnation-Strand both returned and immediately gave the offense a boost. Candelario and Hayes are in rehab.
Current worry is our best starting pitcher Hunter Greene is now going to a DR. in LA to get a second opinion. That does not sound good at all. But the opportunity for a run to climb back in the race is there. Right now the wildcard teams are Padres, Phillies, and Giants, all have been around 10 over. Between them and the Reds are the Cardinals and Brewers. Just staying a little above .500 will not work in the NL this season.
In the AL there is a good chance it will as their 3 current Wildcard teams are 5 or 6 games over .500 and there are another group of 5 or 6 that are slightly above or below .500.
Other than the bad outing here and there the bullpen has been pretty solid. Overall they are about MLB average in allowing runs and baserunners. In the NL they are top 5.
I go back far enough to remember Arte Johnson’s radio ads for Hudepohl as part of the overall Reds/WLW soundtrack. As noted here occasionally, my folks grew up in southeastern Ohio, so they were Reds fans. Devil Bro and I were too through most of the Seventies, and that was obviously great. But we were living in farmland northwest Ohio about equidistant from Cincinnati and Detroit, and when the Reds fired Sparky, my brother and I transferred our allegiance to the Tigers.
Ok, here’s where things get either consistently .500 or we go atomic. Reds are now 2 over five hundy and I go out of town to Europa and every time I do, we win. Like 12 in a row last time. This could be very cool very soon…
