We are going to try a chat tonight at 7pm. Reds prospect talk, Reds major league talk…. anything Reds works for me.

Last February I decided to go off on my own and leave MVN. There were a bunch of reasons that went into that decision, and I hoped that I could keep my readers even after I moved onto my own site with my own format. I feel that while there have been some significant changed since then (and several exciting ones that you guys don’t know about yet, but will be awesome once the season gets rolling) that there is still a ways to go. Still the first month I was on my own, the site had 9,581 visitors. Last month visitors showed up 66,872 times. I just wanted to thank you guys for coming back all the time. Even with increased traffic and more and more users commenting, there have been only two or three times where anyone has gotten even slightly out of line. Being around other sites, I have to say thats just incredible. You guys are some of the best readers out there and I do mean that.

The Reds and Hairston agreed to a 1 year, 2 million dollar deal with incentives that could make it worth up to 4 million.

So Hairston is worth 2 million and 1 year a season after beating the cover off of the baseball, but Taveras was worth 2 million + another 4 million by not being able to hit his way out of a wet paper bag? Color me confused by that one. Glad to have Hairston back at that price though, just find it interesting that both Taveras and Hairston have the same agent and somehow Hairston didn’t get nearly the deal that Taveras did despite being a much better player coming off an incredibly better season.

C Trent just posted an interview he had with Chris Dickerson, discussing his new website (weplaygreen.ORG). Go give it a read.

There is also the news that the Cubs signed Milton Bradley for 3 years and 30 million, while the Rays signed Pat Burrell for 2 years and 16 million. I would have offered Burrell 10 million a year over 2 years if I were the Reds to see if that would have gotten him in here. We need another big bat in the lineup, badly. Bradley can’t stay on the field enough, so his contract would worry me as a Reds fan. Hopefully as a Reds fan though, he stays normal Bradley and doesn’t see 500 AB’s a year over that contract duration because he is good and the Cubs lineup is already ridiculous top to bottom.

Juan Francisco, in case you were wondering, went 2-4 with a HR in the Dominican Winter League Playoffs last night. Chris Heisey finished the Puerto Rican Winter League hitting .281/.375/.471 with 21 walks and 32 strikeouts in 179 PA.

Baseball America had a peice on Catchers in the minor leagues over the weekend and had some good stuff to say about Craig Tatum. Tatum was 4th best at not allowing passed balls in the minors last season and they also had this to say about him:

Craig Tatum: Despite succumbing to Tommy John surgery three years ago, Tatum is now one of the best defensive catchers in the minor leagues. The Reds farmhand has good catching mechanics, records average pop times of 2.0 seconds and delivers throws to second base with a good throwing action, enabling him to nab 38 percent of base stealers in 2008. He controls the running game well, but he’s even better at keeping the ball in front of him, as he does a good job blocking and receiving and shows a knack for the finer points of catching like framing and calling pitches. One AL scout who saw Tatum this year projected him as a future regular, though he’ll have to improve his OBP after hitting .244/.297/.377 in Double-A this season. At 25, Tatum’s offensive projection is limited, but he has the defensive skills to at least get an opportunity as a backup.

Tatum certainly is good insurance to have if one of our catchers go down this year. He won’t hit much, but the pitching staff certainly won’t be hurting if he gets playing time for the Reds. Hopefully his bat can catch up with his defense some this year.

Project Prospect listed its Top 15 Third Base prospects and had Neftali Soto coming in at #9. They like his contact ability and his power, but aren’t a fan of his walk rate. Jaun Francisco missed the list and just barely missed the ‘honorable mentions’ part of the list. I would rank him higher than some of the guys that did make the back end of the list. Note that Todd Frazier is not counted as a third baseman by their standards because he doesn’t play over there now.

Also, not a link, but how awesome is the MLB Network? My DVR is probably hating me with all of the games I am recording.

Chris Dickerson, along with Jack Cassel of the Houston Astros launched WePlayGreen.org today. Here is the first part from the ‘About Us’ portion of the website:

We Play Green was found by Chris Dickerson of the Cincinnati Reds and Jack Cassel of the Houston Astros. This organization is focused on bringing professional athletes together to help inspire the communities that support us into action to build awareness of the power we have to reverse the environmental crisis we are just beginning to recognize.

Go check it out and read through the different pages. Hat tip to John Fay on this one.

Not this Wednesday, but the next one (January 14th) Baseball America will be unveiling its Reds Top 10 list. JJ Cooper has been doing the list for a while now and has a real good grasp on the system. Last year before the Reds Top 10 came out he answered a few questions for me about the system and he has agreed to do so again this year. I have a few questions in mind, but thought I would let you guys get in on it a little too. I don’t think he wants to really give much away on the list, but if there are things you are curious about post them in the comments and I will see if I can fit them in. I am going to be working with some limited amount of questions so I am going to pick and choose. Anyways, post them in the comments and I will post the answers next Tuesday (the 13th).

On to another part, last weeks chat went pretty well and I had a good time with it. I think I plan on doing it once a week, probably on Wednesdays. My question is simple…. what do you guys think will work best. Choose one of the options in the poll.

 Loading ...

Apparently the Reds have shown slight interest in Andruw Jones. Ew.

Juan Francisco is still hitting the crap out of the ball in the Dominican Winter League Playoffs. He went 2-4 with a double, walk, RBI and a run.

Chris Heisey is still impressing in the Puerto Rican Winter League as well. He is hitting .293/.393/.493 with 5 HR, 21 walks and 26 strikeouts in 140 at bats.

Over at RedlegNation.com they sat down with Tyler Stovall (who hit .343/.404/.476 last year in Billings) for an interview. Go give it a listen.

If you have been around here long enough you know that I enjoy myself a little bit of math when projecting players. With the minor leagues I am a lot more into a players scouting reports than their stats when projecting them because they are still learning and growing as players. With major leaguers, especially when guys have plenty of time there, stats tell us a whole lot more as far as what to expect moving forward.

So today I thought I would create a spreadsheet in Excel that gives you guys the ability to fill in the following things for Hitters and Pitchers:

Hitters

• At Bats
• AVG
• OBP
• SLG

Pitchers

• Innings Pitched
• ERA

Basically using simple information like that, we can determine with relative closeness the projected Win/Loss total of a baseball team. Below is a screen capture of the spreadsheet and then I will tell how to use it (its pretty simple).

Hitters Screen Shot

I have included the projections for the projected main stays in the lineup from Marcels, Bill James and Sean Smith’s CHONE Projections. I also included a line for the pitchers (using the 2008 Reds pitchers batting totals), the Reds bench (using the 2008 totals for anyone without 275 PA or Chris Dickerson since he was a starter while he was up) and one OTHER line that can be used for you to project a player not listed that we may acquire via Free Agency or a Trade (you can go to the links above for these players projections if you would like). I used a baseline of 5500 at bats for the offense. The Pitchers and Bench lines are already taken care of. You can adjust the bench AB’s, but should probably leave the AVG/OBP/SLG lines as they are for accuracy. The bottom line tells you how many at bats you need to still use to meet the 5500 team AB’s. You can go over that, but I would suggest not going over it by more than 100 unless you think the offense is going to be one of the best in the league.

Now what you get to do is just fill in the playing time you think the player will get (not what you think they should, but what you think they will) as well as their AVG/OBP/SLG projections that you think they will have. Try and be as realistic as possible. When all of that information is put in, it will created an estimated Runs Scored total at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Pitchers Screen Shot

Like the Hitters section, the pitchers section also has different projection systems on the bulk of the arms that will be taking the mound for the Reds in 2009. As a baseline for innings pitched I used 1450 innings (last year the Reds pitched 1442). There is a bottom line that tells you how many more innings you must account for. There is an ‘OTHER’ line for guys that aren’t listed or could be brought in from the outside. You can adjust the ‘Retreads’ innings pitched if you would like.

All that you need to do is fill out the innings pitched and the ERA of a player. Be realistic with them. Once they are all done it will give an estimated Runs Allowed total at the bottom. The Runs Allowed is the number of earned runs that you gave each guy, plus 70 unearned runs.

Once you have filled in the at bats and the innings for the team your Runs Allowed and Runs Scored will be finished and it will give you a projected Win/Loss number based on the Pythagorean Record Formula.

Don’t type into any of the boxes that are in purple. Those have the formula’s in them that give us the data. If you type in them it will erase the formula’s.

You can download the spreadsheet by clicking here and ’saving target as’.

Feel free to use the comments to post your teams projections as well as the win/loss and RS/RA numbers based upon your input information. Now go be a stats geek and see how the Reds can do if your predictions are correct.