1B - Joey Votto

Joey Votto still remains near the top of the list coming in at +23 players made versus the average. That ranks him 3rd in baseball behind just Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman. While Votto may still have a few issues to work through at first base, his range over there is an absolute plus and shouldn’t be overlooked.

2B - Brandon Phillips

Brandon Phillips also ranks among the leaders at his position as he comes in at +17 plays and ranks 4th overall at the postion. Only Chase Utley (who is far and away ahead of everyone else), Mark Ellis and Adam Kennedy are seemingly better than Phillips in the range department. He is above average on both in and out of range plays.

SS - Keppinger/Hairston

Both guys are below average with Keppinger ranking 45th of the 50 players that had the most innings played. Hairston ranked 34th overall. Between the two of them, they were at -18 plays.

3B - Edwin Encarnacion

Edwin ranked dead last of the top 50 3B by innings played at -27 plays. He was a whole 7 plays worse than the next worst guy. Ouch. A move off 3B could benefit the Reds big time.

LF - No one

With Adam Dunn now gone, no one has enough innings there to mean much at all.

CF - Corey Patterson

Patterson came in at -1 play and ranked 31st.

RF - Jay Bruce

With Griffey traded Jay is now getting the time over there. Jay came in at +2.5 plays and ranked 20th overall despite playing in just 278 innings. His numbers project well above average there with more playing time.

Losing Griffey and Dunn hurts the offense, but the defense is going to look much better. Dunn ranked 43rd in left field at -6 plays while Griffey was 47th in RF at -19 plays. That is a lot of plays being replaced by good defenders in Dickerson and Bruce.

Encarnacion and whoever is playing shortstop at the time really hurt the left side of the infield. The right side of the infield however has to be near the tops in baseball with Phillips and Votto coming in a combined 40 plays above average.

Interview

First Base

Joey Votto is still among the league leaders here. On plays in his zone he is less than 1 play below average, however on plays out of his zone he is just over 20 plays above average. Total, he is +20.15 plays. While he still has issues fielding throws at first base, the guy is a vacuum when it comes to balls hit at him and I feel it certainly outweighs his current shortcomings on throws.

Second Base

Brandon Phillips as you would expect is among the leaders at second base again. He seems to make all the plays in his zone, as he is just over +11 plays on balls in his zone. He is however a little less than -1 plays out of his zone. The overall value is still +10.43 plays. That ranks him 4th among all second baseman.

Shortstop

Shortstop is an interesting position for the Reds because they have used so many of them. We will start with Jerry Hairston Jr. He is slightly below average on both balls in and out of his zone and comes in at -2 plays (although given full playing time he would likely be looking around -7 plays).

Next we can look at Jeff Keppinger, who is well below average on balls in and out of his zone, at -4.5 on both. His total value is at -8.99 plays (although when adjusted for full playing time it would be closer to -14 plays).

Finally there was Paul Janish, who was above average on the balls in his zone, but below average on the balls out of his zone. He only played 162 innings, some of which came as a late inning guy, so I would suggest we take his out of zone plays with a grain of salt given the sample.

Third Base

Edwin Encarnacion is sure killing the ball isn’t he? Yeah, thats a bad way to start off talking about someone’s defense, but Edwin has been Edwin. Errors and lack of plays defensively. While my eyes tell me he has improved, the numbers don’t say the same thing. He is among the worst in the league in both in and out of zone plays. His total value is -20.43 plays.

Left Field

Adam Dunn continues to impress this year in the field. While he still has a ‘what the %$^@’ moment every now and again, his defense is much improved this year. He is actually above average on the plays in his zone at +3.9 plays. The out of zone plays are what are bringing him down though, where he is -5.22 plays. Still, his overall value is at -1.31 plays, which compared to the past few years is about a 25-30 play difference. Thats HUGE for Dunn.

Center Field

Like shortstop, the Reds have had several guys spend time in CF this year. We can start off with everyone’s favorite, Corey Patterson. Patterson is slightly above average on balls in his zone, and slightly below average on balls out of his zone. His total overall value is -0.46 plays.

Jay Bruce has also been slightly above average on balls inside of his zone this year. He has had trouble with the ones out of his zone a little bit though where he is -4.3 plays. His overall total value is -3.2 (but adjusted for full playing time would be closer to -9).

Right Field

Ken Griffey Jr is way below average on the balls in his zone and middle of the road below average on balls out of his zone. While that doesn’t make perfect sense, I think it has more to do with running in on a baseball rather than running sideways at a baseball. Overall though, the guy is downright bad. His -14.96 plays rank him 3rd worst in baseball among the 50 top innings players.

Overview

Between right field, third base and shortstop our team defense has really cost us some runs. Using Chris Dial’s linear weights system for defensive run values, the combined total of those guys versus just the average has cost us nearly 38 runs this season. That is pushing 4 wins defensively for just those positions.

         IP	H	BB	K	ER	ERA	WHIP	H/9	BB/9	K/9
Pre SD	74.7	73	18	63	29	3.50	1.21    8.79	2.16	7.59
Post SD	44.3	63	15	36	36	7.30	1.75	12.78	3.37	7.30

Harang was used on 2 days rest in San Diego to throw 63 pitches. Then 4 days later he was started on short rest and was beaten around like a rented mule. In a span of 7 days, Aaron Harang had thrown 240 pitches in 3 different games. Thanks Crustball. Bob Castellini, way to be a moron and hire a freaking idiot to manage your baseball team. Between on base percentage being overrated, to sac bunting a thousand times a year, to ruining starting pitchers to all of this losing that is happening thats what you should have expected to happen from a manager who doesn’t know anything about baseball other than he was athletic enough to play it at one point and had the great luck of having the best player in the history of the game through his true prime and then his artificially enhanced prime. The Reds suck right now and are being led by an ownership group without a clue and a manager with even less of a clue who coupled with his ‘pitching coach’ (who sucks at his job so much so that whenever 40% of his rotation needs help they call in Mario Soto to work with them) are taking this team down the tube faster than Tunguska went up about a hundred years ago.

I have hated this hire from day 1. I was literally sick when I heard the news. Today, I feel no better than I did then and I almost want to become a Tampa Bay Rays fan or an Arizona Dbacks fan. If Harang ends up undergoing Tommy John surgery, who should be surprised? No one that took the time to look at the history of our manager…. so I hope you enjoy spending all of that money Bob, because its your fault.

Most of you are probably aware of Justin’s site On Baseball and The Reds (and if you aren’t…. you really should be, even if he is in the process of moving across the country and won’t be doing his site for a little bit). He does defensive calculations based on thehardballtimes revised zone rating. I kind of went in the same direction as him, but only used the qualified players (basically the every day starters) for each position to get an idea of how good each player is defensively. Here is how the math worked:

I took every player that qualified for a position (I kept it that way to keep things normal… a team having a backup centerfielder playing a corner outfield position in the late innings will skew the numbers for what the ‘average’ should be if we are talking about starters) and added up their innings, balls in zone, plays and out of zone plays made. I then calculated the average zone rating of the position by taking their total plays made and dividing by their balls in zone. Then I took that number, multiplied it by each specific players balls in zone to get what they should be expected to get. Any number lower than that of actual plays made means they are a negative defender, while the numbers higher meant they were a positive one. For the balls out of zone, I just simply took the total out of zone plays made and divided it by the innings played for the entire group per position. Then I took that number and multiplied it by innings played per player to get an expected out of zone plays. Like earlier, higher than that number and you are above average and lower you are below average. Its certainly not perfect, but I think its a fairly accurate tool to work with.

With all of that said, I went ahead and did the math the other day for all games through June 26th, 2008. Our Reds didn’t do so hot all around.

Here is how we stacked up per position and a little commentary added by me.

1B Joey Votto was +19.5 plays at first base. That is quite good, but it also does not count plays made while on the bag, just plays made in the field on balls hit to him. When he is on the bag, I don’t think he is quite average, so overall his rating wouldn’t be as high. It is interesting to note that on balls in his zone, he was barely above average, just below 2 plays above average. However on the balls outside of his zone he was far and away the best player at first base, over 8 plays better than the next best guy. To me, that would suggest he plays a little bit closer to the ‘out of zone’ area than the in zone area. All in all though, he is likely a little above average at first base.

2B Brandon Phillips was +3.4 plays at second base. Thats not quite as good as expected when I decided to do this and is well off pace for what he was at last year. He is really excelling on the balls in his zone where he ranks 2nd among all qualifiers at +9.6 plays, but on the ones out of the zone he is struggling this year at -6.1 plays which is second worst ahead of just Felipe Lopez. Total though, Phillips is an above average second baseman.

3B Edwin Encarnacion was -8.9 plays at 3B. That number falls in line with about what I expected it to be. He is below average on both balls in and out of the zone, although more so with the ones out of the zone. Overall, he is a below average third baseman.

SS is a position where the Reds didn’t have a qualifier with all of the injuries that have taken place. However, I took all of the guys who have played at SS for the Reds (minus Juan Castro) and just added their numbers all up and ran them as 1 player.  On the total, they were -13.7 plays. That would rank them 18th of 22 qualifiers. Only Paul Janish was close to average at less than 2 plays below average, while Hairston was nearly 5 plays below average and Keppinger was just over -7 plays below average.

LF Adam Dunn was at -2.9 plays. Dunn ranked 11th out of 15 qualified left fielders in total value. Interestingly, he wasn’t as bad as I expected. He was actually above average on balls in his zone at just over +2 plays. On the ones out of his zone however he was over -5. Carlos Quentin seemed to skew the numbers however as he comes in at -13 plays, while only one other player is even below -4 plays. Overall, Dunn is better than I anticipated, but still below average in LF.

CF is another position where the Reds didn’t have a qualifier. Just like at SS I added up all the players numbers who have started in CF and used them as a whole. The Reds centerfield group of Patterson/Hopper/Freel/Bruce/Hairston actually came in just above average at +1.26 plays. That group was led by Patterson at +4.3 plays and Freel at +2.1 plays. Jay Bruce and Jerry Hairston both were just over -2 plays while Norris Hopper was at -0.8 plays. The biggest thing was that the Reds played the balls in their zone very well, where they would have ranked 2nd overall. When they had to get to ones out of the zone however they were well below average where they ranked 16th out of 22 qualifiers.

RF Ken Griffey Jr was -13.22 plays. Undoubtedly the worst defensive player on our team. The interesting part is, he isn’t actually that bad on getting to balls outsize of his zone, where he was just -2 plays. When he had to get to the ones in his zone he was over -11 plays. Maybe he runs better toward the gap and down the line than he does forward or backward. Not really sure, but it is quite strange.

Of those 7 positions the Reds were above average at 3 of them: Second base, first base and centerfield. Unfortunately for them, the centerfielder that was the best is absolutely a black hole on offense. They were well below average at 3 positions: Shortstop, right field and 3B. Griffey isn’t coming back next year, so odds are the defense over there will improve. Then there was left field were Dunn was just merely below average, albeit down the list on the total value.

All in all, the Reds defense is subpar and it needs improving. It could see a major rehauling next year depending on what happens with Adam Dunn. If things go a certain way the Reds would have a new set of outfielders defensively with Griffey and Dunn gone, while Bruce would likely shift to RF in favor of a centerfielder. It could also mean a different shortstop, be it Alex Gonzalez or someone else with maybe a shift of Edwin to LF and Keppinger to 3B. There are lots of possibilities of what could happen, but one thing is certain…. this team needs to get a lot better defensively before they can truly be a good team.

Awesomely amazing stuff by MLB Advanced Media. The nerd in my is very excited about this.

Notes: I am not sure how long it will be until I make a new post with data I gathered. I had a big issue the other day with my computer and everything is good now, but I no longer have Microsoft Office and can’t find my disc, which means I have no way to sort my data or make any graphs. Until then I will hopefully be able to point into the right direction of Reds pitch f/x breakdowns by others.

He has swung at 6 pitches out of the zone in a week. Doing that will result in very good numbers. Only 3 of his hits came on pitches on the inner half of the plate. That is quite impressive. Lets also note though that he didn’t get nearly the amount of pitches on the inner part of the plate as he did on the outer half.