IT’S NOT EARLY ANYMORE. It’s June, the Reds play Milwaukee six times in the next week and a half, starting tonight, so taking stock of the rest of the season is fair game. The schedule is interesting.
Beginning July 2, the Reds play the Brewers and Cubs 10 times in 15 days. Incredibly, that includes seven straight games v. The Crew, four in Milwaukee. I don’t ever recall the Reds playing the same team – a team in their division, no less – seven times in a row.
Between now and July 29, the Reds play Milwaukee, Looie and the Cubs 23 times. Which means in the next 7 weeks, The Club can play its way in or out of relevance. Which should mean that very soon, Nick Krall & Co. should be burning the midnight candles finding ways to help the roster. It would help if the Big Man were interested in donating a few dollars to the cause.
He didn’t want to spend more this season and he’s been scolded for it. His bullpen shows the rotten fruits of his frugality. But after the 4-day weekend at Busch Stadium, Bob Castellini might have a chance to make it up to the faithful.
It starts with the bullpen. The Reds pen isn’t nearly as good as any of its three Central peers, not counting the Class AAAA Pirates, who should be relegated. All the relevant and boring numbers say so. Start with something called Strand Rate, which measures how effective a bullpen is at leaving opposing runners on base.
The Reds rank last in MLB in strand rate, at 63 percent. 30 out of 30. A third of inherited runners score against the Reds pen. The Cubs are 2nd-best in strand rate, Milwaukee 7th, St. Louis 17th.
The Reds also have the highest bullpen ERA in all of baseball, and rank 29th in walks per nine innings.
Which would seem to indicate the team could use some help.
Of course, Baseball being a game of matchups, pitch counts and times through the batting order, every contending team will want to find relievers. Especially those guys who can successfully bridge the gap from the middle innings to winning time.
But if you believe the four days in St. Louis showed the Reds have a pulse, you should also believe ownership should, in the next several weeks, do its part. The Big Man has, in essence, been given a 2nd chance to get it right.
Now, then. . .
PITCHERS ARE PUTTING SOME SORT OF STICKY, MAGIC GUNK on baseballs. This is about as new as Red Man and Wintergreen, but for some reason, MLB has decided to pay that form of cheating some serious mind. Which could make life very interesting for a lot of pitchers and teams the rest of this season.
I really wanted to sidestep this issue, because at its heart it involves way too much inside-baseball stuff, which when read or listened to, causes brain cells to die. I didn’t get into this business to write about fastball spin rates.
Only now, it’s required. Essentially, getting a better grip on the baseball makes the ball spin more. More spin equals better movement equals more effective pitching (and also, presumably, the current nosedive in batting averages and offense overall.)
Example #1 at the moment is Trevor Bauer. Imagine that, Bauer being in the middle of a controversy. LA Times:
In a 4-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Sunday, the spin rate and usage of Bauer’s four-seam fastball were noticeably down. Bauer held the Braves to three runs in six innings, but he didn’t pitch well. The 10 baserunners he allowed were a season-high.
“Hot, humid day in Atlanta,” Bauer said sarcastically.
To his everlasting credit, Bauer didn’t deny having previously used foreign substances to improve his grip on baseballs.
Asked if he could be the caliber of pitcher the Dodgers paid for if the league takes substantive measures to discourage the use of foreign substances, Bauer replied, “Go look at the 2018 numbers and tell me what you think.”
He spent that season with the Cleveland Indians and was 12-6 with a 2.21 earned-run average. He did that with a four-seam fastball that averaged 2,322 revolutions per minute, according to Baseball Savant.
Bauer’s average spin rate for the pitch jumped to 2,779 rpm last year and was at 2,835 through his first 12 starts this year. Against the Braves on Sunday, Bauer’s first start since the league informed owners of its plans to police the problem, the figure dropped to 2,612 rpm.
After reading all those numbers, my head hurts and I feel like taking up something more fun, like tax accounting. But it does seem obvious pitchers are gaining an unfair advantage. As if they need one.
USA TODAY:
Minnesota Twins third baseman Josh Donaldson is sick and tired of seeing the blatant cheating.
“Here's the deal, hitters have never really cared about sunscreen, rosin and pine tar," Donaldson said. "We haven't cared about that because it's not a performance enhancement. What these guys are doing now are performance-enhancing, to where it is an actual superglue-type of ordeal, to where it's not about command anymore.
"Now, it's about who's throwing the nastiest pitches, the more unhittable pitches. …This is going to be the next steroids of baseball ordeal, because it is cheating and it is performance-enhancing. A lot of these guys that are not as good as their numbers are saying will be out of the game, They’ll be done.’’
Boom.
“In 2017, there were four pitchers that had a spin rate on their fastballs of 2400 rpm or more,’’ said Donaldson. “Now, that's league average. Think about that.
One GM says that the foreign substance abuse is so out of control that one of his pitchers even asked him: “Where can I get this stuff? Everyone else is using it.’’
Normally, this wouldn’t bother me beyond the effect it could have on my fantasy team roster. Gerrit Cole is another huge name who’s under suspicion, but two weeks ago I dealt him for Brandon Woodruff and Mookie Betts, so we’re good there.
Cheating is inherent in sports, nowhere more than in baseball, to the extent that it has been accepted. The Astros still have that championship hardware, yeah? But if a prime object among the game’s Powers is to find a way to get offense/action back into the mix, getting the magic gunk out of the proceedings would seem a good idea.
APROPOS OF NOTHING. . . Anyone else taking an interest in the Women’s College World Series? It’s amazing. I’d love to see how Winker and Castellanos would do against FSU pitcher Kathryn Sandercock, who throws 64 mph from 43 feet. That’s insane.
MLB would kill to have the action these games have. Everything is fast, the field dimensions are compressed. What results is bang-bang ball just about every play. TML sez ckitout.
RUFUS ALERT: I’ve always wanted to watch the movie “It’’ based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Nothing is creepier than clowns (unless it’s dolls) and Pennywise promised to be beyond creepy.
He wasn’t.
I’m a big fan of horror movies, partly because I think making a good one is the hardest thing to do in cinema. Adaptations of King books have ranged from very good (Carrie) to stupid (Cujo). “It” was better than Cujo.
Biggest problem was, Pennywise was more cartoon-ish than menacing. The movie was sort of a cross between Stranger Things and Stand By Me, not a bad combination when you’re not going for scares, but not a good combo when you are.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Southside, preachin’.
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