Jehrico

Everyone remembers Cotts outstanding performance in 2005. He was horrible in 06 and 07, and wasn't great early in 2008. He now has the best K/9 and BB rates of his career, and is giving up the second fewest hits per inning of his career. Has he been lucky, or is he finally back to form? Any faith he'll do it again next year?

the point is (people are saying) that Lee isn't likely to maintain a .734 OPS. also, people are expecting way too much from Hoffpauir. i understand giving Lee more rest (inserting Hoffpauir) and moving him out of the 3-spot, but i do think it's silly to be considering replacing Lee with Hoffpauir on a (semi) regular basis. Agreed, except right now I am expecting Lee to maintain that .734 clip. He's not hitting to the other field regularly, and he still seems to be slapping the ball than trying to drive the ball. He doesn't look like he's seeing the ball as well this year as he normally does, and he's shortening up to compensate. If my observations are correct, that would also explain the high propensity for hitting into double plays. Right now, he is not giving me any reason to expect anything different over the course of the remainder of the season.

There's no maybe about it. Howry's spot is Gooz's to steal with a good September. That's who exactly I had in mind in terms of Guzman making into the playoff roster with Howry being left out. For some reason, Lou still believes in Howry. You don't need 5 starters in the playoffs, and Lou has never liked Marquis. I could see Gooz making the team at Marquis expense instead of Howry. I hate to say it, but I'd rather have Marquis than Howry on the playoff roster at this point.

Without a doubt. He might not need to dominate, even. If you throw strikes and get guys out when the team needs it, all Lou needs to see is about a month to be on board. See: 2007 Kevin Hart.

So you're disagreeing with it b/c it sounds like something Dusty would say? There's nothing valid with your statement. There's nothing valid with your humor detector either on that one.

If you read what I wrote (which I have stated numerous times), I have said that Dunn is often too passive early in the count taking pitches that are hittable pitches (often the best pitches of the AB) in doing so, he is often behind in the count and has never hit well with two strikes. I have said that I believe Dunn would be better off being more aggressive earlier in the count (not expanding his zone ala Patterson). So far, the only counter-argument has been that he is good at working counts deep and that takes away from it as well as that he's already a good hitter so don't change it. I've already explained that I think he would be more productive if he did what I suggested and he's more likely to improve as a hitter than regress if he became more aggressive. Is that something different? Hell, I don't know your angle nor do I give a crap to try and figure it out. Agree or disagree, I sure ain't seen anything to pursuade me otherwise. My biggest problem with your suggestion is that pursuading Dunn to be more aggressive sounds a little bit too much like something Dusty tried to get him to do.

LMAO @ Fred McStiff. I lost all respect for that guy after his impassioned play for us. He sucked the last half of his career.

I've been questioning why Lee is our 3 hitter for several months now. I don't think he needs to be "benched" though. Hit him 6th (where he always used to hit in the order his whole career until halfway through his monster 2005 campaign) in the order, and give him more days off for rest. I'd also like to see Hoff called up, but Ward isn't going anywhere right now after the homer last night, so we may as well wait for 1 Sep for that.

The people who are in the ESPN talkbacks are the primordial ooze-dwellers of the earth. It's mostly just disappointed and bitter fans of other teams. They rag on the Cubs to make themselves feel better. It's really quite childish and lame. If they make you feel bad, then stay away from the tools on sportsline.com's boards...

Alright, then maybe I'm missing the boat here. What the heck is this thread about now? The whole argument seems to be on whether his high K rate has a significant impact on his value, and you appeared to be arguing that it does. If that's the case, then no, it's not on. If that's not your point, then what are you arguing? I don't think anyone is arguing against the fact that if Dunn could make contact as consistantly as Manny he'd be an elite hitter. That's a no brainer.

There's some serious flaws in your thought process here. You seem to be concerned with him because he always gets to two strikes which adversely affects his abilities, and you support that by noting his OPS with two strikes is .578. Yet, his overall career OPS is an even .900. If that's the case, then he must not be getting to two strikes so often that it is preventing him from having overall good numbers. Dunn is like everything in life, you take the good with the bad. He's exceptional when he's ahead in the count, and like most other players, including good ones, he's not as good when he's down in the count. What counts is how he does overall, unless you're looking at him as a platoon player. Dunn isn't a platoon player, so all your main concern is how he does overall, which he manages to do very good despite his Ks.

I've stated many times that Dunn should be utilized as a run scorer and not a run producer. He is not a good hitter in any split. One of my biggest problems with him is the amount of RBI's he has not via the HR. I do think he has a lot of value if used correctly, and that he is a detriment if used incorrectly. My biggest fear would be him hitting #3 or 4. Depends on the lineup. If you have a weak bottom of the order, then maybe he's a good #2 hitter. If you have a solid bottom of the order with guys like DeRo, Soto and Theriot hitting 6-7-8, then I'd fine with him as a #4 or 5 hitter in front of him. All in all though, I don't think it's that big of a deal where he hits.

If Lou had to get him in a game, that was a good game to get him in. He gave up three runs, and left with a 4 run lead still intact. I still want him DFAd, but I'm happy to see Lou get him work in a blowout instead of a close game like he had been. Let's hope that's what he's thinking anyways and that wasn't based on the fact that we had three blowouts in a row.

He also consistently works starters deeper into the count and contributes to them departing earlier, which helps the whole team. As far as the comment of 100 strikeouts over average costing half a win, he strikes out about 50 times more than the average player every 600 at bats...so can we call it a game every four seasons? His impact of working pitchers deep into counts isn't likely as damaging to the pitcher if he was more productive in the AB, therefore creating more runs and extending the pitchers' usage by not creating an out. He does that quite a bit as well. He runs the count deep whether he's making an out or not.

He also consistently works starters deeper into the count and contributes to them departing earlier, which helps the whole team. As far as the comment of 100 strikeouts over average costing half a win, he strikes out about 50 times more than the average player every 600 at bats...so can we call it a game every four seasons?

I'm assuming it's the more than 45 days part that gets him. He's never gone past 50IP. But it says during the period of a 25-player limit, which is before September. In 06 he was on the team for 55 games or so when he was up for August and September, but the 25 player limit is dropped in September, right? I'm officially confused Doesn't matter. The first part says "exceeded 50 innings pitched in the major leagues" and Volquez had 80 coming into this year. It doesn't say "in one season" so I would assume that to mean 50 career innings pitched, which he has surpassed. that is correct You are correct.

Nevermind on the runners on base part...it's easier to tackle than I thought. Dunn has averaged 1039 plate appearances fron 2004 until now with runners on base. That's less than half of his plate appearances where someone is on base. If his K rate is uniform (men on vs no one on), then that means around 27 of his Ks a year are with men on base. So that's 27 times he doesn't make contact with men on when the average guy would. That's 5 GIDP less though, and some of those 27 wouldn't have been moved if he had made contact anyways (hard to figure the real impact of that). If you look at the 22 times he didn't move the runner or hit into a DP, maybe half of those times a runner would have been able to move up. So, the part that is easy to figure is that less than 1 time a year he fails to get on via error because of his lack of contact, and 2 times a year he fails to get the sac fly. Add maybe 10 times he fails to move a runner up a base. That adds a bit more to it, but still marginal IMO. If anyone can come up with a better analysis of the real cost of Dunn's penchant for Ks, please add on.

you're not accounting for (a) the number of times that he doesn't reach base via the error, and (b) the number of times that any other baserunner is able to move up because the ball is put into play. I pulled the error numbers up and forgot to put them in there (got sidetracked while typing that up). The league has created 2214 errors, for a rate of 1.6% of the time. Now, some of these errors are allowing guys to advanced to 3rd on an attempt to steal second, or allow singles to advanced to second. Not all of these errors are allowing guys to get on base to begin with. I don't have anything here to use but my judgement. I'm going to say 1700 of those are errors that allowed a guy to reach base. This reduces the error rate to 1.2%. If Dunn K's 55 times more than the average guy, then he's getting on base less than 1 time less a year due to a chance of error. Even if I assumed that all 2214 errors were allowing a guy on base, it's still less than once a year that Dunn isn't getting on base because he K'd instead of forcing the error (as compared to the average player). The other argument (moving a guy over by putting the ball in play) I don't have a way of determining what the real impact is of Dunn's Ks. Anyone have a good site where I can see splits like that for all 30 teams at once? That's a tough one to find. Without having that number, if you consider Dunn is K'ing 55 times more than average over 600 plate appearances, then the number of times out of those 55 that he's not moving the runner over where someone else would is probably a handful.

This whole argument about Dunn and who bad Ks are for outs is a little silly. Let's weight this thing a little bit. This isn't exactly scientific, as it's too difficult to dive into exact splits for the league as a whole without spending an incredible amount of time, but bear with me. The league (MLB, not AL or NL) has committed 2214 errors so far this year. Granted, some of those errors allow 1Bs to become 2Bs, or they allow runners stealing second to go to third or what not, but the large majority of these errors are guys reaching first that otherwise shouldn't have. Let's say that's around 1700 extra base runners that shouldn't have been there. The league has Kd 24,197 times out of 137,218 plate apperances, or 17.6% of the time. Dunn has 1215 Ks out of 4549 career plate appearances, which is a rate of 26.7% of the time. If he were K'ing at this year's league average rate every year, he'd average 105Ks per 600 plate appearances per year. Over the course of an average Dunn season, he Ks about 55 times more than normal. That's 55 more "bad" outs that he makes in an average year. The league has GIDP 2853 times this year, which is a rate of 2.1% of all plate appearances. Dunn has GIDP 54 times in his career (less than 3x what Lee has this year already), for a rate of 1.2% of the time. If he were GIDP at the league rate, he'd have 5 more GIDPs each year. So, essentially, Dunn has makes 55 more of one kind of "bad" out, and 5 less of another kind of "bad" out. Here's where it admittedly gets a little unscientific...what percentage of at bats occur with a guy on 3rd with 0-1 outs to where the K is less desirable than the sac fly? I can't tally that split without taking way too much time. Instead, I'll just look at the league average of Sac Flys and see if Dunn is trailing in that category (i.e. is his proneness to strike out affecting his ability to get that guy home from 3rd...). The percentages of where this affects a guy at third with less than 2 outs should normalize. The league has 993 Sac Flys, for a rate of 0.80%. Dunn, for his career 21 Sac Flies, for a rate of 0.46% of the time, so his proneness to missing the ball is affecting his ability to move the runner over. If he were keeping up with the average, over a course of 600 at bats, this means he is missing out on moving the runner over about twice a season. No one is arguing his ability to not make outs is very valuable. However, if you want to compare the types of bad outs he is making to the type of bad outs he is not making, the cost of his high-OPB approach is approximately 2 sac flies, while you're also gaining 5 fewer double plays. Again, the sac fly part isn't scientific, because I don't have league wide splits with a guy at third and fewer than two outs. The GIDP isn't exactly scientific either because it doesn't weigh the Reds ability to get on base in front of Dunn and his number of chances of getting into a GIDP. If anyone really wants to consider those numbers, I bet the number of missed sac flies in a year won't deviate by more than one or two, and the number of GIDP won't deviate by more than one or two either. So, let me say it again...Dunn's proclivity for the strikeout costs him moving the runner over about twice a year when compared to the average league player in a 600 plate appearance season. At the same time, he is getting into 5 fewer double plays per year. In exchange for his career .900 OPS, you're getting 2 fewer sac flies and 5 fewer GIDPs because of his Ks. IMO, the impact of his high K rates on his overall value is pretty close to nil. For the record, the main thing keeping Dunn from being a Manny type of hitter is his ability to make contact. On the other hand, Dunn is what he is, you know what you're getting with him, and it's not really fair to compare anyone to Manny, who is maybe the greatest all-around hitter of this generation (if not, then he's top 3).

Considering the amount of money they threw at Shark, I don't think they see him as a reliever in the long term. He'll be given a shot at competing for that 5th slot next spring if he keeps up what he's been doing.

Sheffield is beginning to remind me of Canseco. He's not a good player at all anymore. He just wants to get enough playing time to reach that 500 hr plateau so he can go away.

Sounds like something Mr. Obvious would say. ;)

Is this officially the first proclamation of this for 2009? This would make it 8 years running that everyone needs to watch out for the up and coming Reds. I'm going to say 2011. They won't be that great in 2009 or 2010 while Dusty is at the helm. If they fire Dusty, then I'd bump that prediction up a year. I really think he'll prevent this team from reaching their potential. As was typical of his time here and in SF, Dusty's teams are not fundamentally sound teams, and Cincy has proven to be no exception. The man just doesn't put emphasis on the fundamentals of baseball, he puts all of his focus into massaging personalities.

That's easy. Ned Colletti is an imbecile.

Karma is on our side this year. Let's not tempt it.