Wednesday, July 31, 2013

How Bad is the Reds Offense?


There is an exception to all rules. In baseball, good pitching beats good hitting…except when the team with good pitching is so comically bad offensively. That describes the Reds of late. How bad has the Reds offense been of late (and 2013 in general)?

In the last 11 games, the Reds have given up an average of 2.64 runs/game. They are 4-7 in that stretch. Here are the numbers in that stretch:

Win / Loss
Runs
Base Runners
LOB
RISP
Decision for Reds SP
Opp. Pitcher threw (R/L)
ERA of Pitcher faced
Pitcher
L
2
10
6
0-3
L
L
2.15
Locke
W
11
18
6
5-14
W
R
4.61
Lincecum
W
9
15
6
5-8
W
L
Rookie
Surkamp
L
3
14
14
1-14
NK
L
4.92
Zito
W
8
19
10
4-14
W
R
2.77
Gaudin
W
5
12
6
3-8
W
R
3.43
Greinke
L
1
6
4
1-9
L
L
1.96
Kershaw
L
1
3
2
0-3
L
L
3.14
Ryu
L/11
0
5
5
0-6
ND
L
4.54
Capuano
L
1
12
10
0-5
ND
R
3.72
O'Sullivan
L
2
11
8
3-7
ND
R
5.56
Volquez
4-7
43
125
77
22-91

 

Avg Runs Scored/game by Reds:
3.91
Runs in L:
10
Avg Runs in L:
1.42
Runs in W:
33
Avg Runs in W:
8.25
Avg Base Runners (ABR) :
11.36
ABR in L:
8.7143
ABR in W:
16
% of BR reaching scoring position in L:
0.770
% of BR reaching scoring position in W:
0.6875
Avg w/ RISP:
0.242
RISP in L:
47
Avg w/ RISP in L:
0.085
4-47
RISP in W:
44
Avg w/ RISP in W:
0.386
17-44
Reds Runs against:
29
Reds Avg Runs Against:
2.64
Reds Starting Pitchers:
4W - 3L - 4 ND
vs Lefty
1-5
Only W vs a Rookie making his 1st start
vs Righty
3-2
Avg ERA of Opposing P:
3.68
Does not include Surkamp
Avg ERA of Opp P in L:
3.71
Avg ERA of Opp P in W:
3.60
Reds record when scoring 4+ runs:
49-13 (4 losses were in extra innings)
Reds Avg runs/game:
4.31

 

They have not gotten on base a lot of late, but they have gotten on enough (nearly 9 runners/game) given the pitching they are getting.

 

The Reds are currently the 2nd wildcard in the NL despite these staggering pitching numbers:

Pitching
MLB Rank
NL Rank
WHIP
1.18
T-1st
T-1st
ERA
3.33
2
2
QS
66
T-2nd
T-1st
IP
976.1
1
1
ER
361
4
4
Batting Avg Against (BAA)
0.237
3
2
K
882
3
1
K/BB
3.03
3
1
K/9
8.13
5
2

 

On the surface, their hitting doesn’t look too bad:

Hitting
MLB Rank
NL Rank
Runs
466
12
3
OBP
0.327
8
3
Runs/game
4.31
RBI
445
12
4
Avg
0.250
18
9
HR
102
15
5
OPS
0.721
13
5

 

 

These numbers are deceiving though. The Reds runs come in bunches and that skews the holes in this offense.

 

The Magic of 4

The Reds rank 3rd in the NL in runs scored, averaging 4.31/game, however, 49 times this year (45%), the Reds have scored 3 runs or less. 4 runs is the magic number for this team. 4 runs should not be a problem for this offense, yet it is:

When the Reds score 4+ runs, they are 49-13 (.790 W%) – 4 of those losses are in extra innings

Had the Reds scored just 4 runs in each of their last 11 games (they averaged 3.9), they would have gone 8-1 with 2 ties. Instead, they went 4-7.

In their last 11 games, the Reds scored 43 runs – not unforgiveable

33 of those runs came in the 4 wins; 10 in the 7 losses – which is unforgiveable.

 

What are they to do? Well, based on what they did today (or didn’t do at the trade deadline), nothing. If they are waiting for injured players to come back, I wouldn’t count on it helping:

Sure getting Marshall, Broxton, and Cueto back would be great, but pitching isn’t their problem (see above), hitting is. And, if they are counting on Ludwick, I don’t think that is wise either. He is 35 years old coming off a labrum tear, therefore, expecting the Ludwick from 2012 is setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

RISP

Here are the Reds players averages as a whole, and averages with RISP. Not good.

Avg
Avg w/ RISP
0.283
Choo
0.238
0.238
Cozart
0.177
0.317
Votto
0.287
0.256
Phillips
0.389
0.279
Bruce
0.258
0.243
Frazier
0.269
0.251
Mesaraco
0.262
0.215
Heisey
0.222
0.261
Robinson
0.214
0.240
Paul
0.264

2 comments:

  1. Here's the chart you need to know--runs scored in each game as a function of OBP in that game. All data from baseball-reference.com (scroll all the way to the right for the chart): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Amka928XlJGqdDFoOU1MV2dKcnBqWlBZRi1vQzZxdXc&single=true&gid=1&output=html

    The trend is obvious. The higher the OBP in any given game, the higher the number of runs scored. Of course, this is a TREND, and is not an asbolute rule--you can indeed score few runs with a high OBP. But as you can see from the chart, that's pretty rare.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good stuff, though we are beating a dead horse at this point. I still like RISP as my stat, you can have OBP and we can ride off into the sunset singing praise of our respective stats!

    ReplyDelete