Sometime in august, somebody at Baseball prospectus put up a column about
fantasy baseball and average performance figures by position. By league,
what did the best four second baseman hit in terms of average, home runs and
rbi? What did the next best four second basemen hit and so on.

This was before the big offensive swoon at the end of the season where the
team as a whole went into a collective slump that just killed their season,
but after the trade with the nationals. By the numbers, at that time the
reds were one of the better offensive teams in the NL.

I went through by position and found to my surprise that other than Adam
Dunn in left field, the reds did not have a single player that was
performing at even the average level for his position. Nobody. Not
Hatteberg, Not Junior, Not Rich A.

Now, that seems curious to me and I looked into it and come to the
conclusion that some of it was playing time illusion. At that time the reds
had several players who would have been close to league average if their
playing time had been bumped up enough. Some of it was also statistical
illusion in that the unholy stats used by fantasy roto-heads don't always
correlate with team runs scored. Part of it was also that "league average"
in the article was actually code for "league average player who is good
enough and healthy enough to have a full time job" which is actually a good
cut better than "league average.

But it seems curious that on a good offensive team only one player was
playing at what as a level qualified as "good" when adjusted for a
positional bias. I mentioned that it was a tribute to the depth of the
organization that they had as good an offense as they did. The sum of the
"bad parts" lumped up to a pretty decent offense. I think it's a curious
result that bears some watching in the post season.

Before the big trade with the Nationals, I commented a couple of times that
other in the bullpen, the reds were very much the deepest team in the NL,
the team most insolated against injury. After giving up Kearns and Lopez,
that was no longer true.

One of the first things that Wayne did was to bring in Scott Hatteberg. I
howled about it, but ...damn was that a good pickup.

Halfway through the season the reds seemingly threw young Chris Denorfia
under a bus and brought in Todd Hollandsworth. Again I howled about it and
.....while it wasn't a good move, Hollansworth and Denorfia performed at
about the same level.

At about the same time they brought in Hollandsworth, they threw Tomkoed the
Lizard and replaced his starts with some combination of Kyle Lohse and Chris
Michalak. Again, I howl about this, but when you look at the end of the
season results....replacing the young player with a chance of getting better
and performing in the future with a castoff veteran who is plugging a
hole....the results say it was a decent move.

At the end of the season the GM said Joey Votto is firmly slotted for AAA at
best next year and that Homer Baily will in all likelihood be going to
Louisville because the new GM believe that AAA provides a level of
experience important for young players to have. Although several of the reds
players were moved up at the half season point Jay Bruce was retained at low
a ball all year long. The best of the reds minor leaguers seem to be moved
along very deliberately through the system. This is an organizational
change.

Long rambling post. Sorry about that. Add it all up and what does it say?

I think the time of young marginal AAA players being promoted to the major
league roster because they are younger cheaper player with a chance of
contributing bit .....I think that's not in the new GM's playbook. I think
those players will have to bust down the door and earn playing time. Yes,
it's possible that somebody like Chris Denorfia can hit it big and be Brady
Clark in centerfield for a couple of years, but...well Brady Clark himself
isn't that expensive and the while there may be some upside to playing a
young player with a chance at giving you league average or better
production, well there's also a risk that the young player will give you a
Brandon Larson sized crater in the middle of your roster. If the marginal
cost of replacing that risk is and extra $700,000 in salary (the difference
between Hollandsworth and Denorfia) well, the new ownership and management
team feel that's worth it.

In addition to some major trades that will probably reconstruct the team. I
believe at some level the reds are very much aware that the depth of the
team matters. I think we may see the signing of several "Juan Castro type
players" to be the back end of Jerry Narron's bench.

Just something to think about, when we start talking about who will stay and
who will go.

You can point to the West Coast trip, but that St. Louis series that didn't
matter, the Lizards meltdown there and in Philly, was a sea change in the
fortune of the reds this year. Before that you could argue that along with
Milton, Arroyo and Harang, the reds had 4 league average pitchers in the
lineup. Curiously after that meltdown, even though the numbers for the
rotation showed improvement, I don't think anybody made that argument.

dfs