How to fix the Reds (part 1)

They won today ... but the Cincinnati Reds are flat out awful at this point. Last in all of baseball in batting average (.239), on-base percentage (.308), and slugging percentage (.381) ... despite playing in one of the best hitting parks in baseball. In fact, if you look at their road hitting stats, which are not influenced by the offense-friendly GABP, their stats are a putrid .234/.297/.363. To put this in perspective I looked for the player w/ the closest stats to the Reds road split. The winner ... Astros backup catcher Humberto Quintero (.239/.291/.349). Essentially, you can view the Reds lineup on the road as nine Quinteros (which would be a good name for a metal/salsa band). Not surprisingly, they are dead last in runs scored (470). Big ... Dead ... Machine.

The pitching, while fading a bit from April/May, is right around league average which is reasonable considering park effects. The bullpen in particular has been ... well ... very good. Most of the time they are keeping games from getting out of hand rather than preserving leads, unfortunately.

They are 16.5 games out of the wild card lead and very clearly one of the worst 5 0r 6 worst teams in baseball. Their last winning season was 2000 and this decade they have been 116 games under .500. How to fix this mess? Dolberry has the answers.

Before getting to them ... recognize the cure is not going to be an easy one. Barring any massive increases in salary outlay, there are not going to be any easy fixes. You have to start now to build for 2012 or 2013. Yes, that's going to make it hard to sell season tickets next year ... but losing an additional 100-200K in attendance in the short term is worth the potential for an additional 1 to 1.5 million that you'll get when the Dolberry plan has you in the playoffs down the road. Also, realize that it's going to take some luck. The other MLB teams are not idiots, at least the majority of them. There will need to be some calculated risks (zigging when others zag) ... and some of them will have to pan out. But just eliminating the stupid things that the Reds have been doing will help get us started back to respectibility if nothing else.

Salary: Let's assume it's going to stay around $75 million like it's been over the past two years. That's not a problem. It's more than 11 teams, including some playoff candidates. Allocation of those resources has been the problem.

Distribution of salary: I like to view a baseball team as consisting of four parts: 1) the lineup, 2) the rotation, 3) the bullpen, 4) the bench. I'm not sure what the exact optimal allocation of funds should be but certainly you should weight the salary resources against potential contribution towards winning games. Some of this is gut feel ... some is statistical ... some is based on experience in fantasy and tabletop baseball (not a direct translation, admittedly) ... but I think the following distribution is close to right:

Lineup: 45% / Rotation 40% / Bullpen 10% / Bench 5%.

Some of the ideas that are built into this are:
- most of your ABs over a season (~ 70%) come from your top 8-10 players barring injuries
- similarly most of your IP (~60%) will come from your starters
- many relief IP are after the game's already been decided
- most of the bullpen $ should go to a quality pitcher who can be reserved for key situations
- it's easier to find cheap relievers than it is to find cheap position players or starters
- bench can usually be filled w/ useful 1-dimensional cheap pieces (e.g., lefty mashers)

One of the flaws w/ the Reds and their salary allocation this year can be seen in a comparison w/ the St. Louis. The Cardinals have a rotation/bullpen salary ratio of about 4. The Reds' pen of Cordero, Rhodes, & Weathers have pitched great ... but the $17.5 million investment in those three players has not translated to wins because there are few leads to protect ... having shortchanged the more win-relevant parts (lineup and rotation).

Lesson for today ... need to adhere more closely to optimal splits ... Reds bullpen should cost (on average) ~ 7 to 8 million. We'll talk in another installment on how to build a good bullpen w/ that kind of money.

Part 2: Amateur Draft / Free Agents / Minor League Free Agents / Rule 5 Draft / Trades ... general philosophy on how to build a winning roster.