This is modern-era Cincinnati sports we’re talking here…baby steps!
Hey!
:mad:
After sweeping the Mets, the Nats are now 19 games over .500, tying their previous high since coming to DC. And the NL West race seems to have come down to just the Nats and Braves.
Last night’s 16-0 defeat at the hands of the red hot A’s was the worst shutout loss in the 36-year history of the Blue Jays franchise.
Oh, and the starting catcher broke his hand. Now they have nine pitchers on the DL, plus the team’s best position player, plus its catcher.
Wheeeee.
Well, the A’s are red hot right now. The Jays might have a favorable stretch coming up including a series with Detroit where they’ll miss Verlander and then a series in Seattle.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, have a series with the Yankees on the horizon.
All the injured pitchers, and not one of them is Romero.
I think you mean East.
It’s a forgivable error, since Atlanta and Cincinnati were in the western throughout the two-division era. Crazy.
D’oh! 
I think because the Braves were in the NL West for so long, my fingers didn’t want to type ‘East’ in a sentence involving them.
Anyway, the Nats beat up on the Brewers last night - 8 runs, Jackson pitched 7 shutout innings (he and Jordan Zimmerman are understandably overshadowed, but they’re about as good a pair of 3 and 4 starters as you’re likely to find), and are now 20 games over .500.
You know when the last time was that a Washington, DC MLB team was 20 games over .500? 1945.
Also, the Nats are currently tied with the Yankees for the best record in baseball, just ahead of the Rangers (19 games over .500) and Reds (18 games over).
It looks like the Angels have won the Greinke sweepstakes.
Reds 3-0 through 8 innings against the Rockies…even with Arroyo. C’mon Redleggers, win that 8th straight game!
You seem to have a bit of a hard-on for Arroyo, but as far as i can tell, he’s doing perfectly decently this year. He’s having a year that is right about his career average (slightly better, actually), and he is, at worst, the third-best performer among Cincinnati’s starting pitchers.
He’s third in ERA, second in WHIP, and third in WAR.
Basically, the Reds starting pitchers consist of Johnny Cueto, then everyone else. I don’t see Arroyo as deserving of any special attention for dragging the team down. If he’s behind the other pitchers in W-L stats, it probably has more to do with run support than anything else.
Nah. Arroyo is what he is. A guy that can eat innings if he doesn’t get destroyed, but often gets destroyed. Usually around the fifth inning. His problem is that his stuff is junk. If he can’t get batters to chase after his sinking junkball, then he gets into trouble and gives up the meat. His fastball tops out at about 88mph right now and its straight and fools only those that are chasing his junkball stuff.
He is what he is. Yes, he gets you about 13-15 wins a season, but loses the same amount and has an ERA of close to 5. He’s not great. By his own recent admission, he’s the weakest link in the rotation now.
If by “close to 5” you mean “less than 4”.
Being the weakest link in the Reds rotation isn’t a real insult by any means. You can call them “Johnny Cueto and everyone else” but here is a full list of all Cincinnati starters, by starts made, in 2012:
Johnny Cueto, 20
Homer Bailey, 20
Mat Latos, 20
Mike Leake, 19
Bronson Arroyo, 19
That’s it. Nobody else has started a single game. They have run the same 5-man rotation since Opening Day with not a burp, not an injury, not so much as a single missed start. The four guys after Cueto haven’t been spectacular but they have been consistent, dependable starters who give the Reds a chance to win.
How many other teams have had just five men start games for them this season? If your answer is “none,” you are of course correct. It’s actually kind of amazing to have your rotation get a hundred games into the season without anyone missing a start. The Giants are the only team close, having had to use just Eric Hacker for a start.
By way of comparison, the Padres have used 13 starting pitchers this year. The Blue Jays have used 10, the Rangers 10, the Nationals 7, the Pirates 7, the Yankees 8. There is a lot to be said for being able to send guys out there you know will pitch decently day in and day out.
I’m well aware of that.
As should have been clear from my post, what i meant by “Johnny Cueto, then everyone else” is that, in terms of performance, Cueto is the clear standout starting pitcher in the organization, while all the others have quite similar stats.
Cueto’s ERA is 2.23; the other four are all over 3.50.
Cueto’s WHIP is 1.17; the other four are all over 1.24.
Cueto’s WAR is 4.5; all the others are 1.5 or less.
Cueto has 12 wins despite having the second-worst run support among starting pitchers in the whole National League.
My point was simply to note that Arroyo has not been bad this year, and (despite FoieGrasIsEvil’s insistence that he’s the dud of the bunch) has really been about as good as the other starters, with the exception of Cueto. The only reason that Arroyo’s W-L record is so poor is that he’s had run support almost as bad as Cueto’s, but he’s not the stud pitcher Cueto is.
Here’s the Reds’ starting pitchers’ run support for the year (Run support per 9 innings):
Cueto: 4.73
Arroyo: 5.14
Leake: 6.41
Bailey: 6.64
Latos: 7.09
Actually, Miami has also used just 5 starters for its 98 games.
Yeah, the five man thing for the entire season is pretty remarkable. And the Reds own the longest win streak in MLB right now with 8. They aren’t playing a tough schedule right now by any stretch, but its still pretty cool to rattle off 8 in a row.
Mhendo, you’re right…I thought Arroyo’s ERA was a full point higher than it actually is. I’m kinda extrapolating his stats this season into every other year he’s pitched here, and he’s just always been decidedly average. I suppose what I am forgetting is that so is every other MLB teams 4th and 5th pitchers!
What my Mariners’ pitchers could do with that kind of run support…
My mistake; after Anibal Sanchez was traded I assumed they’d used someone else, but it was more recently than I’d thought and his turn doesn’t come up until today.