The Cincinnati Reds have as much young talent as any team in baseball. Players like Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, Drew Stubbs, Edinson Volquez, Johnny Cueto, and Aroldis Chapman represent a bright future for the Reds and their fans.
When a team has that much talent, the next step is to lock up that talent.
The Reds took the next step with one of their young, talented players this week when they signed Bruce to a contract extension. Cincinnati signed Bruce to a six-year, $51 contract with a $13 million option for 2017.
At $8.5 million a year on average, this is a very good and fair extension by the Reds.
After a down 2009 season, Bruce had a nice bounce back season for the Reds in 2010. Bruce finished the year with a .281/.353/.493 slash line with 25 HRs. Back in late September, I thought there were three reasons for Bruce’s rebound season.
1. Improved BB percentage. Bruce has improved his BB percentage from 9.8 percent last year to 10.1 percent in 2010. While that might not be the biggest jump in the world, it marks the third year in a row that Bruce’s BB percentage has increased. It was just 7.3 in 2008.
The continued increase tells me not only is Bruce getting more comfortable at the plate, but more comfortable facing major league pitching. Bruce is only 23 years old, and the more comfortable he gets throughout his career, the more I would imagine his BB percentage would continue to increase.
2. Improved line drive percentage. Last year, Bruce was hitting more flyballs (48.5 percent), which led to more HRs, but also led to more lazy flyball outs. Bruce has stopped hitting so many flyballs and has started to hit line drives.
Bruce has improved his line drive percentage by over seven percent in 2010.
3. Improvement versus left-handed pitching. Coming into 2010, Bruce had a career slash line of .200/.288/.315 in 263 AB’s versus left-handed pitching. Essentially, he was an automatic out against lefties.
However, Bruce has really improved versus lefties in 2010. Bruce came into Wednesday night’s game hitting .260/.335/.500 in 154 AB’s. He also has 10 of his 22 HRs against lefties in 2010. That’s a tremendous improvement from years past.
If Bruce continues and improves in those three categories throughout the length of his extension, the Reds will be getting a steal.
Not only is Bruce solid offensively, but what many people don’t realize is that he is very good defensively. I know a lot of people will remember Bruce for his gaffe against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the NLDS this season, but I hope that is not the case. Bruce has posted back-to-back solid defensive seasons in right and his 20.2 UZR was second amongst all Major League right fielders in 2010.
This is a good extension by the Reds. Now if they can get Votto extended, they will really be in business in the future.
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