Kuzul

WhatIfSports.com utilizes its award-winning baseball simulation engine to present the most comprehensive and unbiased ranking possible of all 30 teams in baseball each Monday during the regular season.

To come up with the rankings, using only their statistical performance to date this season, each team is simulated against every other team 100 times (50 at home and 50 away) so that all five pitchers in the current rotation start ten times at each location.

(Note: If a pitcher who was in the rotation was recently put on the disabled list, he will not be included in the simulations.)

Teams Ranked by Winning Percentage
(everyone plays everyone 100 times)

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On a day with some tremendous pitching performances, Clayton Kershaw stole the show by striking out 12 and walking none.  Ubaldo Jimenez appears to have righted the ship after a rough patch.  Carl Crawford showed why he is one of the elite outfielders in the game.  Let’s take a look at these stories and all the rest from yesterday’s games.

Pitchers

• Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers (8.0 IP, 2 ER, 7 H, 0 BB, 12 K, W): It was a spectacular performance, to say the least, especially considering the control problems he’s had in the past.  He currently has a 2.96 ERA and 1.20 WHIP, with both numbers being realistic as they are based off a .292 BABIP and 77.6 percent strand rate.  If he could ever get his control completely in order (4.0 BB/9), the numbers could be off the charts.  As it is, with 128 Ks in 112.1 innings, he’s entrenched himself as an elite fantasy option.

• Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros (9.0 IP, 0 ER, 1 H, 2 BB, 8 K, W): Forget about the six wins, it’s only because he pitches for the Astros.  He is now sporting a 3.08 ERA and is one of the better pitchers in the league.  There will be rumors right up until the deadline of potential trades and if he goes to a contender, his value will only increase.

• Ubaldo Jiminez, Colorado Rockies (8.0 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 2 BB, 6 K, W): He needed this heading into the All-Star break.  He had struggled over his previous three starts, allowing 17 ER over 17.2 IP.  He finishes the first half with 15 wins and a 2.20 ERA.  Simply amazing, even with the short cold streak.  Obviously it’s impossible to expect him to replicate these types of numbers in the second half, but he certainly will remain one of the elite in the game.

• John Danks, Chicago White Sox (9.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 0 BB, 7 K, W): It was a brilliant performance, and he needed every bit of it to defeat Ervin Santana (8.0 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 3 BB, 4 K).  Danks has allowed three earned runs or less in five of his last six starts and has been solid all year long with a 3.29 ERA and 1.13 WHIP.  He has had some luck (.265 BABIP), so there may be a small regression, but he’s proven over the past two and a half years to be a solid option.

• Brett Cecil, Toronto Blue Jays (7.0 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 1 BB, 2 K, W): Just when you think that his value has completely diminished, he draws you back in.  He was awful in interleague play (0-3 allowing 15 ER over 15.2 IP), but now that he’s back pitching against AL opponents he has allowed two earned runs over 13 IP against the Yankees and Twins.  He’s certainly worth stashing for the second half.

• Scott Baker, Minnesota Twins (6.0 IP, 5 ER, 7 H, 0 BB, 4 K): In his last seven starts, he’s allowed four earned runs or more five times.  What is going on?  Before you press the panic button, he entered the game with a BABIP of .338.  That’s really the only difference, as he’s still striking batters out and he’s still hardly walking anyone.  If there’s someone in your league that is fed up with him, I would certainly buy low for the second half (we’ll certainly be talking more about him in the coming days).

• Mat Latos, San Diego Padres (7.0 IP, 0 ER, 5 H, 2 BB, 8 K, W): The real question is if he will face an innings limit or not.  With the Padres competing for the NL West title, there’s no chance of them completely shutting him down.  Could they give him an extra day off or not now and then?  Probably, but that’s about it.  Plus, there is recent for skepticism as he entered the day with a .243 BABIP and 80.8 percent strand rate.  I’ll have to spend much more detail over the All-Star break on what we can expect from him in the second half, but in all likelihood, there is a regression coming.

• Johnny Cueto, Cincinnati Reds (7.0 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 2 BB, 3 K): He was solid for the fifth straight start, but the strikeouts continue to be a puzzling trend.  In his last 32.1 innings he’s allowed just three earned runs, but he’s struck out 14 batters.  That’s a terrible mark (3.9 K/9) and unless he can rediscover that, his luck will sooner or later run out.  Considering his trend of fading in the second half, there certainly is cause for concern.

• Andy Pettitte, New York Yankees (8.0 IP, 1 ER, 5 H, 4 BB, 9 K, W): Pettitte closes the first half at 11-2 with a 2.70 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP.  Tremendous numbers, but let’s keep in mind that he hasn’t had a sub-4.00 ERA since 2005.  When you dig deeper into his line, you see that he’s benefiting from a .265 BABIP and 80.6 percent strand rate.  I would say it’s likely he sees a regression in the second half, and possibly a major one.  Now may be the best time to sell high on him if there’s an interested owner.

Hitters

• Lance Berkman, Houston Astros (3-4, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 2 R): Maybe the talk of is demise was a little premature, huh?  He’s now homered in four straight games, going 7-13 with five homers, eight RBI, and six runs.

• Aubrey Huff, San Francisco Giants (2-3, 1 HR, 4 RBI, 1 R): He just keeps hitting and hitting and hitting.  He has his average at .298 with 17 HR and 54 RBI on the year.  He now has a seven-game hitting streak going 11-28 with five home runs, 12 RBI and eight runs.  You certainly want to ride him while he’s hot, and there certainly is the potential to continue driving in runs hitting in the middle of the lineup.

• Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Rays (2-4, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 2 R): While he’s not a big-time power threat, he’s also more then just a source of speed for fantasy owners.  On the year he’s hitting .321 with 10 HR, 48 RBI, 66 R and 29 SB.  Simply amazing.  In July, he’s gone 15-27 with three homers, 10 RBI, nine runs and a stolen base.  That begs the question, where has the speed gone?  Then again, is anyone really worried with the production he’s provided?  He’s one of the few elite outfielders in the game today.

• Felix Pie, Baltimore Orioles (1-3, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 R): Pie has a hit in all three games he’s played since coming off the DL, going 4-13 with one home run, three RBI, and a run scored.  We’ve all heard about his potential and it appears that he’s going to get the chance to play everyday in the second half.  That certainly should put him on the radar of those in five-outfielder formats, but given his history we need to give him more time to prove his value.

• Kelly Johnson, Arizona Diamondbacks (4-5, 3 RBI, 2 R): After his amazing April he had faded significantly in May (3 HR, .245) and June (1 HR, .235).  In July, things are looking up significantly.  He’s now hitting .417 (10-24) with one home run, eight RBI, five runs scored and a stolen base for the month.  Keep in mind, in May he had seven RBI and 10 in June.  The fact is, he’s not as good as he was in April and he’s not as bad as he was in May and June.  I would expect him to be solid, though without the power he initially showed, the rest of the way.

• Rafael Furcal, Atlanta Braves (3-3, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 2 R, 1 SB): He did a little bit of everything in this one, showing his full range of abilities.  He’s a must-use in all formats right now.

Who were the night’s big performers in your minds? Anyone else jump out at you? Any thoughts on the guys I mentioned here?

THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO FEATURED ON WWW.ROTOPROFESSOR.COM

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Baseball can be a cruel game. The numbers are the numbers, and they never lie. If you look at the boxscore from Saturday night’s 11-5 Reds victory over the Royals, it will show you that Johnny Cueto pitched six innings, allowed five earned runs, and had four walks.

Under no circumstances is that ever good, or something that should be acceptable on a per game basis, but after completely unraveling in the second inning, which saw him allow five earned runs, Johnny Cueto composed himself, kept his team in the ballgame, and gave that bullpen some needed relief with those six innings of work.

Rightfully so, he was booed off the mound in that second inning, and booed for not running hard down the line in his at bat in bottom half of that inning. It started to look like the end of the road for the enigmatic Cueto. With Edinson Volquez rehabbing, and Aroldis Chapman not too far from making his Major League debut, someone in that rotation is going to lose his job.

For one night, Cueto fought like hell to make sure that it’s not going to be him. His success after that inning came when he stopped trying to aim his pitches, and started relying more on his God-given abilities.

Cueto’s physical gifts are up there when you assess the young pitchers in the game. However, for every young pitcher who combines great stuff with the right mental approach, there are many others who are solely hard throwers and nothing more.

Which guy will Cueto become? Will he become just another failed prospect with a cannon for an arm, or will he do more with his career? I hope his gutsy performance Saturday night is a sign of good things to come.

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Entering the 2010 baseball season, the Cincinnati Reds and their fans had lofty expectation for the starting staff. Bronson Arroyo, Homer Bailey, Johnny Cueto, Aaron Harang, and Mike Leake have gone way above and beyond those expectations since, on April 24, manager Dusty Baker went “Bull Durham” on the entire team.

Yesterday Craig Simpson wrote an article titled, “Dusty Baker Goes Bull Durham, Cincinnati Reds Respond.”  Simpson explained that Baker chastised his team for it’s lackadaisical play.

The old curiosity peaked and an investigation was in order.  

Knowing that the starters were pitching better than they were at the beginning of their dismal excuse for a season, a team of experts was sent to delve deeper.

The findings are mind blowing.

Collectively, over the last 21 games, the starters are 12-3, with an ERA of 3.11, and a 1.11 WHIP.

The “quality start” stat used to be looked at as a joke. In recent years, it has become a pretty decent indicator of a staff’s success, or lack thereof. In their last 21 games Reds’ starters have amassed 15 quality starts. Boys and girls, that’s a 71 percent clip.

From April 25 until yesterday, May 18, their ERA has dropped almost two full points—from 6.49 to a 4.55 spot.

Before the meeting only one starter, Leake, had an ERA under four.

Small sample sizes, yes. Bailey is the only guy with five starts—all others have four. 

However, since the meeting Arroyo’s ERA has dropped 2.65 points, Bailey’s 2.26 points, Cueto is down from 5.33 to 3.67 (a difference of 1.66 points), Harang has seen his dip 2.29 points, and even Leake now sports a 3.09 ERA, 0.83 points better than before. 

WHIPs since Dusty went Durham: Cueto 0.88, Leake 0.92, Arroyo 1.14, Bailey 1.16, with his 1.37 WHIP, Harang is looking like the chump of the bunch. But his ERA during the run is 4.01—very respectable. 

The Reds have played 12 home games and nine away. 

Great American Ball Park is a notorious home run stadium—that’s putting it kindly.

During the three-plus week stretch the staff is letting only 1.03 balls leave the yard per nine innings.

The numbers go on-and-on: a 7.6 K/9 ratio, while allowing only 2.27 batters to reach via walk per nine. 

How are they doing it?

Throw strikes, baby…Throw strikes! Getting ahead in counts while making hitters work down in the count allows the starter to work deeper into the ballgames.

In 19 of the last 21 games, the starting pitcher has thrown at least six full. Just once during the span has a starter been removed before completing five innings, and only once more before the pitching six full.  

So Dusty must be abusing his starters again, right? Nope. Well, maybe.

Twice Baker has allowed a starter to throw more than 120 pitches. Both Bailey and Harang threw 121 in a start.

Cueto has thrown 113 and 118—that may be a bit distressing. He also needed 102 in his complete game, one-hit shutout. 

Rubber-armed Arroyo has pitched 100-plus (never hitting 110) in three of his four starts. 

Rookie sensation, Mike Leake, has been allowed over the 100-mark in just one of his last four starts.

Besides Dusty’s Durham speech, much of the credit must be given to first-year pitching coach, Bryan Price. 

Price has twice been named the Major League’s Pitching Coach of the Year—once with Seattle by USA Today Baseball Weekly, and again in Arizona by Baseball America.

No doubt, it has been a promising three-week run for the Cincy starters. 

One that has The Queen City and it’s surrounding regions all ready buzzing with a long forgotten playoff vibe. 

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The month of May has been good to the Cincinnati Reds. They have gone 7-4 through a Cardinals, Cubs, Mets and Pirates slate.

The hitting is coming around, currently ranked fifth in the N.L. with 158 runs scored. But the major turn-around as been courtesy of the starting pitching.

After a magical one-hit complete game shut-out by Johnny Cueto, Homer Bailey followed suit. He gave up a whopping five hits over a complete game shut-out. The legendary Dayton Daily News beat writer Hal McCoy sums it up best:

“Reds pitchers gave up one run over 27 innings. The Pirates third base coach was as lonely as a cop directing traffic in the Arctic Circle”

Bailey (1-2) needed only 90 pitches—73 for strikes—to close out the Reds’ fifth straight win. He did not go to a three-ball count the whole game and only went to a two-ball count four times.

“That’s the epitome of pitch conservation right there,” manager Dusty Baker said. “He followed Johnny Cueto’s lead right there. That’s the most well-pitched two days that I’ve seen in a long time.”

Cueto and Bailey become the first pair of Reds pitchers to fire back-to-back complete-game shutouts since Jose Rijo  and Tom Browning accomplished the feat on June 9 & 10, 1989 at Los Angeles.

Bailey loves the Pirates—he has a 5-0 record lifetime against the AAAA club. Sure he got rocked against the Cubs last week, but he seems to have found out how to conserve his pitches better than in the past. He is still a work in progress, but the 23 year-old is finally learning from previous mistakes.

Couple the terrific past two days with a seemingly revived Aaron Harang, a steady Bronson Arroyo a phenom in the making in rookie Mike “who needs the minors” Leake, and the Reds suddenly have one of the best starting rotations in all of baseball.

Sure the ERA and wins, loss records aren’t there. Yet after a rocky month of April the Reds hold 16 quality starts—sixth in the N.L.

Sure it’s only May, there is plenty of games to be played (128 to be exact), but the season is over 20 percent complete.

Still too early to declare 2010 “the year”, last season the club was 26-20 at one point. But this team has the right chemistry. No more aging stars with ego’s too big for the clubhouse. No Corey Patterson’s or Willy Taveras’. Just a lot of youngsters that are enjoying the ride that is being a Major League baseball player.

Reds media relations guru Jamie Ramsey blogged about how manager Dusty Baker took the team out to dinner Sunday night. Baker seems to genuinely like this team:

“He gave a heartfelt post-dinner speech to the guys in which he called the group “special” and told the guys to believe they can win this season.  It was nice and the team responded to it.  There was a nice energy in the room”

Dusty picked up the check for the whole team too!

On the offensive side, the veterans (Scott Rolen, Brandon Phillips, Orlando Cabrera, Johnny Gomes) are starting to put up numbers usually expected when looking at the back of their respectiveve baseball cards. Joey Votto is on his way to the All-Star game, and even Jay Bruce has righted the ship.

“He’s been much better,” Baker said. “We try to give him some theories and philosophies. We have talk to left-handers who can hit left-handers.”

Baker has had Bruce talk to Luis Gonzalez and Raul Ibanez.

Bruce’s splits are pretty even this year, quite the opposite of ’09. He went into Wednesday hitting .250 off left-handers and .273 off right-handers. He has two homers off LHs and two off RHs, even though he had 49 more at-bats vs. righties.

He is second on the team with 16 walks and seems to not fall for the garbage in the dirt as much over the past few weeks.

So all is well in Red Leg land, but a larger question still remains. Can this team compete with the division leading St. Louis Cardinals? Beating the Pirates is one thing, but getting Albert Pujols out consistently is a whole different beast.

Nobody likes to throw the term “must win series” out in May, but the Reds need to take two of three to let themselves know it’s not just a one team race in the N.L. Central. The Reds sit only one game out of first, but it feels like the gap is much wider. This weekend the Reds can prove that’s not the case.

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Johnny Cueto pitched a gem of a game last night at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, a 9-0, one-hit shutout of the Pirates.

It was the third consecutive game in which a Reds starter had a one-hitter through six innings. Mike Leake did it on Sunday against the Chicago Cubs. Bronson Arroyo did it Monday against the Pirates.

It was also the fourth consecutive quality start for the Reds pitching staff.

It was especially enjoyable not to have  911 pressed on your cell phone, waiting to push the send button because Coco Cordero was not pitching in the ninth and on the verge of giving me another stroke.

Rookie Chris Heisey brought his average up to .273 with a 3-4 performance, which included his first major league home run. It was a two-run shot in the seventh inning.

Pirates’ starter Charlie Morton actually left the game at the end of six with a quality start of his own, trailing 3-0. The bullpen couldn’t support him on this night.

Cueto was never in any serious trouble at all. He gave up his first hit, a single to Ronny Cedeno in the third inning.

Cueto then retired the next eight, before hitting Cedeno with a pitch in the home half of the sixth. He closed the show by retiring the final 12 Pirates he faced.

It was Cueto’s first complete game of his young career and his third consecutive quality start.

He threw only 102 pitches and 67 of them were strikes, while reducing his ERA to a nearly respectable 4.07.

The Reds win coupled with the St. Louis Cardinals home loss to the Houston Astros brought the Reds to within two games of the front running Cards.

It was the fourth win in a row for MLB’s hottest team. It assures them of winning the series which is their third in a row after losing their second set to the Cards.

Jay Bruce raised his average to .265 with three hits and three runs knocked in.

Brandon Phillips, Scott Rolen, Joey Votto, and Ramon Hernandez had two hits each as the Reds out-hit the Bucs 15-1, They also left nine men stranded during the game.

In today’s final game of the series, at 12:35 PM, the Reds will throw Homer Bailey (0-2) against Pirate southpaw Zach Duke (2-3).

They will then return home for their third series against the Cardinals.

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