Here's a clue: TI Dont Lie

My TI don’t lie-the Reds Lose



Back in collage at the University of Dayton, I had a saying, “My TI (calculator), don’t lie.”

Well Reds fans there is not a lot of mystery why the Reds are losing. All you really have to do is take a look at the starting pitching. There is not one starting pitcher who has a winning record except for the injured Edinson Volquez (who may not return for 2 years, if ever). This is a seriously bad sign, why?

Baseball has evolved into a 6 inning game for most teams. After 6 innings the game comes into the hands of Specialists, Set up Men, and Closers. If your team is behind after 6 innings your chances of winning are greatly diminished. Specialists, Set up men, and Closers have those jobs because they are effective at what they do. If they fail to be effective, they lose those jobs, very quickly on good teams. This makes effective starting pitching even more important than in the past.

Enter the Reds, whose first inning ERA hovers around 10! The team ERA hovers around 4.5 which is bad, but that is misleading because the bullpen (which is pretty good) numbers are included. The Reds team ERA for starters is 5 (5.1)! The Reds, however, only score 4 (3.95) runs per game. Looking at it from a macro view this team should probably lose every game it plays even if you took the entire team ERA of 4.5, the Reds are still short a half run per game! Thankfully baseball games happen in the micro and so the Reds will win some games, but overall as a trend this team is short of run production and too long on runs allowed.

Well what to do?

Your Ace is 5-12 coming off a 6-17 performance last year, your number 2 is 10-10 coming off a 15-11 season but over all for his career, he’s a .500 pitcher (your Ace is under .500 at 74-79). This is unacceptable especially when the rest of your starting pitching staff is very, very young. Considering that Volquez may not pitch again, the Reds have only one solution, go out and spend some money in free agency and bring in some better guys to take up the #1 & #2 roles. This is the only quick fix available to Bob Castellini to sign a guy like Roy Halladay if he will come here (and probably one other effective guy) and pray hard that Cueto, Bailey, and Owings continue to develop. Since this is Cincinnati the chances of this are remote.

Failing that, the payroll needs to be trimmed and Harang and Arroyo are big salaries. Willy Taveras has utterly failed as a leadoff hitter, and Alex Gonzalez needs to be replaced.

So Walt go find some pitching prospects this will not get any better until the ERA drops under 5 and the RPG is over the ERA.

Big D