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MLB Weekly Report: Yankees & Reds Heat Up

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Two teams got some separation in major league baseball this week. One came from a small market, did it with hitting and from predictable spots. The other came from the big markets, did it with pitching and it came from surprise players. Thus was the story of the strong weeks for the Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees.

The Yankees have been hot throughout June, having won all six series played and it’s not been because of an extended homestand or a soft schedule. The scalps include series wins over Tampa and an otherwise improving Detroit team. They include road sweeps in Atlanta and just this past weekend in Washington. It’s been done with pitching, and believe it or not, C.C. Sabathia has been the rotation’s worst starter of the month. Not that the big lefty has been bad—his three starts in June have resulted in a respectable .386 ERA. But compare it to the three outings from Phil Hughes (1.69), Andy Pettite (1.77), Hiroki Kuroda (1.80) and two more from Ian Nova with a  dazzling 0.60 ERA. The fact the Yankees are winning by the bunches without great hitting and without great work from their ace has to be heartening to them and worrisome to the countless good people who count themselves as adversaries of the Pinstripes.

Cincinnati came into the week a bit sluggish, but turned it around quickly as they swept Cleveland then did the same to the Mets. The bats got unleashed and to no one’s surprise, Joey Votto has been leading the way with a .556/.824 line for on-base percentage/slugging percentage this month. What I like is that’s not a case of Votto going on a home run binge—he’s hitting them to be sure at four for the month, but all year long Votto his built his production by also driving the ball in the gap for doubles, something that’s much more consistent. His performance has been joined by rookie shortstop Zack Cozart getting hot again after a slow May, and second baseman Brandon Phillips showing signs of getting his own bat unleashed. The Reds get a rematch with Cleveland on the road to start this coming week and then have a good opportunity to pile up some home wins when they get six in a row against Milwaukee and Minnesota.

Around the rest of baseball…

*The Baltimore Orioles have shown they can take a punch. After a slump that had baseball observers waiting to see if they teetered at the first sign of adversity, Buck Showalter’s team turned it right back around and are only a game and a half back of the Yanks. If the season ended today they’d host the American League wild-card game. Whether their starting pitching is good enough for the long haul is a fair question, but they’ve cleared one hurdle in answering their ability to come off the mat.

*Detroit is getting better pitching and while they’re still under .500 at 32-34, the Tigers are back within three games of the lead in the AL Central.

*Texas is also pitching better and at 40-27 has stabilized after a recent hiccup. The lead is four games on the Los Angeles Angels who continue to play consistent baseball behind them. The Angels are two back of Tampa Bay for the second wild-card.

*With the exception of Washington’s sweep of Boston a week ago, interleague has been a disaster for the NL East in general and June has not been kind to the Miami Marlins. Ozzie Guillen’s team seems to be on the every other month plan. A lousy April was followed by a sizzling May, which in turn has been followed by losing 11 of 15 in June and plummeting back to .500.

*Colorado wasn’t on anyone’s playoff radar, but it has to be disappointing for their fans to see them suddenly challenging San Diego for the NL West basement. The Rockies’ pitching has been a disaster all month, with a 6.02 ERA and the worst of that stretch has come in the last week. At 25-40, Colorado is only up two games on the hapless Padres.

Do The Cincinnati Reds Have Offensive Depth?

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The National League Central is a division in flux, and with Albert Pujols leaving St. Louis and Prince Fielder saying goodbye to Milwaukee, the Cincinnati Reds were thrust into the favorite’s role by default. But are the Reds good enough to live up to the hype and win the Central for the second time in three years? They’ve already made a big splash by locking up 2010 MVP first baseman Joey Votto to a 10-year, $225 million deal and rightfielder Jay Bruce is a rising star himself. But elsewhere in the lineup there are question marks, and it’s those questions that will draw the attention of TheSportsNotebook today.

Let’s begin by saying that question marks mean just that—there’s every possibility that this lineup could be good top to bottom. But there’s also the possibility it could be top-heavy, reliant almost exclusively on Votto and Bruce. Here’s the rundown of who Dusty Baker will relying on.

THE CORE VETS: Brandon Phillips & Scott Rolen: Phillips, the 30-year-old second baseman is coming off the best year of his career, which is why I’m sure Reds’ fans are utterly baffled as to why I don’t include him as part of the reliable. But the very fact it was a career year makes Phillips a question mark. Over his career prior to ’11, he’d been good to hit .270-plus and pop 15-20 home runs. But the on-base percentages were low, and it’s important to remember with all these players that Great American Ballpark is one of the most hitter-friendly environments in the majors. In the case of the 37-year-old Rolen, it’s a question of whether or not nagging injuries have resulted in the end of the third baseman’s effectiveness. Last year was a lost season. The two years prior to that were still good, with OBP’s running just over .350 and slugging percentages in the .450-.500 range. If Rolen returns to that form and even gets 400 at-bats, it will be a big boost to the offense.

THE CORE KIDS: Shortstop Zack Cozart and catcher Devin Mesoraco are both in their first full year in the big leagues. Mesoraco is a favorite of Baker, but the manager is going to break him in slowly, so only time will tell when he’ll play. The organization was high enough on Cozart that they chose not to pursue Jose Reyes at the trade deadline last year. Now Cozart is the everyday shortstop. He hit .324 in 37 at-bats last year, but to say that’s a limited sample size is to state the obvious. It’s also worth nothing that he didn’t draw even one walk, so developing some plate discipline is going to be an absolute imperative.

KIDDIE QUESTION MARKS: Chris Heisey and Drew Stubbs are both 27 years old and will get regular playing time in the outfield. Each has show power—Heisey hit 18 home runs in just 279 at-bats last year. Stubbs hit 22 two years ago, but he dropped to 15 home runs a season ago and his lack of contact hitting and/or plate discipline means if he’s not hitting substantial numbers of home runs, he’s not productive. Cincinnati fans got used to this with Adam Dunn for so many years, but if you’re going to mimic Dunn’s weaknesses, you better hit 35-40 bombs a year to go with it. Suffice it to say, I am not high on Stubbs, while I think Heisey has considerably more promise.

VETERAN QUESTION MARKS: Ryan Hanigan is holding down the fort at catcher and even when Mesoraco gets in the lineup, I’d be surprised if the 31-year-old vet is completely shunted aside. Hanigan’s career track record tells you he’ll give a .350-.400 on-base percentage if you keep him at part-time work. Nothing wrong with that at the catcher spot. Ryan Ludwick was acquired at last year’s trade deadline, with Cincinnati hoping that a shift from San Diego’s vast Petco Park to the hitter-friendly banks of the Ohio River will mean a revival of the Ludwick who hit 37 home runs in St. Louis during 2008, part of an excellent overall season. If this were just one year later I’d feel optimistic about it, but Ludwick has struggled terribly for three solid years now. The positive for Cincy is that he’s still 33 years old, so there’s reason to think he has a couple years left in the tank.

UTILITY OPTIONS: Miguel Cairo and Wilson Valdez aren’t going to electrify anyone with their offense, but how well they handle themselves with the glove and doing some basics like moving runners will likely effect Baker’s comfort level with working them into the lineup—each plays second, third and short. That in turn can affect the effectiveness of the starters, Phillips, Rolen and Cozart throughout the year, especially Rolen who needs to be given rest.

If you just look at the numbers overall, perhaps my concern can seem misplaced. But the one thing that troubles me about this lineup is the lack of plate discipline and good on-base percentages. There’s anecdotal evidence that suggests this offense—apart from Votto and Bruce—is exclusively the product of playing every day in Great American Ballpark. If that’s the case it means every road lineup will get corresponding increases in production for three days. It means the Reds will have trouble scoring on the road. Building an offense around the long ball can look great for some sizzling stretches, but it’s going to be tough to win a division that way. That’s why TheSportsNotebook picked Cincinnati to finish third.

But, if Phillips’ career year was really a natural elevation of play at the age of 30, if Rolen stays healthy and hits (I’d put the odds at about 40 percent) and Cozart develops some plate discipline in a hurry and becomes a reliable on-base instigator, then the picture changes. I don’t predict any of those things to happen, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t realistic to hope for.

Cincinnati will get some MLB Network attention the next couple days in their series against rival St. Louis. The Cards-Reds are on tonight at 7 PM ET and their getaway game is matinee special tomorrow at 12:30 PM ET.

MLB March Report: Cincinnati Reds

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It’s win-or-else time for the Cincinnati Reds, after a disappointing fade in the late summer and fall of last season. Cincy’s main competition from last year, Milwaukee and St. Louis, is re-tooling after major free agency hits. The Chicago Cubs have the money, but still have a big rock to crawl out from under. Houston is completely rebuilding. So with all due respect to Clint Hurdle and the Pittsburgh Pirates, that leaves the Reds in a position to win their second NL Central title in three years. And the word from the Queen City is that the heat is on Dusty Baker early—if they’re not off to a sound start, we can look for a managerial change by Memorial Day and a possible firesale. If they are playing well, Dusty’s safe and sound and the front office will get what they need to make the playoffs. This dynamic makes the Reds one of baseball’s most interesting teams in 2012, and TheSportsNotebook evaluates them today, based on their ability to get on base, hit for power, starting pitching and relief pitching.

ABILITY TO GET ON BASE: This is the weakest area of the Cincinnati team and they’re dependent on a lot of variables. Prize prospect Zack Cozart is expected to start at shortstop and hit .324in extremely limited at-bats last year. He also didn’t draw a single walk. For the overall arc of his career this is nothing to be alarmed about, but if you need to get off to a fast start, it’s not an ideal team to be teaching plate discipline. Brandon Phillips had the best year of his career at second base, hitting .300 for the first time, and he needs to be in that neighborhood again. Ryan Hanigan is at catcher and his consistently put up OBP’s in the .350 range, but he’s never been a full-time player and won’t be this year—Baker is committed to eventually dropping 23-year-old Devin Mesoraco into the job and the odds are that the kid and the vet split time this season. Drew Stubbs is mediocre at best in center field.

>POWER:  The good thing for the Reds is that the top players here are also good at getting on base consistently even when they aren’t going deep. The conversation about this team’s offense begins with Joey Votto. The first baseman won the 2010 National League MVP and had a year that was MVP-caliber last season. Jay Bruce is one of baseball’s bright young power hitters. At age 24, he’s already had four straight years of 20-plus home runs, and as you see his on-base percentages rise each year, you see a hitter becoming more and more complete. His development has to be at tremendously exciting thing for Cincy fans to watch. After these two, Cincinnati needs Scott Rolen to stay health—the 36-year-old third baseman had an awful season last year, as the shoulder problems that have been with him in varying degrees since 2006 acted up. When he’s healthy, as he was in 2009-10, he’s still an excellent power producer. And in Baker’s pipe dreams he surely thinks about Ryan Ludwick recapturing the form he showed for St. Louis in 2008 when he hit 37 home runs and batted nearly .300. Perhaps getting away from San Diego and back into a hitter’s environment at Great American Ballpark is what Ludwick needs.

STARTING PITCHING:  Johnny Cueto is the pitching staff what Bruce is to the everyday lineup. A young player who’s already putting rapid improvement under his belt. Cueto, at age 26, has pitched in the big leagues for four years. His first-year ERA as 4.81, and it’s dropped every year. Since Cueto outdid himself with a 2.31 ERA last year, continuing that streak is a pretty tall order, but it’s not a tall order to see in him a true #1 starter. The front office paid substantially for 24-year-old Mat Latos in a deal with San Diego. Latos won 14 games with a 2.92 ERA for the 2010 Padres team that contended to the last day of the season, but his ERA jumped to 3.73 last season, and he’s on the flip side of the park effects coin we discussed with Ludwick. I just have my doubts about Latos, at least that he can be more than a back-end starter consistently. And the Reds look pretty good on the back end. While Bronson Arroyo had the worst ERA of his career last season, he’s only posted 30-plus starts every year since 2005—and in 2004, he made 29 starts. If his ERA returns to its place of either mid-4s on the high end, or mid-3s on the low end, he’s a reliable #3. Mike Leake made 26 starts a year ago, going 12-9 with a 3.86 ERA. The fifth spot is an interesting choice involving Homer Bailey, Jeff Francis and Aroldis Chapman. With Bailey you have a young arm at age 25, who’s already got three straight years of being around 20 starts with ERAs in the mid-4s. Improvement is certainly needed, but at his age it’s reasonable to expect, and those numbers for a pitcher in this park aren’t that far from being pretty good. Francis is the veteran castoff who hasn’t been really good since winning 17 games for Colorado’s 2007 World Series team. And Chapman is the wild-card, probably best suited for the bullpen, but whose stuff makes him a candidate. I would go with Bailey.

RELIEF PITCHING: While Cincinnati lost Francisco Cordero, they signed Ryan Madson away from the Phillies. Madson took advantage of Brad Lidge’s injury problems last year to close 32 of 34 save opportunities with a 2.37 ERA. Madson’s been solid in setup work going back to 2007, so there’s no question he can pitch. And the group in front of him is reliable and deep. Sean Marshall’s had two great years for the Cubs. Nick Massett is has been steady for four straight years here in Cincy. Logan Ondrusek and Bill Bray have also done good work for at least two seasons in Cincy. Then factor in the possible inclusion of Chapman in this group, and an X-factor is Jose Arredondo, who has good stuff and posted a 3.53 ERA a year ago after a tenure with the Angels that fluctatuated to wild extremes.

LAS VEGAS OVER/UNDER WIN TOTAL:  88—I have to go Under here. I look at the Reds and see about an 85-win team. The core of the lineup with Votto and Bruce and the starting pitching are enough to make sure the team wins more than it loses. If they do really well, it would be relief pitching that carries them, if they do poorly it will because of long stretches with too few runners out there for Votto and Bruce. Also factor in that if the poor start materializes and a fire sale ensues, the Under becomes a runaway winner. Look, I might pick Cincinnati to win the NL Central (I haven’t made up my mind yet) and that means it’ s likely—though still not certain in this division—that they’d win at least 89 and go Over. But right now I’d have to say there’s far more that can happen on the wrong side of this number.