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The Unhappy Fans
Reds fan here. Local media is driving me crazy. Terry Francona has transformed the team's philosophy into what they call "The Art of Hitting," essentially eschewing pulling the ball into the air, instead encouraging players to hit the ball the other way. Sacrifice bunting in now in vogue.They refer to it as situational hitting. Playing to the scoreboard. The Reds seem to be drifting away from analytics for what they see as a more holistic approach. This seems to be a function of ownership's refusal to spend big money. What say you?
-- Richard F.
I actually had not heard tell of this. I went and looked, and the Reds are middle of the pack in sac bunts with a bottom-five OBP, indicative of a high rate of use. They’re 23rd in pulled fly balls, eighth in hitting to the opposite field. Last year, they were 12th in pulled fly balls and 26th in oppo rate. So the numbers back up your story that this is an intentional thing.
Here’s the rest of the story: The Reds are 24th in wOBA, 29th in wRC+, 23rd in runs scored, all worse than they were a year ago. By Clay Davenport’s estimates, they’re scoring eight fewer runs than you’d expect from their run elements, so it’s not like these approaches are finding more runs than they might otherwise score.
I can understand why this is driving you crazy. The Reds are preaching a style of play that will produce fewer runs. There’s real passion in many quarters of baseball to disprove what is true: That hitting the ball hard and up is the way to win, that pulled fly balls are the most productive batted balls, that you can’t string singles and bunts together to win a championship. The Reds, and disappointingly Francona, seem more concerned about making a point than winning games. This could well explain why so many of their young hitters have gone backward in recent years.
I don’t know what more you can do than point to the results. It’s not working.
--J.
