NLDS Preview: Cincinnati Reds at Philadelphia Phillies

The Reds surprised everyone by ending a decade and a half playoff drought—not to mention a failure to place higher than third in their division in this millennium—by winning their division and blowing away the competition in the process.

They flip-flopped with the Cardinals a few times for the division lead, at one point trailing by as many as five games in early May, but they won five of their next six, and never found themselves more than a game-and-a-half out of first after that.

They took over first place for good on August 11th and ended up winning by five games.

MVP candidate Joey Votto led the offense with 37 homers and .324 batting average, and there are few weak spots in the lineup. Four other players hit at least 18 homers, and the two-headed catching monster, Ryamon Hernanigandez, hit .298 with 88 RBIs.

The only soft spot in the offensive underbelly is shortstop Orlando Cabrera, who hit only .263 with no power or patience, and that’s not much of a weak spot. Most teams have two or three players like that. The 2010 Mariners would have sold their souls to Donald Trump for a hitter as good as Cabrera.

The Reds led the Senior Circuit in runs, home runs, batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, and missed leading the league in OBP by one point to the Braves. They also had the fewest errors in the NL, so you know their defense isn’t likely to give any games away.

Good thing, too, because after Bronson Arroyo and Johnny Cueto, the starting pitching is pretty questionable.

Edinson Volquez has no shortage of talent, but is a huge question mark after two years of just four wins and a 4.3ish ERA each, due to injuries, ineffectiveness and a drug suspension. He’s as likely to surrender five runs in two innings as he is to rack up 10 strikeouts in seven shutout frames.

They won’t likely feel comfortable throwing Volquez out for game four on three days rest, given his injury history, so I expect that rookie southpaw (and awesomely-named) Travis Wood will get the ball for that contest.

Wood only pitched half of the season and went 5-4 (with a 3.51 ERA), but he’s absolute poison to lefties, allowing them a paltry .136 average and two extra-base hits in 67 at-bats. I’m sure that Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Raul Ibanez are hoping that the series is decided in three games.

Jason Werth and Shane Victorino both provide power and speed, and Placido Polanco and Carlos Ruis both hit around .300, with doubles power and a few walks to boot. Ross Gload, Mike Sweeney, Ben Francisco, and Wilson Valdez give them an experienced and capable bench both on offense and defense.

With Roys Halladay and Oswalt, and lefty Cole Hamels likely to start every game of the series, it may not matter.

Halladay is practically a lock for the NL Cy Young award, and Oswalt and Hamels both pitched as well as anybody in baseball this season, giving the Phillies three of the top seven pitchers in the NL in Wins Above Replacement for 2010.

The Phillies were second in the NL in Runs Scored, were fourth in the NL in steals, and led the league in SB percentage, with an incredible 84 percent mark, so you know they won’t run themselves out of a scoring opportunity. Their defense was excellent too, with only a handful more errors than the Reds, good for fourth in the NL.

Neither team has a particularly good or bad bullpen, each ranking around the middle of MLB with ERAs around 4.00. Brad Lidge, the Phillies’ closer, has a reputation for choking, but that may just be because I live near Philadelphia and hear their fans whining about him a lot. He only blew five saves this year, compared to eight for Francisco Cordero, and his ERA is almost an entire run lower. I’ll take him over ‘Cicso any day.

The rest of the Phillies’ bullpen consists mostly of seasoned veterans who have been through this before and won’t be rattled by the bright lights in the playoffs. LAIM Joe Blanton figures as the long man out of the bullpen—the one they don’t expect to need.

Cincinnati has a lot of youngsters out in the ‘pen—Bill Bray, Homer Bailey, Logan Ondrusek, Nick Masset, and of course Aroldis Chapman—though Arthur Rhodes should be able to help calm the seas.

If the Phillies have a weakness to exploit, it’s that they do not hit well against power pitchers, with only a .219 batting average and 19 homers in more than 1,100 plate appearances against pitchers who rank in the top-third of the league in combined walks and strikeouts, according to Baseball-reference.com.

The Reds are only in the middle of the pack in that regard, but some of their key pitchers—Volquez, Cueto, Bray, Chapman, Bailey—are power pitchers who need to strike batters out to succeed.

If they can do that, the Reds’ stellar offense—apparently not a mirage of what used to be referred to as the Great American Bandbox—may be able to chip away at Halladay, Oswalt, or Hamels and steal a couple of wins.

But I doubt it. Phillies in three.

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Baseball America’s top 20 Prospects: #11 – #15

#11. Dustin Ackley , OF/1B/2B, Mariners

Opening Day Age: 22

ETA: 2011

After hitting over .400 in each of his three years at UNC, Ackley got a six million dollar signing bonus as the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft.

Don’t think the batting average is the only thing he’s got going for him. He also got on base almost 50% of the time, slugged almost .650, walked almost twice as often as he struck out and stole 43 bases at a 75% success rate.

Due to arm problems, including a Tommy John surgery, he only played first base in college.

Normally, a bat like his could play anywhere he wanted, but the Mariners are apparently moving him to second base, and it seems to be going well. At 6’1″, 185 lbs, Ackley’s not the lumbering physical specimen that you would expect from a slugging first baseman with numbers like his.

The Mariners seem to think he had the physical agility to play the keystone in the majors; or more likely, they don’t think he’ll develop the kind of power expected of a first baseman or left fielder.

He played second base in the Arizona Fall League and apparently did well enough, in addition to hitting .315/.414/.425 in 20 games. Everyone hits in the AFL, so take that with a grain of salt, but at least the switch to wooden bats didn’t cripple him. Note that his power output was considerably less, though that was what I said about Buster Posey after last year’s AFL and he turned out OK.

Ackley projects more of a Derek Jeter type, perhaps with less propensity to strike out, with only modest power but with speed, average and patience to more than compensate. I’m always leery of dubbing someone one of the best prospects in baseball before he’s faced any real competition, but if Ackley starts out at High-A ball and progresses as they expect, he could be in the majors by the middle or end of next year.

 

#12. Alcides Escobar , SS, Brewers

Opening Day Age: 23

ETA: 2010

One of several players to repeat on this year’s top 20 (along with Heyward, Posey, Bumgarner, Feliz, Alvarez and Stanton), Alcides is again the only one of the score predominantly here for his glove and not his bat.

Escobar’s defense is very, very good, with incredible range and instincts and a great arm, but he’s also got speed to burn and a decent line-drive type of swing. He doesn’t have much patience or any power and at 6’1″, 155 lbs isn’t likely to develop the latter—but then neither did Ozzie Smith, and he had an OK career.

The future is now for Escobar, who will be the Brewers’ everyday shortstop after they traded JJ hardy away in the offseason.

Because both his range and his speed on the bases depend so much on his speed, he’ll be more susceptible than most to any sort of leg injury, but if he develops as expected, he’s a perennial Gold Glove middle infielder who can hit for a respectable average and steal 30 or more bases.

 

#13. Justin Smoak , 1B, Rangers

Opening Day Age: 23

ETA: Mid-2010

This is the body you expect to see with Dustin Ackley’s numbers, except that Smoak has the numbers too, or at least he did in AA.

After mashing the ball for three years in the SEC, Texas made him the #11 overall pick in the 2008 draft, and he’s moved up quickly through the ranks. Though he hasn’t shown much of the power he had in college, he has shown some, and his body (6’4″, 220) and approach suggest that the homers will come.

He stalled a bit in the second half of last season, after his promotion to AAA, though how much of that was difficulty adjusting to the highest level of the minors (well, short of the National League, anyway) and how much had to do with an oblique strain is anybody’s guess.

Given that he hit nine homers in nine World Cup games in the fall, he’s probably not favoring that oblique anymore, I would say.

 

#14. Madison Bumgarner , LHP, Giants

Opening Day Age: 20

ETA: Mid-2010

After posting a 15-3 record with a 1.46 ERA in Single A as an 18 year old, there was really nowhere for Bumgarner to go but down, statistically speaking. he did, but not very far.

He posted a combined record of 12-2 at High-A and AA with an ERA comfortably under 2.00, but his strikeout rate dropped dramatically, from about 10.4 per nine innings last year to about six per nine this year in AA, before fanning ten batters in ten frames at the major league level.

Most sources seem to agree that the drop in strikeout rate coincided with a drop in velocity, continual over the year, which could be a harbinger of problems.

Indeed, I said in my prospects article last year that his mechanics, particularly the long, sweeping arm action, concerned me, and perhaps this is a sign of a shoulder injury beginning to rear its ugly head. Or, it might just be because he threw too often and too vigorously between starts, as he and the Giants seem to think. That, of course, begs the questions of

A) Why it wasn’t an issue in 2008, if he had the same training regimen, or

B) Why he bothered to change his regimen in 2009, if everything was going so well in 2008.

So far this spring, his velocity is still down a bit , so we have to wait and see. With his control and his long, left handed delivery, he can still be a good starter in the majors, but to be great he’s going to need those extra few mph on the heater.

 

#15. Domonic Brown , OF, Phillies

Opening Day Age: 22

ETA: 2011

Phillies fans, this is the reason that Cliff Lee is no longer on your team.

Well, that’s not precisely true, but essentially GM Ruben Amaro figured that Brown was not enough of a prospect to tide the farm system over without getting a little help. So after practically emptying the cupboards to get Roy Halladay, he sent Lee to Seattle for more prospects, including another toolsy outfielder, Tyson Gillies.

Brown’s big frame had some projecting him for eventual 30-homer major league power, but he’s shown little evidence of that in the minors so far. He did hit 11 homers in 238 at bats at High-A last year, but then smacked only three in almost 150 at bats at AA.

He’s got great speed, but it comes from his long stride rather than quick movement, so he gets caught stealing a little more than you would like. Overall he’s been caught about 28% of the time, though in some stints it’s been as much as 35%, which hurts the team. Not as much as thinking, but still.

His body type and statistical profile remind me a lot of Bernie Williams for some reason, though I think he’s probably got less patience and a better arm. Bernie took a while to develop, and wasn’t really an impact player until age 26 or so, and I see a similar path for Brown.

He’s still working on the patience and power, but all the tools are there for success. Given the Phillies’ crowded major league outfield, he should have time to master both AA and AAA before he gets much exposure in the Show. Best case scenarios have him in the majors in the middle of next year, though I would guess a September 2011 call up is more likely.

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