Red Sky at Night: A Cincinnati Reds Dynasty

[lazershow]

Any draft update?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Operation Sports mobile app

[Funkycorm]

Quote: Originally Posted by lazershow

Any draft update? Sent from my SM-G955U using Operation Sports mobile app

I just did one for the Reds. I decided not to cover the draft for the entire MLB.

[Funkycorm]

July 2017

July was a rough month for us. It saw us win no more than 2 games in a row and hold losing streaks of 3 games and 5 games. We could not capitalize on 7 games this month versus Miami. It was a rough first week getting swept off the bat by those pesky Cubs. The trade deadline and All-Star games loom this month as well.

July Record: 8-17
Overall Record: 38-67
Current Place: 5th place

We dropped to 25.0 games back in the NL Central. At this point in the season, only 1 team has a worse record than us and that is the Padres.

Player Performances:

Votto: .287 BA, 28 HR, 72 RBI. He is 2nd in homeruns, 3 in RBI, and top 5 in multiple other categories. He is first in the MLB overall in base on balls. This is indicative of a lot of intentional walks without any real protection in the lineup.

Iglesias: 2-2, 24 SV (4 blown saves), 3.38 ERA. He did not have a good month at all. He had 2 more blown saves resulting in 9th inning comebacks, both by the Washington Nationals as payback for the sweep last month. His ERA also shot up by a full run during the month. He is still a solid closer but is starting to fatigue from the weakness of this pitching staff.

Team Stats (Rankings):

BA: .244 (23)
R: 385 (24)
HR: 110 (17)
SB: 59 (5)
E: 47 (18)
ERA: 5.03 (30)
SV: 25 (26)
Runs allowed: 557 (30)
K: 844 (13)

As can be seen here, some of our offensive stats are sliding a little bit as the summer goes on. The bright spot in stolen bases with Hamilton leading the way with 21 and being 9th in the NL in the category.

All-Star Festivities:

To start out the festivities, the Futures Game was decided by a 3-2 score in favor of the World over the USA.

For cranking out 28 homeruns, Joey Votto earned himself a spot on the Home Run Derby. He however lost to Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays, 8-14, in the first round. The eventual winner was SS Corey Seager defeating Mike Trout in the Finals.

The Reds sole representative in the All-Star Game was Joey Votto. A game in which he went 1-2, with a double. The AL won the game 4-3.

Injuries:

Anthony DeSclafini returned to the rotation on July 5. Amir Garrett was sent back down to AAA to make room on the roster. Garrett amassed a 1-4 record with an ERA of 5.75. Certainly not what we were hoping for from his MLB debut. The experience he got will be nice and he will learn from it and hopefully come back stronger when he is more prepared.

2B Tony Renda sustained a broken arm and will be out for 2-3 months. Taking his spot on the roster is Zack Walters (62C), who hit .214 with 14 HR and 38 RBI at AAA Louisville.

Other Notes:

There were a few moves up and down in the farm system based on good/bad performances. As usual, there were not much moves of prospects to the majors to allow time to mature.

The trade deadline will be covered in the next post dedicated solely to that topic.

We also decided to sign draft pick 1B Steve Urbina to his minor league contract.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

[Funkycorm]

2017 Trade Deadline

The trade deadline is upon us and we made a few moves to help the future of our team.

Before we get into that though, let’s recap some big moves around the league:

San Diego traded Will Myers to the Los Angeles Dodgers for 1B/OF Cody Bellinger.
Arizona trades Patrick Corbin to the New York Yankees for prospects.
Texas trades Shin-soo Choo to the New York Yankees for Chase Headley
Kansas City traded Lorenzo Cain to Washington for prospects.

The move that intrigues me here is the trade of Will Myers to the Dodgers. Myers just signed to a long-term deal with San Diego and appeared to be the cornerstone of their own rebuild. The Dodgers had Adrian Gonzalez as their starting first baseman with Cody Bellinger all but set to be the heir apparent to him. After trading for Bellinger, he was placed at AAA for the Padres.


Now on the what the Reds did:

1. Our first trade was with the Minnesota Twins. We traded SS Zack Cozart (77C) and 23-year-old prospect LF Jesse Winkler (63A) to the Twins for 19 year old prospect LF Alex Kirilloff (64B), 22 year old prospect SP Fernando Romero (65B) and 22 year old prospect SP Stephen Gonsalves (66B). We did give up Jesse Winkler, a top 50 prospect in this deal. We also moved on from Zack Cozart, and used his trade value. We got 3 prospects in the deal, all of whom given a few years, can be solid contributors on this team.

2. Our second trade was with the San Diego Padres, who were in a trading mood this summer. Not too often the bottom 2 teams in the league trade, but it was a mutually beneficial trade. We traded 23-year-old prospect SP Cody Reed (54B) and 23 year old prospect SP Savlavore Aviles (52C) to the Padres for 20 year old prospect RF Jorge Ona (62B). This trade moved us on from pitching prospects that we did not need anymore. Aviles was never going to pan out and Reed was progressing too slowly. We got an outfield prospect who can help us for a long time as well.

These 2 trades were about improving weak areas on our team and our farm system. The first of which is pitching and the second being our outfield. We have Billy Hamilton and Adam Duvall in our outfield but overall, the farm system was weak in this position.

To compensate for our loss of a shortstop, we signed free agent SS Alexei Ramirez (75B) to a 1 year/$4.0M deal so we could allow our young middle infield prospects more time to grow.


New Players Review:

1. LF Alex Kirilloff (64B): 19 years old, 6’1”, 195 lbs, from Pennsylvania. L/L. Secondary position is 1B. He is a pull hitter who has solid power and contact and hits better against right handed pitching. Given a few years to grow, he could work himself into our lineup as either a corner outfielder or possibly at 1B.

2. SP Fernando Romero (65B): 22 years old, 6’1”, 215 lbs, from Dominican Republic. R/R. He has solid command and a 4-pitch arsenal that includes a nasty slider as his go to strike out pitch. He could develop in to a solid middle rotation starter for us.

3. SP Stephen Gonsalves (66B): 22 years old, 6’5”, 214 lbs, from California. L/L. He is a southpaw with a 4-pitch arsenal that includes his go to strike out pitch, a curveball. He too could find himself mid-rotation in a few years.

4. RF Jorge Ona (62B): 20 years old, 6’1”, 200 lbs, from Cuba. R/R. He is a balanced hitter with good power and solid contact, though better versus left handed pitching. He could find himself in a corner outfield slot for us in a few years.

Stay tuned for the August update.

Thanks for reading!

[Funkycorm]

August 2017

August was yet another rough month for the Reds. Much of the same. It was a streaky month. We had 2 stretches where we won 3 games in a row twice, intertwined with losing streaks of 4 and 7 games. We had two 7 game losing streaks, with one carrying over from late July. It was a month that saw some drops in player and team stats.


August Record: 10-19
Overall Record: 48-86
Current Place: 5th place

With one month left in the season, we sit at 32.5 games out. For us to avoid losing 100 plus games, we must finish over .500 in September. We are now sitting 2 games worse than the Padres for the worst record in baseball.

Team Stats (Rankings):

BA: .250 (20)
R: 506 (22)
HR: 143 (16)
SB: 84 (5)
E: 60 (20)
ERA: 4.91 (30)
SV: 30 (29)
Runs allowed: 690 (30)
K: 1060 (14)

Player Performances:

Votto: .295 BA, 32 HR, 84 RBI. He is one of the only few bright spots on this team this season. Currently sitting 3rd in HR, 4th in RBI, 1st in base on balls, and 5th in OPS in the NL.

Iglesiais: 2-4, 29 SV (8 blown), 4.15. After starting the year solid, he has started to slide as the season progresses. The hope that it is from a weak bullpen in front of him. Though, if he finishes the year on a continued downswing, he role in the bullpen may need to be adjusted next season.

Bailey: 10-9, 4.08 ERA, 118 K, 35 BB. Though by no stretch of the imagination is this a great year for him, he is still performing the best amongst our starting rotation.

Duvall: .242 BA, 26 HR, 69 RBI. He is quietly in the top 10 in the NL in homeruns and has been having a solid year for us.
Hamilton: .298 BA, 5 HR, 32 RBI, 36 SB. He currently sits 3rd in the NL in stolen bases and is proving to be a solid leadoff hitter for the Reds.


Injuries:

No major injuries at the MLB level, though 2B Tony Renda is still out.

Other Notes:

Our newly acquired prospects have been playing well at the AA level.
AAA Louisville: 55-84, 4th in IL West
AA Pensacola: 39-31, 3rd in SL South

Stay tuned for our September/October (regular season) update.

Thanks for reading!

[Funkycorm]

September 2017 (through end of regular season)

We lost our 100th game of the year on 9/23 in a 3-0 loss to Boston.

Monthly Record: 8-20
Overall Record (final): 56-106 (.346)
Current Place: 5th place

We finished 44 games back this season. We held the worst record in the league with the Padres the only other team losing 100 games and that was 105 games.

Injury Notes:

2B Tony Renda returned to the club in mid-September.

Other Notes:

Some of our prospects were brought up to the MLB level in September at the 40 man roster expansion. Players included were LF Alex Kirilloff, SP Amir Garrett, and SP Eugene Pope.


Team Stats (Rankings) (Final):

BA: .246 (23)
R: 591 (25)
HR: 163 (19)
SB: 101 (5)
E: 71 (19)
ERA: 4.77 (30)
SV: 35 (30)
Runs allowed: 811 (30)
K: 1260 (15)

Player Stats:

2017 Cincinnati Reds Stats - Hitting
NAME	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG
Joey Votto	602	96	175	26	1	36	97	103	163	6	5	.291	.396	.517
Eugenio Suarez	592	55	153	29	2	10	53	57	149	4	4	.258	.323	.365
Jose Peraza	597	59	141	37	5	10	51	27	114	13	4	.236	.265	.365
Adam Duvall	562	54	131	20	3	31	83	52	165	8	3	.233	.301	.445
Billy Hamilton	548	74	162	31	10	5	40	42	111	46	8	.296	.354	.416
Scott Schebler	294	26	76	16	3	7	30	23	72	3	3	.259	.312	.398
Devin Mesoraco	479	52	111	14	0	21	54	50	105	0	0	.232	.308	.392
Tucker Barnhart	201	19	50	11	0	6	24	25	41	0	0	.249	.332	.393
Arismendy Alcantara	270	31	71	17	3	7	25	22	79	2	2	.263	.325	.426
Desmond Jennings	263	20	55	8	1	3	21	30	63	11	4	.209	.287	.281
Ryan Raburn	232	19	58	9	2	7	30	30	73	0	0	.250	.333	.397
Alexei Ramirez	203	21	577	12	3	5	20	14	20	5	3	.281	.327	.443
Tony Renda	118	7	17	4	0	0	7	5	30	0	2	.144	.176	.178
Zack Walters	34	2	6	2	1	0	1	5	9	0	0	.176	.282	.294

2017 Cincinnati Reds Stats - Pitching
NAME	GP	GS	W	L	SV	QS	HLD	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP	ERA
Homer Bailey	32	32	11	12	0	19	0	178.0	203	79	23	47	144	1.40	3.99
Anthony DeSclafini	25	25	8	8	0	13	0	135.1	133	57	13	34	100	1.23	3.79
Tim Adleman	95	0	8	3	0	0	14	119.2	152	85	16	71	91	1.86	6.39
Robert Stephenson	33	33	7	16	0	10	0	163.0	181	90	23	101	146	1.73	4.97
Scott Feldman	31	31	6	15	0	8	0	160.0	182	81	23	52	96	1.46	4.56
Brandon Finnegan	33	33	3	15	0	9	0	162.1	157	78	20	93	150	1.54	4.32
Blake Wood	102	0	3	9	0	0	14	88.0	92	62	11	86	99	2.02	6.64
Tony Cingrani	89	0	3	4	0	0	25	70.2	80	46	10	57	93	1.94	5.86
Raisel Iglesias	58	0	2	5	34	0	1	59.2	53	27	6	22	59	1.26	4.07
Drew Storen	76	0	2	4	1	0	28	69.2	79	29	6	30	74	1.56	3.75
Michael Lorenzen	96	0	2	5	0	0	14	113.1	111	52	14	62	99	1.53	4.13
Jumbo Diaz	50	0	0	4	0	0	21	45.2	64	39	8	31	48	2.08	7.69
Amir Garrett	24	8	1	4	0	2	1	66.1	76	39	13	32	45	1.63	5.29

*The only player on the team to play in all 162 games was Joey Votto.
**Votto lead the NL in base on balls.


Player Performance Assessment:

In terms of pitching, it was not a good year overall. Homer Bailey and Anthony DeSclafini has decent seasons going .500 and posting ERA’s under the 4.00 line. Drew Storen was a bright spot out of the bullpen posting an ERA under 4.00 as well. Robert Stephenson did not have a good year in his first full season at the MLB level. It is apparent that our pitching staff as a whole will need some major renovations to it, which is what we expected.
On the hitting side of things, there were some solid season performances. Joey Votto stands out as the best season, but Adam Duvall, Devin Mesaraco, and Billy Hamilton also had solid years. Jose Peraza had a decent year but I would like to see him increase his batting average and on base percentage when near the top of the lineup. Eugenio Suarez played alright as well but I would have liked to see better power numbers out of my third baseman.
Overall, there were some solid wins here, but also some opportunities. This is where we need to start developing our prospects.

League Standings:

MLB Standings - Updated: Oct 4, 2017
AL EAST	W	L	GB
Toronto	93	69	-
Tampa Bay	80	82	13
Boston	78	84	15
New York Yankees	77	85	16
Baltimore	77	85	16
AL CENTRAL	W	L	GB
Cleveland	103	59	-
Detroit	87	75	16
Chicago White Sox	75	87	28
Minnesota	72	90	31
Kansas City	71	91	32
AL WEST	W	L	GB
Los Angeles Angels	94	68	-
Texas	87	75	7
Houston	79	83	15
Oakland	76	86	18
Seattle	71	91
AL WILD CARD RACE	W	L	GB
Texas	87	75	-
Detroit	87	75	-
Tampa Bay	80	82	7
NL EAST	W	L	GB
Washington	96	66	-
New York Mets	92	70	4
Miami	79	83	17
Philadelphia	73	89	23
Atlanta	67	95	29
NL CENTRAL	W	L	GB
Chicago Cubs	100	62	-
Pittsburgh	89	73	11
St. Louis	82	80	18
Milwaukee	76	86	24
Cincinnati	56	106	44
NL WEST	W	L	GB
Los Angeles Dodgers	102	60	-
San Francisco	91	71	11
Colorado	76	86	26
Arizona	74	88	28
San Diego	57	105	45
NL WILD CARD RACE	W	L	GB
New York Mets	92	70	-
San Francisco	91	71	1
Pittsburgh	89	73	3

Stay tuned for the post season recap and award winners.

Thanks for reading!

[Funkycorm]

Post season

Playoffs:


AL:

Wild Card:
Detroit 1 – Texas 0

Division Series:
Toronto 3 – Los Angeles Angels 0
Cleveland 3 – Detroit 0

Championship Series:
Toronto 4 – Cleveland 3


NL:

Wild Card:
San Francisco 1 – New York Mets 0

Division Series:
Chicago Cubs 3 – Washington 1
Los Angeles Dodgers 3 – San Francisco 0

Championship Series:
Los Angeles Dodgers 4 – Chicago Cubs 3


World Series:
Los Angeles Dodgers 4 – Toronto Blue Jays 0


I found it ironic that the top 4 teams from the 2016 playoffs where the final four in the playoffs this year with the 2 teams that lost in the League Championship series making it to the World Series this time and turning the tides on the top 2 teams in the league. In the end, the Dodgers were just too much for the Blue Jays to handle.

The Postseason MVP and World Series MVP were both awaded to Corey Seager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.


Season Awards:

2017 MLB Award Winners
Award	Player	Pos	Team
AL Cy Young Award	Chris Sale	SP	Boston Red Sox
AL Hank Aaron Award	MIke Trout	CF	Los Angeles Angels
AL Most Valuable Player	Miguel Cabrera	1B	Detroit Tigers
AL Rolaids Relief Award	Kelvin Herrera	CP	Kansas City Royals
AL Rookie of the Year	Yulieski Gurriel	1B	Houston Astros
NL Cy Young Award	Clayton Kershaw	SP	Los Angeles Dodgers
NL Hank Aaron Award	Corey Seager	SS	Los Angeles Dodgers
NL Most Valuable Player	Corey Seager	SS	Los Angeles Dodgers
NL Rolaids Relief Award	Jeyrus Familia	CP	New York Mets
NL Rookie of the Year	Alex Reyes	SP	St. Louis Cardinals

*The AL Batting Title was won by Miguel Cabrera and the NL Batting Title was won by Corey Seager.

Notes on the season:

I will do a better job of tracking my prospects in future years. I will also work to share more stats from across the league, such as league leaders at season’s end.

Stay tuned for the start of the off season.

Thanks for reading!

[Funkycorm]

Where we are now?

At this point, I lost a majority of my text files recapping the next 4 seasons.

We are currently at the beginning of the 2022 season. At this time, I am going to change up my dynasty and play all the games with the team I have formed.

Let’s take a look at the year-by-year recap I was able to still find my notes on and what I remembered.

Recap:


2017:

56-106, 5th place NL Central

We sent 1B Joey Votto (89A), SP Robert Stephenson (69B, 25 years old), and LF Freddy Wroten (50B, 22 years old) to the San Diego Padres for 1B Cody Bellinger (76A), 3B Hudson Potts (62B, 19 years old), and SS Fernando Tatis Jr (62B, 19 years old).

We won massively on this deal. We get our 1B of the future, and 2 other quality prospects. A week after this trade, the Padres traded Robert Stephenson to Tampa Bay for CF prospect Garrett Whitley (62B)

Coaching Staff:
With losing 106 games and the coaching staff not having very high attribute grades, we decided to make some changes. Our 1st base coach and 3rd base coach had contracts end so they moved on. We also fired our hitting coach and manager Bryan Price. We hired coaches who had A attribute grades only and all positive ratings modifiers.

Later in the offseason we parted ways with our Farm Director and replaced him.

New Staff:
Head Coach: Woody Francisco, B attribute grade, 3 year/$17M deal
1st Base: Vernon Wynn, A attribute grade, 3 year/$3.3M per year deal
3rd Base: Mark Almonte, A attribute grade, 3 year/$3.4M per year deal
Hitting: Richard Nieves, A attribute grade, 3 year/ $3.9M per year deal
Pitching: Rob Moffett, A attribute grade, already on team
Farm Director: Jordan Morning, A attribute grade, 3 year/ $3.6M per year deal


2018:

76-86, 4th place NL Central
The Los Angeles Dodgers held the best record in baseball with a 108-54 mark. Cleveland won the World Series defeating St. Louis, 4-3, in 7 games.

We drafted a great SP prospect, Kyle Blumenthal (52B, potential 89)

C Devin Mesoraco: We offered a qualifying offer of 1 year/$17.9M. When free agency hit, we offered him a 5 year/$84M deal with a player option and he turned it down to sign a 5 year/$78M deal with the Kansas City Royals. We received a compensatory pick for this. The following July 2019, he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for prospects.

We didn’t really target much in the way of players, as we were still working on building our farm system at this point.

Both Bryce Harper and Josh Donaldson signed massive deals with the Baltimore Orioles.


2019:

65-97, 5th NL Central

This was 1B Cody Bellinger’s (80A) first full season in the majors. He had a poor power year, hitting .230, with 10 HR and 60 RBI. I attribute this to him having no protection in our lineup.

We drafted our catcher of the future with the 11th pick in the first round, C Tom Kang (68B) – MLB ready in 2021 with 88 potential.

The Los Angeles Dodgers had the best record with a 110-52 mark. Cleveland won the world series, defeating the Dodgers, 4-0, in 4 games.

We traded Homer Bailey to Colorado for a shortstop prospect.

We made 2 huge splashes in free agency. I felt it was time as some of our young core is starting to develop.

SP Julio Teheran: 3 year/$34M deal to become the ace of our staff. Going into the 2020 season, 4 of our 5 starters are rated 80+, with the last being at 78. This is even before Evan Kalita joins the big league team.
3B Nolan Arenado: 6 year/$146M deal. Eugenio Suarez had never played great for us. Plus, our minor league prospects were progressing slow. I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to add power to our lineup and build for the future, which is closer now than it has been.

We resigned our pitching coach Rob Moffett (attribute grade A) to a 3 year/$3.9M per year deal.

Our hitting coach retired, so we signed Sean Martinez (attribute grade A) to a 3 year/$4.1M per year deal.


2020:

76-86, 4th NL Central

We drafted a future shortstop for us with the 2nd pick in the first round, SS Kenji Murakami (53A), MLB ready 2024+, 90 potential.

Nolan Arenado was a starter for the NL in the All-Star game and won the Home Run Derby.

The Los Angeles Dodgers had the best record with a 102-60 mark. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the world series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles, 4-2, in 6 games.

During the offseason, we signed CF Billy Hamilton to a 5 year/$80M extension.

During the offseason, we traded SP Anthony Desclafini and 3B Eugenio Suarez to Pittsburgh and the Cubs respectively, for prospects.

Our Manager, Woody Francisco, accepted the Philadelphia Phillies Farm Director position and left. Our First Base Coach accepted the same position for the Miami Marlins. We hired Pablo Mott (A attribute grade) to be our manager to a 4 year/$4.3M per year deal and Marcus Rosen (A attribute grade) to be our first base coach to a 4 year/$1M per year deal.


2021:

88-74, 1st NL Central, lost 3-1 to Washington in NLDS

We made the playoffs and won the NL Central by 2 games.

We drafted some solid prospects, including a 2B, LF, and SP, all with high 80’s potential.

Raisel Iglasias and LF Roman Watkins were named to the All-Star Game. Watkins started in LF for the NL.

We made a big move at the deadline to give us a playoff push. With 1B Cody Bellinger finally having a solid year, we traded 1B Charley Szuminksi (81B) to Toronto for LF Lourdes Gourriel Jr. (86B).

In September, the Rangers placed OF Jurickson Profar (86B) on waivers and we picked him up.

The Los Angeles Dodgers had the best record with a 99-63 mark. The Indians won the world series, defeating the Nationals, 4-2, in 6 games.
Offseason:

First, we traded LF Roman Watkins for prospects with our outfield being full.

Then, we made some splashes in free agency. We had a huge amount of money to spend.

SP Jon Gray (86B): 1 year/$10M deal. He agreed to come on as a rotation pitcher to help bolster the top of our rotation.

SS Addison Russell (91A): 5 year/$150.1M deal. This was huge for us. Carlos Correa and Trevor Story were both on the market as well, but we liked Russell the best. We have had a hard time securing our middle infield and Russell will settle that. We have some solid prospects at 2B, with one becoming our full time starter there now too.

Our hitting coach and Farm Director both retired, so we had to hire new one.

We head into 2022 with high hopes.

This is where I am going to change this dynasty. I am at 2022 in the game so I will start doing in-depth coverage of the team and league.

Thanks for reading and welcome back to the 2022 Reds!