Lil Red Machine

The good: The bullpen is lights out. Arthur Rhodes, David Weather, and Francisco Cordero give us a bullpen edge on most nights. If our starters can just get us 6 innings of decent baseball, these guys, on most nights, can take care of the rest.

Joey Votto has been a beast. He’s like Sean Casey with more power. He ought to be a cornerstone of this franchise for years to come. The good thing is, he hits lefthanded pitchers about as well as he gets the righties, so prolonged slumps for him are less likely.

Aaron Harang is rounding back into form. Very solid start so far for Harang. 1-2 record, but has a 2.70 ERA

Wily Tavares has done the job. He’s walking a bit more, and doing a good job in that leadoff role

The bad: Bronson Arroyo, Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez have feen fairly mediocre coming out of the gate. Not horrible, but starting pitching is supposed to be a strength of this team. So far, the Reds are in the bottom tier of teams in the NL in ERA and BAA (batting average against)

The ugly: Outside of Votto, the Reds have shown very little power, and are also dead last in the NL in batting average, posting an ugly .218 figure. Several regulars (Brandon Phillips, Jay Bruce, Ramon Hernandez, Edwin Encarnacion, and Alex Gonzalez) are hitting below .200

Overall, the team is off to a solid 7-5 start, but have had a fairly easy schedule so far. so I don’t really know how to gague their progress as a result. Cincinnati is winning games with timely hitting and great bullpen work. They miss an Adam Dunn in the worst way, though. The regulars whom I mentioned that aren’t hitting won’t continue to be quite as bad, but there are a few mediocre bats that will continue to see lots of playing time. That could be their downfall. They also might need to rework the batting order. Batting Phillips at cleanup is a mistake. Votto is their main source of power, and has a much better batting eye. He needs to be put in that spot.

This team really is only a few moves away, but I’m afraid that their lack of offensive production will keep them right at around .500 for the season. That should never be an organizational goal. Being an OK team is unacceptable. Like I said, some of those bats will come around, but I don’t know if it will be enough. Funny, a few years ago, we had an exceptional offense that kept getting let down by a horrible bullpen. Now, it appears we have the opposite problem.