2007 Reds Preview
By Last year I predicted that the Reds would go 72-90, good for fifth place in the NL central. Instead, they went 80-82, placed third, and but for a couple of boneheaded midseason missteps and the utter collapse of Adam Dunn, might well have won the division. Their Pythagorean record was 76-86, closer to my prediction but still better than what I had expected. What happened? Scott Hatteberg had an improbably good year, the Reds acquired Dave Ross and Brandon Phillips, and Bronson Arroyo emerged as an outstanding starter. What should we expect in 2007?
Adam Dunn, who last year hit .234/.365/.490, can be expected to hit better. His late season collapse was bizarre, but he’s too good of a player not to recover. Indeed, he appears to have hit two home runs against Carlos Zambrano thus far today. Ken Griffey had his worst season in terms of rate stats in his career, but I suspect that he may come back a bit. Then again, he may fall off a cliff. His defense already has, but that should be okay (or, at least, not noticeable within the Reds outfield) as long as he stays in right. Edwin Encarnacion is young enough to still see some improvement. Phillips and Freel should be about the same, although Freel will provide better defense than Griffey in center. Dave Ross will be much worse than he was last year, but he’ll get more playing time, so things should even out. Alex Gonzalez should be about as good as the average of Royce Clayton and Felipe Lopez.
On the downside, Scott Hatteberg is 37 and coming off the second best season of his career. He can be expected to decline, perhaps significantly. Bronson Arroyo was outstanding last year, but will probably regress a bit this year. Eric Milton and Kyle Lohse will continue to be terrible. The bullpen doesn’t look particularly good, and defensively the team remains quite weak. Freel will be better than Griffey in center, but he’s only an average centerfielder, and we can expect both Dunn and Griffey to be quite bad. Phillips, Hatteberg and Encarnacion are all substandard defenders, with Gonzalez at best average at this point in his career. This may be the worst defensive team in baseball, which isn’t super for a team that doesn’t have many real strikeout pitchers.
In true “surge” fashion, I’m going to double down and say that, last year notwithstanding, the Red are going to go 70-92 this year. The one saving grace may be that the rest of the NL Central is also terrible, and thus that the unbalanced schedule may float the Reds to a slightly better record.
But we’ll see. Thank Jeebus for baseball, and Opening Day.