Over the course of the offseason I will certainly dive into the Cincinnati Reds season a lot more in depth, but for this morning I am simply going to be giving some quick thoughts on a few things.
First – Joey Votto is incredibly good at hitting the baseball. At the end of May he was hitting poor enough that he said something to the extent of he’d retire if he continued to play that way. With the regular season over, he finished by leading the National League in on-base percentage and tied for the lead in OPS. He hit .326 and hit over .400 in the second half of the season.
Jose Peraza turned in a heck of a rookie season, especially once the organization started giving him every day playing time. After hitting .250/.290/.284 in his first 93 plate appearances through July 31st, he returned on August 20th to play every day through the rest of the season. In the 163 plate appearances from that point forward he hit .366/.387/.484. In total he finished with the 5th highest average for a 22-year-old, .324, in the last 10 years (minimum 250 plate appearances in a season). Not shabby.
Adam Duvall fell just short of joining a very rare club on Sunday. After starting the day with a hit he had a sub .300 on-base percentage and a slugging percentage of .500. The amount of qualified players to ever meet those marks was a grand total of two. In the entire history of baseball. Dave Kingman did it in 1976 and Mike Jacobs accomplished it in 2008. Unfortunately Duvall didn’t get another hit on the day and his slugging fell below the .500 mark. History did smile on the side of this record though as the Texas Rangers Rougned Odor joined the exclusive club in 2016.
Billy Hamilton finally started getting on base in 2016. If he can continue that next year it could go a long way to improving the offense even more. His step forward offensively in 2016 was good to see. His continued excellent in the field and on the bases was flat out fun to watch.
While losses aren’t ever really desirable, the way that Sunday played out for the organization probably couldn’t have played out any better for the future of the franchise. The blown 9th inning lead led to them drafting 2nd overall thanks to the help from every other team ahead of them winning.
I’m looking forward to seeing what changes, specifically to the public, in how the front office begins to do things. Walt Jocketty officially takes more of an advisory role in 2017 and hands the front office reigns over to Dick Williams and company.