I’ve never been to Cincinnati. Moreover, I’ve never felt any particular urge to visit Cincinnati. I probably think about the city of Cincinnati about once every four or five months, usually when the theme song to the early 80’s sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" rises out of the foggy memories of my misspent television-watching youth.
I got tired of packing and unpacking,
Town to town, up and down the dial.
That is a great theme song.
I’ve never been to Pittsburg, either. But while Pittsburg shares a few geographic traits with Cincinnati (both are rust-belt middle-of-America cities with rivers running through them; both cities have baseball teams that reject the designated hitter), I think about Pittsburg all the time. Really: I probably talk to my wife about moving to Pittsburg at least once every month. My obsession with the city is well-known among my family and friends. Last year, one of my closest friends visited the city for a conference, and sent me an audio account of him walking down a few random streets in Pittsburg, describing what it looked like. Sometimes I have fever-dreams where me and Andrew McCutchen tour the city’s dive bars, looking for a magical jukebox that plays Rusted Root’s "Send Me On My Way" no matter what digits you punch into it.
Semmmie ommmmmaayy (ommy way!) Semmie ond mah way-hay-hay!
But Cincinnati? Meh. I have no interesting in visiting the city. I understand they do horrible things to their chili.
Perhaps as a by-product of this indifference, the Reds are the baseball team I follow the least of all the teams in baseball. Do you know those online quizzes, where you have to list all 30 major league teams in a minute? I always get to the Reds last.
This isn’t really logical, because the Reds have been a pretty team good team over my life as a baseball fan. They had a superstar, Eric Davis, whose career coincided with the start of my baseball fandom. They won a World Series in 1990, and they’ve made other runs in the postseason. They even have some historical ties with my favorite team: they’re the team on the losing end of Fisk’s homer.
But I’ve paid more attention, over the years, to teams like the Mariners and the Astros and the Brewers than I’ve paid to the Reds. This isn’t out of some geographic preference: I’ve never been to Seattle, Houston, or Milwaukee either. And it’s certainly not because those teams have a richer history than the Reds: the Reds are a great original franchise who’ve won multiple championships, while the Mariners, Brewers, and Astros are still waiting for that first flag-laden trophy.
Here’s a possible cause of my indifference: I don’t know any Reds fans. I’ve never had a conversation with a single person who identifies themselves as a Reds fan. I don’t know that I’ve have so much as an online interaction with a Reds fan. Are there Reds fans on this website? Raise your hands, please.
Anyway, I’ve made an effort to follow the Reds this year, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. They’re certainly not a great team: at this writing, they’re just above .500, in the middle of a crowded NL Central that has four teams with winning records. They’re in fourth, but a good day might vault them to second. But it is very obvious that the Reds aren’t a great team. For some reason, baseball in 2014 has decided that all of the great teams have to be in California. All the great teams and the Padres.
What’s compelling about the Cincinnati Reds isn’t their teamgreatness, but the number of astonishing individual performances they’re seeing this year. The Reds have a large number of players having Seasons of Historic Significance.
Here’s a breakdown of their SoHS’s:
1. Aroldis Chapman is striking out more hitters than anyone. Ever.
The record for the highest strikeout rate in baseball history is currently held by Craig Kimbrel, who did this:
|
Rank
|
Pitcher
|
Year
|
K/9 IP
|
IP
|
|
1
|
Craig Kimbrel
|
2012
|
16.66
|
62.2
|
There have actually been five seasons in which a relief pitcher has struck out 15 or more batters per nine innings pitched….let’s see who else pops up on that list:
|
Rank
|
Pitcher
|
Year
|
K/9 IP
|
IP
|
|
1
|
Craig Kimbrel
|
2012
|
16.66
|
62.2
|
|
2
|
Kenley Jansen
|
2011
|
16.10
|
53.2
|
|
3
|
Carlos Marmol
|
2010
|
15.99
|
77.2
|
|
4
|
Aroldis Chapman
|
2013
|
15.83
|
63.2
|
|
5
|
Aroldis Chapman
|
2012
|
15.32
|
71.2
|
Kimbrel has the record currently, but Chapman has been challenging it just about every year he’s been in the majors. Though Aroldis started the 2014 season on the DL (thanks to a Salvador Perez line-drive that broke his face in spring training), the southpaw is currently posting a 17.55 K/9 rate.
If you prefer strikeout percentage to strikeout rate, Chapman is still in rare air. 2012 Craig Kimbrel also holds the record for highest strikeout percentage in a single season. He is the only pitcher to strike out more than half the batters he’s faced in a single season:
|
Pitcher
|
Year
|
K%
|
|
Craig Kimbrel
|
2012
|
50.2%
|
|
Eric Gagne
|
2003
|
44.8%
|
|
Aroldis Chapman
|
2012
|
44.2%
|
|
Kenley Jansen
|
2011
|
44.0%
|
|
Aroldis Chapman
|
2013
|
43.4%
|
|
Billy Wagner
|
1999
|
43.4%
|
And Aroldis Chapman’s just ahead of him this year. The Cuban Missile has (at this writing) whiffed 51.5% of the batters he’s faced (52 out of 101). If he keeps this up, he’ll post the highest strikeout rate and strikeout percentage any pitcher has ever posted.
2. Joey Votto is trying to win another on-base crown.
Alright…this one’s a long shot. Votto is currently on the DL, and he doesn’t currently have enough plate appearances to qualify for the league-lead in rate stats. Also, there’s some shortstop in Colorado who is going to be tough to catch up to. But Votto’s managed to post a .390 on-base percentage this year, which would rank him in the top-ten among NL hitters…it’s not impossible that he’ll lead the NL in on-base percentage for the fifth consecutive season.
It is already historic that Joey Votto has led his league in on-base percentage in each of the last four seasons. Just to put that accomplishment in perspective, here’s a list of all of the players who have ever done that:
Lou Gehrig
Ted Williams
Barry Bonds
Joey Votto
That is impressive company. Even if you lower the bar to consider players with just three consecutive on-base crowns, you’ll add Mike Schmidt, Joe Morgan, Arky Vaughn, a couple stretches by Babe Ruth, a few stretches by Ted Williams and Barry Bonds, and two old fogies named Ty Cobb, and Honus Wagner. You’ll also add Elbie Fletcher, who led the NL in on-base percentage in 1940-1942. He has to buy beer when the group gets together.
 
If Votto manages to grab his fifth straighton-base crown, he’ll be in an even more exclusive club. Here’s the only guy to lead the league in on-base percentage five times in a row:
Wade Boggs
And here’s the only player with six in a row:
Rogers Hornsby
(Just a note: Ted Williams led the AL in on-base percentage for seven consecutive seasons in his career: he led the AL in on-base percentage in 1940-1942, went to war in 1943-1945, and then came back to lead the league in on-base percentage in 1946-1949.)
Though Votto’s isolated power has declined steadily since his 2010 MVP season, he’s still a historically special hitter. If we gave on-base percentage half the love that the batting title gets every year, maybe people would notice.
3. Johnny Cueto is the most unhittable NL pitcher in more than a century.
One of the most entertaining parts of watching the Reds this year has been watching Johnny Cueto take the hill every fifth day. On the mound, Cueto looks….well….determined. While the perennially brilliant Kershaw and Wainwright have each had remarkable seasons this year, Cueto’s been keeping pace, and should now be considered among the elite arms in baseball.
What makes Cueto’s 2014 season Historically Significant is how difficult it’s been for batters to get a hit off him. This year Cueto’s allowed just 5.619 hits per 9 innings pitched, a mark that is better than any National League pitcher ever, except for Sandy Koufax Steve Carlton Bob Gibson Ed Reulbach.
You’ve never heard of Ed Reulbach? Me, neither. He set the NL mark of 5.326 for the 1906 Chicago Cubs. Big Ed was famously unhittable: in every one of his thirteen major league seasons, Reulbach gave up fewer hits than innings pitched, a weird record that no other pitcher has come close to replicating. According to the excellent biography on the SABR site, Reulbach had weak vision in his left eye, which caused frequent spells of wildness.
Anyway….acknowledging that hits have a high ‘luck’ component, it is nevertheless true that Johnny Cueto has been as tough to hit as any NL pitcher in the last century of baseball.
This might change, of course. It’s highly likely that it will change: I bet that Cueto’s hits per nine innings pitched will be over 6.0 by season’s end. But that doesn’t change the face that Cueto is doing something historically unique.
4. Devin Mesoraco is having one of the greatest hitting season for a catcher in major league baseball history.
I feel like no one has noticed how amazing Devin Mesoraco has been this year. Here’s where he ranks among major league catchers in some offensive categories:
RBI: 3rd
Batting Average: 2nd
And here’s where Mesoraco ranks in plate appearances by a catcher:
He’s played about 65% of the 2014 season, and he’s hit like the second-coming of Johnny Bench. Actually, he’s hit better than Johnny Bench.
Here’s a list of the five best catching seasons (minimum of 200+ plate appearances), as judged by Weighted Runs Created (wRC):
|
Rank
|
Catcher
|
Year
|
PA
|
wRC
|
|
1
|
Mike Piazza
|
1997
|
633
|
183
|
|
2
|
Devin Mesoraco
|
2014
|
207
|
179
|
|
3
|
Mike Napoli
|
2011
|
432
|
179
|
|
4
|
King Kelly
|
1886
|
534
|
177
|
|
5
|
Bill Dickey
|
1942
|
284
|
174
|
Like Cueto, it’s highly unlikely that Devin Mesoraco will continue to post a wRC in the Mike Trout range for the rest of the 2014 season. But he certainly has the pedigree to have a breakout season: Mesoraco is a former first-round pick, and while the notion that catchers peak later than other hitters is a tad overstated, it’s not impossible that Mesoraco will be one of the better hitting catchers in baseball going forward.
Mesoraco is twenty-six. Here’s a list of the nine catchers to post a wRC of 160 or better between the ages of 24 and 27:
|
Player
|
Year
|
wRC
|
|
Devin Mesoraco
|
2014
|
175
|
|
Joe Mauer
|
2009
|
170
|
|
Mike Piazza
|
1995
|
168
|
|
Mike Piazza
|
1996
|
165
|
|
Carlton Fisk
|
1972
|
165
|
|
Don Padgett
|
1939
|
165
|
|
Buster Posey
|
2012
|
163
|
|
Derek Norris
|
2014
|
163
|
|
Carlton Fisk
|
1974
|
161
|
When you’re keeping company with the likes of Mauer, Piazza, Posey, and the young version of Carlton Fisk, you’re doing something right. Mesoraco’s having a terrific year (as is Derek Norris, incidentally).
5. Billy Hamilton is very good at playing baseball.
Billy Hamillton is actually not having a Season of Historical Significance.
This is surprising, because if you were going to pick one Reds player to have a SoHS in 2014, Hamilton would probably be your guy. This is because Hamilton set the minor league record for stolen bases two years ago, and because he showed a similar talent for stealing bases whenever he wanted during his brief stint in 2013.
Coming into 2014, any bold prediction about Hamilton fell into one of two categories:
1. He would steal an astonishing number of bases, or
2. He wouldn’t hit anything in the majors.
Certainly, his Opening Day whiff-fest against Adam Wainwright had a lot of people jumping on the second prediction, just as his early feats of tagging up on an infield fly and tripling on a bloop single had people hoping his all-world speed would have people digging out their old Vince Van-Go posters from the mid-80’s.
The record-setting stolen bases haven’t exactly happened: while Hamilton’s stolen 37 bases so far, he's well off an 100-steal pace, and probably won't reach 80. He’s also been caught stealing twelve times, for a less-than-brilliant 76% success rate.
Instead, what’s happened is that Billy Hamilton has turned out to a very good baseball player.He’s been a league-average hitter: his OPS+ is now at 102, and he has a respectable .280 batting average. He’s managed to hit six homeruns, which is five more than just about every projection credited him with. All six of those homers have left the park…two actually came in consecutive at-bats.
More significantly, Hamilton has played brilliantly in centerfield. Keeping in mind that this is a position Hamilton learned last year, it is a remarkable accomplishment. He might win a Gold Glove this year. He certainly deserves to be considered for it.
So what’s happened with Hamilton is something no one really predicted: he’s been a competent major league hitter this year, a brilliant defensive player, and an excellent base runner.
Fangraphs credits him with a 3.2 WAR, which rates him 18th among major league hitters, right between Miguel Cabrera and Jose Altuve. He has been more than an adequate replacement for the departed Shin-Soo Choo….he’s been much better than Choo this year, at a fraction of the cost the Rangers are paying for Choo’s services.
David Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.