Cincinnati Reds Off-Day Notes

A Thursday of rest before a West Coast swing.

No team in Major League Baseball has played fewer games on the road this season than the Cincinnati Reds, to date. They’ve played just 10 of their 25 games away from the cozy confines of GABP, and they’ve gone just 1-9 in those games.

They have won a game on the road this year! That’s the bad news.

The good news? While a handful of teams have played fewer home games than the Oakland A’s - who just so happen to literally be searching for a new home, still - no team in Major League Baseball has won fewer games as the home team. They’re just 2-10 so far at the Coliseum, and they’ve been outscored by an astounding 55 runs there in those dozen games. The schedule says that they’re up next for the Reds, too, as Cincinnati heads west today to, on Friday, begin a 6-game road trip through Oakland and San Diego.

The Padres, interestingly enough, sport a disappointing -17 run differential so far this season despite sporting a lineup that looks, on paper, as thorough as any in the game. Thanks to their recent sweep of the Texas Rangers at home, the Reds run differential so far in 2023 looks almost identical: -18.

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In other news, the excellent run of form from lefty Andrew Abbott across AA-AAA has him increasingly on the national radar. Eric Longenhagen took a closer look at Abbott through the lens of his ever-evolving Top 100 prospects list, detailing a couple of points that are pertinent to consider when evaluating Abbott’s rise. For one, his velocity is spiking on all of his pitches, which is a good thing. On the potentially less-good-thing side, though, is the note about the AA Southern League - where Abbott excelled early with Chattanooga before his recent promotion to AAA Louisville - where a new tacked (read: grippy) baseball has been used so far in 2023.

We’ll certainly see how different things begin to look with Abbott’s offerings as he gets a larger sample of AAA work on his resume, but his first outing there still went pretty OK - he allowed 3 hits and a trio of walks that resulted in 2 ER in 5.0 IP last night for the Bats, striking out 7 on 85 pitches.

The notes on Abbott are just a portion of Longenhagen’s latest piece, and there’s a positive blurb in there about Lyon Richardson, too.

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Nick Senzel’s walk-off homer yesterday broke the string of, I dunno, 8 games without a homer for the Reds? What’s that? Slyde was already tracking that with aplomb?

Of course he was. This was entering play yesterday, for the record:

The team’s ISO now sits at .112 for the season, still second worst in the game. Keep the previously mentioned tidbit of them having played 15 of their 25 games this season in the league’s most dinger-friendly ballpark in mind when evaluating that statistic, too.

Per FanGraphs, the team’s 18.5% soft-hit rate is the 3rd highest in the league.

Over at Statcast, they’ve got the Reds as barreling the 2nd fewest balls per PA so far in 2023. I’ll let you toggle with that particular leaderboard to uncover some more fun-ish tidbits about the team’s offensive struggles this year, but I will add that they’ve hit the fewest balls over 95+ mph EV of all 30 MLB clubs, to date.

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Jason Vosler, who is not on the Cincinnati Reds anymore, remains the Cincinnati Reds team-leader in homers.

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Christian Encarnacion-Strand is healthy and mashing for AAA Louisville already.

Give him a week with the Reds and methinks Jason Vosler would no longer be the team’s leader in dingers.

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Former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer has died at 79.

RIP, Jerry.