Reds July 2023 thread

[CJD]

(07-04-2023, 03:20 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I gotta say that before this season began, I completely thought that the Reds were going to flounder and just sell off any viable prospects.  However, seeing how this season is playing out, as I am guessing that nearly no one had the Reds in the division lead at this point;  I'm going to come forward and say that the success is either the complete result of luck, or just maybe the management realized what they had growing in prospects and things are just going as planned.

Either way, as a Reds fan I am just surprised and impressed by the way this team shows resolve and is getting it done at the plate.  If the coaches decide to pull the lead off hitter and move him to the 8 slot, who am I to second guess their strategy?

I've tracked the Reds this whole time that they've been bad and, basically, it's the latter. There's luck involved, undoubtedly, as there always is when it involves prospects. But the Reds have made smart trade after smart trade in the lead up to this rebuild, as well as acquiring players via the draft and international free agency and paying above slot in both cases.

Baseball is a very strange sport because the means of acquiring talent are so varied. I mentioned paying above slot. Basically, the draft comes down to three options:
1. draft a high school player
2. draft a college player who has no eligibility left
3. draft a college player who has eligibility left.

When drafting high school players and college players who have eligibility left, there is always a chance that that player just...decides not to sign with you. If that is the case, they can either go to college or continue in college as if they had not been drafted. If you draft a player and they don't sign, you get a compensatory pick in the next draft, but it's still a goal not to do that if possible. 

One way of luring those players into signing is to offer them money above their slot value. Much like the NFL draft, each draft position has a standard price. The difference in the MLB draft is that you can choose to offer a player more than that slot price if you believe they are leaning towards staying/going to college. The Reds have made a habit out of signing their draft picks above their slot. They did it with Hunter Greene, who was a high school phenom at the time, as well as Cam Collier, who fell in the draft because he was a JUCO player who could go to college if he didn't get drafted as high as he wanted. Matt McLain was a player who was drafted in the first round out of high school, decided to go to college and then was drafted by the Reds 3 years later, above slot price.
They recently drafted McLain, India, Abbott, Greene, Lodolo, Stephenson, Fairchild, and Senzel with first or second round picks in the past ~8 drafts (since you're drafting high schoolers, they often take time in the minors).
 
They had a few good hits on lower round players like Graham Ashcraft and Alexis Diaz as well.

They were able to sign TJ Friedl after the draft because, somehow, no one knew he was actually draft eligible. We gave him the biggest bonus ever given to an undrafted free agent (super weird story, but interesting).

The other main avenue for talent acquisition is via international free agency. This is where teams sign players from several Latin American and Asian countries whose players are not allowed to enter the MLB draft. The Reds have always been fairly big players in the international free agent market, especially relative to their overall salary.  

In 2016, the Reds actually intentionally spent more than they were allowed to because they signed so many players (this resulted in a penalty to how much they were allowed to use in the following international signing period). They signed Vladimir Gutierrez, Alfredo Rodriguez and Jose Barrero to contracts exceeding $4M each, well above their allotted pool. But, in a way, that just shows that the Reds see huge value in this avenue of talent acquisition. 

They have plucked quite a few high profile players over the years, including Johnny Cueto in 2004, Aroldis Chapman in 2010, Raisel Iglesias in 2014, Elly De La Cruz in 2018, Shogo Akiyama in 2020 and, in more recent years, Ricardo Cabrera in 2022 and Alfredo Duno in 2023, both of whom were top 3 international prospects that the Reds went out and signed. 

The major downside of the international free agent market, as we saw with the 2016 signing period where the three major players they signed did not end up working out, is that a lot of these players are teenagers, so there's a huge development curve and a lot of them end up not working out just because of how much projection teenagers have going into the MLB. Jose Barrero is a great example of a teenage free agent who had all the talent in the world, but just cannot put it together in the majors.

Elly De La Cruz is the obvious addition from this group in recent history and what a hit it was. The bonus of signing teenagers is that sometimes they just keep growing and getting stronger, and you end up with a top prospect that no one saw coming.

Finally, the Reds have made some brilliant trades. I am not going to go over all of them because that's a very long list, but a few years ago, they traded for Sonny Gray from the Yankees, who they got relatively cheap because he was struggling in NY. He rebuilt his career in Cincy, then we flipped him for a very promising pitching prospect. We also traded Suarez and Winker, two guys who never really lived up to their potential for three pitchers and an outfielder. After that, they traded Tyler Mahle, a decent #4 or #5 starting pitcher, for 2 infield prospects and a pitcher. The pitcher they acquired in the Mahle trade was alter traded as part of a package to get Will Benson. Then, finally, they traded Luis Castillo (who they got from the Marlins years ago for practically nothing) for 2 shortstops and 2 pitchers. 

All told, those trades resulted in the arrival of Spencer Steer, Brandon Williamson, Will Benson and Jake Fraley on the current roster, as well as 3 of our top 5 prospects that are on their way here in Noelvi Marte, Connor Phillips and Christian Encarnacion Strand. 

Edwin Arroyo and Chase Petty are also coming from these trades, but they are still a few years away.

They've traded away a lot of talent in the last few years, but the returns have been great and the draft picks have been hitting like crazy. Hats off to the development team because they basically did no wrong in the last 7 years. It just took a while for it all to materialize. But it finally has. And all at the same time, which is incredible and how you build a winner when you aren't a 300 million dollar team like the Mets or Yankees.