So I am getting pretty stoked on the work that Kevin Dame is doing over at The Hardball Times in his "Visual Baseball" series where he interprets Baseball Data with graphics. In his most recent article he represented the 2010 Mariners hitters vs the rest of the leagues starters in OPS. I liked the idea and how it was represented. I tweaked a few things though and decided to just use the position for each team and ranked them by OPS+ since it adjusts for the park one plays in. Here are the results for our 2009 Reds:

You may want to click and open it in a larger window to get the full view. The one thing that surprised me was just how well our right fielders performed in 2009. The next thing was second base. I give Brandon Phillips my share of crap around the internet because I feel fans overrate his bat dramatically because of his RBI numbers 'being so good'. With that said, for national leaguers he was quite good at the plate. He still is in the wrong spot in the lineup by far, but that one isn't on him at all.

What does it all mean? Well, looking at those rankings what spots do you think the Reds can improve upon in 2010? What about spots you see a decline at? Here are my thinkings, feel free to share yours:

Improvement Positions:

Center - Its going to be tough to be as bad in center next season. Even Willy Taveras playing there next year is likely to be much better than he was in 2009. Given that Stubbs is likely to see most of the time there, even the most pessimistic on Stubbs think he will hit better than Taveras did in 2009.

Third Base - Scott Rolen makes a lot of his value on the other side of the ball, but even at this point in his career he should very much be expected to provide better offense than what Edwin and Rosales brought to us in 2009.

Declining Positions:

First Base - Call me a pessimist if you will, but I don't expect Votto to replicate another .375 BABIP season in 2010. If he falls down even to a .325 BABIP he would have to have the same rate of strikeouts, walks, HBP, SF and SH while hitting 42 doubles and 35 HR to have a .979 OPS. I just don't expect that big of a jump in power for Votto. I think he can be around the .900 OPS range, but he isn't likely to sniff .950+ again this year.

The Rest

I expect just about every other position to be about where they were. I think Jay Bruce picks up the slack in 2010 and makes up for the guys who filled in for him very well in the season. We have the same catchers back and while Corky Miller and Craig Tatum did get some playing time I figure they wind up in roughly the same area overall.

Anyways, that is my opinion. What about you guys?