Darren Hauck/AP

I noticed yesterday that FanGraphs has added a fantastic new feature to their site.  They call it plate discipline stats, and it gives us the ability to go one step further into analyzing the player's performance.  It's not quite the level of detail that you get from Pitch F/X data, but frankly, it's a helluva lot easier to get to and to comprehend.

So what do these plate discipline stats tell us?  Well it gives us an idea of how a hitter address the strike zone.  It lets us see how often they are swinging at pitches in the zone compared to pitches outside of the zone.  Also, it tells us how often they are making contact on those pitches they swing at.  Unfortunately, it does not tell us what kind of contact they are making, but maybe we'll get there some day.

The great thing for us is that it allows us to examine the source of our frustrations a little further.  Many of us have been, uh, concerned about the amount of aggressiveness certain players are showing during their at bats.  These data will  hopefully give us a better idea of whether or not that concern is warranted.  Specifically, we'll be able to tell a little better whether or not a certain player is being aggressive in the zone or if they are just hacking away at whatever the pitcher throws up there.  After the jump you'll find a table of some of the Reds hitters this season, so go ahead and take the leap of faith that I'm not playin' witcha...

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Yesterday I asked lboros from Viva El Birdos to give us a Cardinals fan's perspective on Walt Jocketty's downfall in St. Louis as well as what made him successful while he was there.  Being the good guy that he is, lboros obliged.  I want to thank him for taking the time to give some rather extensive answers.  I didn't ask him every question that I had, but I feel like we get a pretty good idea of why Jocketty left St. Louis and what fans thought of him towards the end.

Also, at the bottom post there are two links to an evaluation of Jocketty that lboros did at Viva El Birdos back in February that is definitely worth the read.  Thanks lboros!

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Al Behrman/AP

New Reds General Manager Walt Jocketty spent 13 seasons as the GM of the St. Louis Cardinals.  During his tenure the Cardinals went from a team that hadn't been to the playoffs in 7 years to a team that won the division in his second season and went to the playoffs in 6 of the last 9 years.  Regardless of what your perception is of his skill level, it's hard to argue with those kinds of results.

In the 2006 Hardball Times Annual, Cardinals fan Brian Gunn wrote an article titled GM in a Box: Walt Jocketty where he tried to summarize who Jocketty is as a GM.  As with most evaluations of GMs will be, especially by an outsider, his observations where based mainly on circumstantial evidence.  I don't believe Gunn has ever had direct conversations with Jocketty, so he's really just trying to identify trends in Jocketty's tenure and extrapolate a strategy from there.  It's not perfect, but it's the best we've got in terms of a historical summary.  That's why I decided to steal a bunch of it and post it here.  If you don't own any of the THT Annuals, hopefully this will be a good example of the kind of varied information you find in them.  It's a purchase that is worth the money, even two years later.

Gunn starts off with Jocketty's record and background.  I've updated it to current time.

Age: 56

Previous Organizations:
    1975-1980: White Sox - various minor league positions under GM Rolan Hemond
    1980-1993: Athletics - farm director mostly under GM Sandy Alderson
    1993: Rockies - assistant GM to Bob Gebhard
    1994-2007: Cardinals - General Manager
    Jocketty has said that he learned people skills from the genial Hemond and the technical/contractual skills from the lawyerly Alderson.
Cumulative record with the Cardinals: 1117-968, .536 Winning PCT.  One ridiculous WS championship.
Did he play professional ball and if so, what type of player was he?
    No. He played college ball as a pitcher but that was it.

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A long time ago, Herb Carneal or Vin Scully or some other old coot told me that aside from certain specific matchups, at any given point in a season most major league starters aren't remembering much more about their season than their three most recent starts.

Another time, my dad pointed out to me how USA Today's Sports section provides information about that day's starters' three most recent outings.  (Pops tells me that this is the absolute minimum amount of information that a gambler would want to know before calling in his action.)

So you see... 3. It's the magic number.  Yes, it is.  It's the magic number.

And if you allow each pitcher in your favorite team's rotation to amass three starts and then stop to see how they've all done during their three respective starts, you should be about fifteen games (or five three-game series) further along than the last time you took inventory.  And if you fudge the math to keep things simple (and keep things magic!) you'll find that fifteen games is about 10% of your 162-game baseball season.

So here we are.  Roughly 10% of the way through the Reds' 2008 season.

How we lookin'?

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We may be entering a recession and the markets may be soft right now but you'll all be pleased and proud to know that Red Reporter is taking an unprecedented step to buy up our own little corner of the interweb.

Check it out. (Scroll down.  No, wait.  Not that far. Scroll back up a bit.  You see it?  Pretty cool, huh?)

For those of you who long ago stopped trusting me to send you off linking to anything worth seeing... just trust me on this one.  It's pretty cool.  (Cooler than poppin' and lockin' for papal pleasure.  And cooler than a hockey rink blowing up under a monster truck race.)

For those of you who don't click on any hyperlinks until after your mom has checked them all out for razorblades and anthrax, I'll just spell it out for you..

Your favorite quiet little out-of-the-way Cincinnati Reds blog has gone big time.  We're sponsoring BaseballReference.com's 2008 Cincinnati Reds page.

Pretty cool, huh?

No?  Seriously?

We've sold out?  We've cashed out our street cred?  We've lost that certain charm that you can spend your whole life searching through semi-literate sports blogs to find?  We're stupid and new?

Wait.  What if I told you.. that umm... that you can win a contest!  Yeah, there ya go.  I knew you'd like that.  Contests are fun and challenging and not without an element of seduction. Kinda like Wheel of Fortune.

Here's what you're gonna do: Come up with a tagline wittier than the one Slyde posted with the initial purchase.  And don't worry, you're not gonna hurt Slyde's feelings.  He wants the tagline to change.  In fact, we're planning to change it monthly or weekly or something.  I can't remember right now.  I'll let you know soon.  But rest assured, when it changes it will be because a Red Reporter came up with something good and it was rec'd a bunch of times and it passed JD's thorough approval process.  (Psst.. Little known secret: JD hardly ever reads his own blog!  For the past eight or ten months he's been pretty busy volunteering and campaigning pretty heavily for Ron Paul.  I know.. weird, right?)

Anyway, get your ideas for the new BR.com tagline put up in this thread below and feel free to discuss this bold sponsorship idea from Bob in Marketing.  And if you've got nothing to contribute along those lines, check out our new partner for a while and then come back and tell us what cool things you found on the most awesome website in all the internet. (Yes! 38 cents every time I type that.)