Back in April, before the season started, we had ourselves a little contest.  You were asked to predict the final rankings for each division, the playoffs, and the winners of the MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year for each league.  I promised to total those predictions up and give the entrant with the best results a copy of Joe Posnanski's book The Machine, detail the 1975 season for the Cincinnati Reds.  What I didn't tell you is that the book will be signed by the author himself, which it is.  Hopefully those of you who may have already bought the book will still enjoy having a signed copy in your collection if you win the contest.

You are probably wondering though whether or not you still have a chance to win.  Well, as a matter of fact, I have the unofficial results for you right after the jump.  We currently have a 3-way tie for first place between The Crushinator,  c60, and cokane.  There are still 40 points available, and none of the leaders have either the Yankees or Phillies winning the Series, so this is still open to many people down the chain.  That's not to say people haven't been mathematically eliminated yet (3 Fast 3 Furious), but there are still a large number of entrants who have a shot to take home the prize.

These standings are definitely unofficial.  I encourage you to review your entry and double-check your points because I did the calculation by hand.  I will triple-check them myself once the contest is over, but I figured I'd give you a quick results list so that you can get an idea where you stand.  Leave any questions in the comments section below.

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This past Saturday, BK, jch24, 'tHan and I were given the opportunity to take a tour of the fabulous Green Diamond Gallery in Montgomery. For those that aren't familiar with the Green Diamond Gallery, it is a fantastic private collection of baseball memorabilia that has been put on display in a pristine gallery here in town. It is an amazing collection that is made even more amazing by the fact that it has all been acquired by a single person. There are artifacts on display from all the way back to the start of the National League in 1876 and the pieces are as varied as game used bats to actual World Series trophies to gimmick products made to promote the game.

The best part about the entire gallery is how well the items have been compiled by the gallery's managers Kevin Manley and Tim Ruge. Unlike most museums, there is a certain style to the organization of the artifacts that tells more than just a chronological story of the game. There is a display called "Defunct Teams," which shows jerseys from teams that no longer exist like the Washington Senators, St. Louis Browns, and Montreal Expos. There is also a wall of "Curses," celebrating the supposed cursed teams of the game. My favorite display is the "Cloud Over Baseball," which is a set of jerseys of prominent steroid users displayed directly above a celebration of Major League Baseball's Top 25 Moments in the game's history.  It's stuff like that that you'll never find in a museum and that makes this gallery truly special.

The one downside of this gallery is that it is not open to the public.  They do have occasional events at the site where the public can buy tickets and see the gallery, but this private collection remains private for the most part.  You can become a member though, which will give you access to regular tours of the gallery as well as a chance to attend a couple of the many events that the gallery puts on during the year.  These events usually have a former Major Leaguer player there to give a speech of some sort, and they regularly pull in Hall of Famers like Mike Schmidt, Goose Gossage, and Ozzie Smith to speak.  If you are interested in checking out the membership, you should go to their website linked above.  I'll warn you though, it ain't cheap.

I want to thank Tim Ruge for offering to open up the gallery to us on a Saturday morning.  It really was exciting to see all of the cool stuff they have there.  Thanks to jch24 we do have some pictures for you after the jump.  If you are in town and ever get a chance to tour the gallery, don't pass it up.  It is a must-see for all baseball fans.

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We've heard a lot about Homer Bailey's improved mechanics, and the evidence is definitely there in the results that we saw during the season.  Bailey chalks a lot of the improvement up to work that he did with Skip Johnson, pitching coach with the University of Texas:

"So I went for one bullpen (session) and he was telling me try this and try that," said Bailey, who tossed eight scoreless innings Friday, Aug. 28, in beating the Dodgers. "The whole time I’m kind of like, ‘All right, Homer, keep doing it. It feels funny and it feels different.’ So he told me to come back in a couple of days and throw another bullpen.

"And he gave me some drills to do at home before I went back and I kept doing them," Bailey continued. "I went back for the next bullpen and the ball just jumped out of my hand and I just stared at it. I threw three pitches and said to myself, ‘It’s back.’ "

Bailey was regularly hitting above 95 on the radar gun this past season, something that we really haven't seen him do in the big leagues prior to this season.  Having that speed has definitely allowed him to pitch more freely and confidently, and I think that is why we saw such good results from him during the last 2 months of the season.

But what has changed about Bailey's mechanics?  Alex Eisenberg at Baseball-Intellect.com has taken a stab at trying to see what is different for Bailey this season compared to 2008.  The key, he says, is tempo.  After the jump, I've posted two pictures from Eisenberg's post comparing Bailey's tempo from 2008 to 2009.  I'm no expert in pitching mechanics, so I have a hard time truly differentiating what is important and what is circumstantial, but I think what Eisenberg points out seems reasonable.  I encourage you to read the article and see if you notice anything different than what it points out.

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More photos » by Al Behrman - AP

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Bronson Arroyo has certainly put up some outstanding numbers in the second half of the season.  In his first 17 starts he posted a 5.85 ERA, which wasn't far off from the 6.08 FIP that he put up over the same span.  That is to say, he sucked and a lot it was his doing.  In the 15 starts since then though, he's posted a sparkling 2.15 ERA in large part because he has cut down his non-intentional walks and his home runs allowed in half.  Those two improvements alone have removed over a run and a half from his ERA, but that is not all that has given Arroyo more success in the 2nd half.

While Arroyo's ERA is hovering around 2 in the second half, his FIP is still just 3.80, good but not great.  A lot of that difference can be attributed to the help that Arroyo has received from his defense.  Check out the break down in this table:

As you can see, outside of pop flies, Arroyo hasn't really changed the rates of the batted ball types that much, but his defense is turning a lot more of those batted balls into outs (DER calculates the rates that balls in play are turned into outs).  Couple this with the fact that Arroyo has dramatically cut down on his walks and you can see why he has faced much fewer base runners since the all star break.  Add in to this a lower home run per flyball rate and you have the makings of a Goodroyo transformation.  This all despite the fact that his strikeout rate has only increased slightly and is still well below his previous rates with the Reds.

To give you an idea of how much the fewer base runners has helped, in his first 17 starts, 10 of the 21 HR that Arroyo allowed were with runners on base, and 4 of those were with 2 outs.  In his last 15 starts, just 1 of the 10 HR that he has allowed have come with runners on base.  Being able to get outs faster has meant avoiding the big inning, which was Arroyo's doom in the first half.

What this all says to me is that Arroyo is likely do for a tumble, not that you wouldn't expect that.  His HR/FB rate is probably a bit low and his walk-rate is a few ticks below his career rate.  If those settle back to their norm without any improvement to his strikeout rate, we'll start to see him wonder back over the 4.00 ERA range rather than the 2.00 ERA range.  Also, while the defense was below their norm behind Arroyo in the first half, they've been much more above the norm in the second half.  If he starts getting more normal defensive help (the team's seasonal DER is .707), you'll see a few more longer innings with a couple more base runners, leaving Arroyo to fend for himself to get the outs.  Sometimes that's not a good thing, though having Arroyo at his 2007-2008 levels still makes him a valuable pitcher.  He just won't likely be as good as we've seen this second half.

NOTE: All of the data that I used for this was compiled from Baseball Reference, who combined regular fly balls with infield flyballs in the reports that I ran.  I separated out pop flies using hit data from Pitch FX, which may not be completely accurate.  I still think the point is accurate, even if the numbers aren't exactly what you would expect. 

Does anybody ROAR like El Nino Destructor?

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Justin from Basement Dwellers has been trying to find a reasonable comparison to Juan Francisco via Twitter.  He's received some suggestions but hasn't quite been able to lock in on a name just yet.  The thing is that it looks like, based on his minor league numbers, Francisco is a truly unique player to make it to the Majors.  That's probably overstating it a bit, but I have yet to find a player who walks less than 4% of the time while striking out over 20% in the minors who still makes it to the big leagues.  They're not outrageous ratios to have in the big leagues, but typically players who have those sorts of rates in the majors performed much better in the minors.

So, the task for you is to try to come up with a reasonable comp for Juan Francisco.  We're just looking at offensive numbers here, but we're trying to find players with seriously low walk rates, high strikeout rates, and good power.  Here are some of the names that have been suggested so far with their minor and major league rates:

Obviously this isn't definitive and every player travels their own path, but I think it's worthwhile to try to find comparable players early in a player's career to see if we can project those players out into the future.  It's good to see that there are 2 or 3 good players on that list who have had good careers, but there is still a tough road ahead of Francisco.  I don't mind the cup of coffee right now, but he still needs to make some serious progress with his plate discipline before I consider him to have a real shot at success in the Majors.

More photos » by Paul Beaty - AP

Brandon Phillips can't help but be frustrated by the lack of performance up and down the lineup.

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I appear to have come down with the flu.  Not sure of the letter/number combination of the disease, but it's definitely put me in an unpleasant state.  Since misery loves company, I decided to show you just how bad the Reds 1 and 2 hitters have been this season.  Here's the Reds numbers by batting position:

As you can see, the Reds top 2 hitters in the order, the two players that are guaranteed to get the most at bats in a game, are batting worse than the 7-9 hitters.  And ridiculously, the Reds' lead-off hitters have just 10 more walks than the 9th spot in the order, in 121 more plate appearances.  It's an embarrassment.

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by Al Behrman - AP

Scott Rolen has been the center of attention for the Reds recent run of remarkable results. Is it warranted?

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When the Reds traded for Scott Rolen on July 31st, Walt Jocketty said he "felt that there are a lot of things that Scott will provide this club that we thought was lacking -- leadership on the field with a position player."

Since Scott Rolen came off of the disabled list on August 23rd after suffering a concussion, the Reds have gone 12-3 and it's looking like Jocketty was right about Rolen's influence on the roster.  Bronson Arroyo doesn't want to go anywhere else now that Rolen is around.  Brandon Phillips credits Rolen with helping him become a better player.  Heck, even the USA Today Crossword puzzle found him worthy of a clue.

It's hard to argue with the results, right?  I mean, check out this 15-game stretch by the offense:

Pretty impressive, isn't it?  And it wasn't all just the offense.  During that 15-game stretch, the pitching staff had a 3.68 ERA, striking out 110 and walking just 47 batters and allowing only 13 home runs.  It's arguably the best stretch the Reds have played all year.

And Scott Rolen had nothing to do with it.

The numbers above are from the 15 games that the Reds played from April 28th to May 13th when they went 10-5.

The fact is that 15 games isn't enough to tell us about the true quality of a team.  Sure it's information, but it's only a small slice.  The team that put up those numbers above is basically the same team that hit .234/.300/.375 over the 68 games that followed that 15-game stretch. 

Is Rolen an improvement to this team?  Yes.  Has he helped them win 80% of their last 15 games? Absolutely.  But as most historians will tell you, it's hard to assign meaning to events as they are happening, especially when those events are just a small subset of the bigger picture.  Let's not assign too much meaning to one player, lest we lose track of the issues that need to be addressed to actually make this team a contender.

After the jump, I'll post the team's numbers for the most recent 15 games for you to compare.  Also, I'll point  to a player who may actually deserve the credit for being the straw that stirs the offensive drink.

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Many Reds fans have been waiting anxiously for Joe Posnanski's latest book, The Machine, which arrives in your local bookstore on Wednesday, September 9th.  For those of you who read Posnanski regularly, you understand what a great storyteller he is.  If you aren't familiar with his work, I suggest you check out his first book, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America.  It's incredible.  

As you may recall, Red Reporter is having a contest to give away a copy of The Machine.  I imagine some of you are looking forward to the book enough that you don't want to have to wait until the season is over to find out if you've won the contest.  In order to make the contest still worth your while, I will make sure to have Poz sign a copy of the book for the contest winner.  That way, if you do buy the book before the end of the season, you can pass it on to a friend and receive your signed contest book if you win.

Posnanski was kind enough to answer a few questions for Red Reporter about the Big Red Machine in anticipation of the new book.  We appreciate him taking the time out of what I can only imagine is a ridiculously busy schedule.  Besides the book, you can also read him pretty much daily at JoePosnanski.com and on SportsIllustrated.com.

RR: When you first started writing the book, you joked about there not really being a need for another book about the Big Red Machine. What did you hope to do differently with this book that hadn't been done in previous books about the BRM?

Poz: My favorite response to the book was from Johnny Bench, who when he heard I was doing it said: "Why, is there an anniversary coming up?" It's funny, there were quite a few books about The Machine -- some of them quite good -- but most of them were written some 30 years ago -- so I guess I wanted to add some perspective if I could. I really wanted the chance to write about baseball and the world in 1975, when I was eight years old. I think that in many ways baseball of that time has been overlooked -- there have been a many wonderful books written about the 1950s and '60s, but not as many about the 1970s. The Oakland A's won three consecutive World Series and not many books have been written about them. The great Earl Weaver Orioles -- not many books have been written about them. The George Brett Kansas City Royals, the We Are Family Pirates, the Steve Garvey Dodgers and so on. So I thought I would dive in with the most enduring team of the time.

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