Fun stats from the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff

Sonny Gray is plying his trade quite effectively for the Minnesota Twins. Wade Miley has looked Wade Miley-ish of late for the Chicago Cubs. We’ve still never seen Mike Minor, the bottled lightning caught by Connor Overton has been shelved for months, Vlad Gutierrez has been bullpen’d, Reiver Sanmartin demoted, and the whereabouts of Nick Lodolo are mostly unknown.

The overhauled Cincinnati Reds pitching staff is equal parts who the hell is that as it is what the hell was that these days. And while the bats behind them have gradually begun to thaw, it’s still been a very, very rough go of it on the bump so far this year.

With Memorial Day Weekend now here - the typical two-month demarcation point for a season - here’s A Friday List full of cherry-picked statistics to allow you to form an opinion about this pitching staff that, I’m assuming, likely won’t be super rosy. I’ve even gone so far as to include their rank among the 30 MLB teams to further sway your opinion so that it mirrors mine and my cherry-picked statistics.

BB/9 - 4.43 (30th)

HR/9 - 1.40 (30th)

GB % - 37.8% (30th)

ERA - 5.71 (30th)

FIP - 4.89 (30th)

xFIP - 4.55 (30th)

fWAR - 0.5 (30th)

HBP - 28 (30th, or the most)

Wild Pitches - 21 (29th, or second most)

WHIP - 1.47 (30th)

LOB - 67.6% (28th!)

wFB - -30.4 (28th!)

wCH - -12.3 (29th!)

Launch Angle - 15.7 (30th)

IP by Johnny Cueto - 0 (t-29th)

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To summarize, they put the most opponents on-base via walks and by plunks, and also allow the most homers. As Joey Votto would tell you, it’s cool to be a dinger-smasher who actually has people on-base in front of them. They induce the least percentage of grounders despite playing in the most dinger-friendly home ballpark, too. As a result, they not only allow more runs than everyone else, all the metrics that suggest they should be allowing more runs than anyone else also rank worst.

Thanks are in order to FanGraphs for this data, which surely brightened your day.