At 17-15, the Reds have been one of the most pleasant surprises in baseball this season. They fell out of first place Monday, but for a squad coming off a 94-loss season without any real additions in the offseason, holding onto first into the second week of May has to be considered a big achievement.
The pitching staff probably can't hold up enough to keep this going, but the Reds are one of the league's best offenses. Their combined .831 OPS for non-pitchers is good for second in the NL. That offense has been pretty valuable for Fantasy purposes and it's worth looking into what's going on in Cincinnati.
So that's what I'm going to do! We'll break down the most interesting players among this interesting lineup, including the big names and some of the surprise stars.
Is that a new Joey Votto?
Joey Votto has been terrific to open the season, sporting a 1.024 OPS that would be his best for a season since his MVP season in 2010. He is still walking a ton, with 22 in 32 games, and has more walks than strikeouts for what would be just the third time in his career. However, in many ways, he hasn't been himself in the early going.
Votto has been much more aggressive so far, upping his swing rate from 42.1 percent last season to 44.5 percent in the early going. That doesn't sound like a huge increase, but it continues a trend, as Votto had been under 40 percent in every season from 2012 through 2015. He isn't just going up there hacking, of course -- his 15.9 percent walk right is right in line with his career average -- which is what's so exciting about what we're seeing from Votto.
He's swinging at the right pitches, with his swing rate on pitches outside of the strike zone actually falling to a career-low 18.4 percent. Votto's mastery of the strike zone has always been pretty much unmatched in the majors, but he is taking things to an extreme so far. That seems to be a very good thing, judging by his 10 homers through 32 games; he didn't hit his 10th last season until game 56.
It is worth noting that Votto's power improvements may not stick, at least if judging by his 32.7 percent hard-hit rate and average exit velocity of 86.7 mph, just a tick below average. However, Votto has a long enough track record that there's only so much regression you can bake in and any dip in power is likely to be made up for by some BABIP normalization from his current mark of .250, nearly 100 points below his career average.
This is all a lot of words to say something you already knew: Joey Votto is a great hitter. One of the best, but also one of the most interesting, given how many different ways he'll go about attacking pitchers. This is a new one, one we haven't seen before, but it hasn't changed the fundamental fact of Votto's greatness.
Can the fast guys hit enough?
There's no question Billy Hamilton and Jose Peraza can run. They've been doing it all their lives, ever since they learned to walk! These are two of the fastest players in baseball and their combined 27 stolen bases would be enough to rank fourth in the majors as a team. However, it remains an open question whether they can hit enough to make that matter in Fantasy.
For Hamilton, though he may have his doubters, the question has been pretty much answered. He'll never be a great hitter, but he just has to be better than he was early in his career and he's cleared that low bar. His .246 batting average this season probably even has a bit of room for regression -- his BABIP is 31 points lower than last season's -- and he has sustained his walk rate as well. An on-base percentage in the low-.300's isn't ideal for a leadoff guy, but with Votto raking behind him and Hamilton ready to take off at any moment -- he steals about 45 percent of the time he has an open base in front of him -- he doesn't need to be a high OBP player to be a valuable contributor.
Things aren't quite so easy for Peraza. To start with, he isn't even the hitter Hamilton is, sporting a .240/.264/.288 line in 129 plate appearances. He has been totally punchless, sporting a 14.7 percent hard-hit rate, and ranks just 315th out of 326 players with at least 30 batted balls tracked by Statcast in average exit velocity.
That exit velocity isn't far off from someone like Dee Gordon, or even Hamilton himself -- he ranks lower, as a matter of fact -- but Peraza has had an issue with distribution. He has the lowest exit velocity in baseball on line drives and flyballs, and but ranks in the 43rd percentile in exit velocity on groundballs. That strikes me as a particularly bad combination for a player with Peraza's skill set, who needs to steal a few extra hits here and there to make up for his lack of pop.
Peraza is going to have better days ahead of him, if only because he has some BABIP normalization ahead of him, but the .324 mark he managed last season might be asking a bit too much. If he is a .270 hitter, that's a low-end option, so it's hard to get excited about anything we've seen from Peraza, speed aside.
What about the out-of-nowhere sluggers?
If nothing else, it's nice to see Adam Duvall prove that second-half slide last season wasn't a real cause for concern. Duvall has cut his strikeout rate and sustained his flyball rate from a year ago and the 30-homer power looks legit from where I'm standing. If he can hit .270 instead of .240, well that's just a cherry on top, especially when he gets to hit behind an on-base machine like Votto.
This year's version of Adam Duvall looks like Scott Schebler, who showed some decent skills last season. In 82 games, Schebler cranked out nine homers while hitting .265, a pace that wouldn't quite make him mixed-league eligible, but at least established him as a viable major-league player. However, Schebler had a two-year stretch in the minors, between 2013 and 2014 when he hit a combined 55 homers, so it was fair to wonder if he might be capable of more.
So far, he has. He has matched last season's homer total in 52 fewer games, and it's not looking like a fluke. Schebler has upped his flyball rate from 29.1 percent to 43.0, while increasing his hard-hit rate from 33.3 percent to 37.0. Add in a solid 88.8 mph average exit velocity, and there's a lot to like about what Schebler is doing right now. Do the Reds really have three 30-homer guys in the middle of their order? Yeah, I think so. Overlook Duvall and Schebler at your own peril.
I haven't even mentioned arguably the two best hitters in the lineup so far: Zack Cozart and Eugenio Suarez. That's because… well, I don't really buy it. Both are established hitters, and while they have some appeal in deeper leagues. Of the two, I like Suarez more as a cheap source of power, and can see him topping 20 homers again, perhaps with a batting average approaching .280 in the long run. Unfortunately, that plays a lot better at shortstop than third base, and he's only eligible at the latter these days. You'll see a lot of Cozart and Suarez on the waiver wire by the summer.
