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Tony Cingrani is headed to the bullpen for the Reds. He’s not happy about it, but that’s where he’s going. Cincinnati manager Bryan Price announced as much on Monday; Chris Mosch covered the transition in Tuesday’s Rumor Roundup. With Homer Bailey starting the season on the disabled list, there are three open spots in the Reds’ rotation, but Cingrani will no longer compete for one of them. Instead, Price will select three of Raisel Iglesias, Anthony DeSclafani, Paul Maholm and Jason Marquis to chug through opponents’ first 18 or 20 batters early in the season.

It would be too harsh to call this decision stupid or unconscionable, but it seems too little to simply call it wrong. Even if Cingrani weren’t angry about the change, the Reds would have dropped the ball. Chris gave a quick overview of the reasons for the switch—Cingrani’s extreme, fastball-heavy approach, his troublesome medical track record, and the team’s desire to plug permanent solutions into the two permanently vacant rotation spots, rather than get caught in a numbers game when Bailey returns and lose Marquis or Maholm in the process. It’s easy enough to see what the Reds are thinking here. That’s why it’s so frustrating that they missed the mark so badly and botched the decision.

Now, Cingrani is an imperfect starting-pitcher prototype. He relies heavily on his fastball (and specifically, on the combination of exceptional arm-side run and a deceptive delivery) to get outs. He has a very wide platoon split, one that isn’t likely to regress much, given the way right-handed batters can gear up for his heat. He also faded as starts went on last season. To wit:

It doesn’t seem like much, and he’s by no means the most egregious case of this, but as Cingrani progresses through a start he sheds some of the lateral movement that sets his fastball apart. As Noah Woodward found in an article for The Hardball Times 2014 Annual, horizontal movement is the one thing many pitchers hold onto as a game goes on. Everyone loses velocity; everyone loses vertical movement. That tailing or running action, though, is something nearly half of all starters maintain deep into their outings. Cingrani isn’t such a pitcher, or hasn’t been up to now.

There’s another good reason for the Reds to at least consider this move, one that hasn’t been talked about much, but which could be important, under different circumstances: They need a lefty in their bullpen. Aroldis Chapman’s impact is sadly diminished by his entrapment in the modern closer’s role, but it would be even more laughably marginalized as a left-handed specialist. In the middle innings, when the Reds need to get through a high-leverage frame and take care of two tough lefties along the way, they have only Manny Parra there—or they did, before they added Cingrani to the mix.

Cingrani really could be a weapon against lefties:

He’ll certainly benefit from the move in this regard, too. Opposing managers so stacked the lineup when Cingrani started that he faced lefties only 21 percent of the time last season. A good lefty reliever, even a generalist, can expect to see lefties more than twice that often. (Other than Chapman, at least. The combination of his deadliness against lefties and the rigidity of the closer’s role led to him facing lefties only 21 percent of the time, just like Cingrani. The next-lowest number for a reliever with at least 40 innings pitched was Glen Perkins’s 28 percent.)

In other words, there is a rationale for the moving Cingrani—just not a rationale for the timing. The Reds aren’t in any position to leverage whatever modest gains Cingrani might be able to provide by transitioning to the pen. We give the Reds 13.1 percent playoff odds, and the bulk of even those chances lie in making only the Wild Card play-in game. This is a veteran team with limited upside, except in that their talent could carry them near the front of the division if they all stay healthy. The problem, of course, is that betting on Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, or Marlon Byrd staying healthy is usually a good way to lose money fast, and that the team is hardly chock-full of pitchers with long track records of good health.

No, the Reds aren’t going anywhere in 2015, and that’s what makes Cingrani’s relegation so galling. A wise team spends a rebuilding year performing experiments, gathering information, and most importantly, exercising patience. Players whose development doesn’t match the pace of forward progress for winning teams often have to be dispensed with. It’s the price of success. For mediocre teams, though, a player like Cingrani—a 25-year-old who has demonstrated success, despite the obvious potential for further physical and mental maturation—is a perfect candidate to get some extra opportunities. The probabilities might be stacked against Cingrani being a long-term starter, but the Reds are making that call a year earlier than they have any need whatsoever to make it. For his career, mostly as a starter, Cingrani’s four-seam fastball has missed the bats of 23.8 percent of the batters who swung at it. That’s the fifth-highest whiff rate for any pitcher who has thrown at least 1,000 pitches since PITCHf/x started tracking pitches in 2008. To give up on the starting career of a pitcher with that kind of potential for dominance before he’s 30, let alone 26, is to trade in half the possible reward within that arm for a 10 percent reduction in risk. He might lack a useful second or third pitch right now, but if given time to fail and adjust and work on things while the team turns it around, he could well find a cutter or a splitter or who-the-Hell-knows-what in a year or two, and if that happens, the ceiling on pitchers with his fastball profile has naked people painted on it.

Price’s quotes about the move emphasize the presence of Maholm and Marquis as factors in the choice to shorten up Cingrani. Here’s hoping that’s a simplified, political way of saying it’s not about them at all. If the move is truly motivated by the need to make room for those two replacement-level journeymen, both Price and Walt Jocketty would be overdue to be fired. Even if it’s motivated by a vision of a more efficient overall pitching staff, it’s ill-advised, but at least that would be a noble idiocy.

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fbraconi
3/20
I totally agree with this analysis. For all the scouting criticism of Cingrani's arsenal, his MILB/MLB performance has been stellar. Even including an injury-marred 2014, his MLB totals are impressive and in no way suggest a guy who ought to be converted to middle relief. Unless there's some ulterior developmental motive to this, it's a silly decision.
jarretthaines
3/20
I'm a little biased about this because Cingrani finished with a 1.86 ERA and the Cy Young in my MLB 14 The Show franchise lol, guess the Reds aren't rolling that dice
Muboshgu
3/20
Franchises know more about their own players than we outsiders do, so I assume that they determined that he just can't stick in the rotation based on their inside knowledge. Those of us in dynasty leagues have already been skeptical for several reasons, and the Reds probably confirmed it. I also don't think they're thinking of themselves as in a rebuild, but Marquis isn't exactly an enticing option.
texpope
3/20
I would love to see an analysis of Cingrani by the umpire calling the game. Having been an interested follower of him in the past, it always seemed to me that because of his heavy reliance on the fastball, he worked best when working around the edges of the strike zone ... and when he ran into an umpire who was being stingy around the edges, he both ran up his pitch count and ended up having to challenge hitters in the inside part of the plate, which no matter how much movement he has isn't going to be a formula for success.

I wonder if an organization knowing this, and having the data to know the tendencies of certain umps, could use him in relief in a way that maximizes his leverage vis a vis differences in anticipated strike zones. As a starter, you're pretty much going out there every 5th game no matter who's behind the plate ... as a reliever a manager has an ability to consider not only the situation but whether a pitcher's style is going to mesh with the guy calling balls and strikes.
matrueblood
3/20
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=cingrto01&year=Career&t=p#ump

I can't make much of it, but it's a start, if you're interested.
drscott46
3/20
Uh, the Reds are set to lose both Johnny Cueto and Mike Leake in free agency. They are very clearly in win-now mode, and if putting Tony Cingrani in the bullpen helps them win in 2015- I can't really blame them for it. Sure, I would love it for the guy to start (just like I would have loved for Aroldis Chapman to have started) and I think the Reds should consider Cingrani in that role again if the opportunity arises, but the writer's conclusion is faulty.
matrueblood
3/20
Well, sounds like your objection is to my premise that the team won't won this year, not to my conclusion, which is predicated on that premise. Right? If so, fine by me. There's room for rational disagreement about the viability of this team for this season. I remain pretty confident that they're likely to finish fourth or worse in the NL Central.
Bluke221
3/20
I do not want to speak for the original commenter, but your(speaking to author here) objection to the Cingrani move was that the Reds are in rebuilding mode and not acting accordingly. As Drscott stated, the Reds do not view themselves as in rebuilding mode and thus are not making moves that go along with that mindset. When in this context, the move makes much more sense than it would otherwise. Whether the Reds SHOULD be in rebuilding mode or not is another discussion entirely.
matrueblood
3/20
I guess I failed to flesh out this part of the conversation fully enough. That's not a whole different discussion. It's a critically important and inextricably related discussion. This is the wrong decision, being made primarily because the team has the wrong idea about what it should be doing this season.
drscott46
3/20
Well said, Bluke221.
WaldoInSC
3/20
Making decisions based on PECOTA projections is a prescription for silliness. Projection systems have proved to be only slightly less flawed than our intuition.

The Reds don't believe their playoff chances are merely 13%, so they are making a move they believe will make them better. Other than teams in total rebuild, I don't know what else their fans could ask of them.
matrueblood
3/21
On what basis are you advocating that they make their decisions? Hope and faith? Intuition? It doesn't have to be PECOTA (though since you mention it, I'll point out that PECOTA is quite a bit more bullish on the Reds than, for instance, ZiPS), but if they're not making their choices about whether to attempt to compete based on some probabilistic model (which could be, even should be, proprietary, but had also better be objective) that gives them an idea of their chances, then they're not treating the question with sufficient rigor. The Reds aren't going to be good in 2015. If they don't know that, it's a further indictment of the organization, not an excuse for any particular mistake they make because of their ignorance.
qwik3457bb
3/22
You're very likely right about where the Reds will finish, but they probably feel that given where their starting rotation is headed in the near future, they'd rather take the 13% shot at making the playoffs, trying to maximize that chance of making it this year. If that results in a longer rebuilding period because they'll keep their starters rather than rationally trade them off in an effort to shorten the rebuilding phase, that's their choice. It might be coming from ownership rather than Price or Jocketty as well.

So they'll likely pay the price over the next 2-3 years, but if that's what they're doing, then that's sufficient explanation/justification of the Cingrani move, and I say that as someone who has him for $5 in my fantasy league, and now will very likely cut him rather than keep him for this season.
agdainoff
3/21
this feels like the kind of move that if the Cards or Rays or A's did it, it would be praised as smart and financially savvy, but because it's the Reds, it must be wrong-headed.
gweedoh565
3/21
Re: the first graph showing horizontal movement by times through the order

Given those error bars, there's NO WAY those differences are anywhere close to statistically significant.
gweedoh565
3/21
On second look, the error bars represent min/max range and not standard error. Still, it is extremely doubtful that the differences are significant.