4/17 Pirates @ Reds

Great win for the Reds today, as they clobbered the Pirates 11-2. Nice to see some hitting with men on base for a change. I thought the Reds would win big, and they did, but it wasn't because of my pick to click Bruce. Jay had another tough day at the plate, but did get a hit late in the game so he didn't go o-fer. My pick to click for the Bucco's was Garrett Jones and he was 2-3 with an rbi.

Sunday's matchup is Jeff Karstens(1-0, 0.00) vs Edinson Volquez (2-0, 5.82). This is Karstens first start of the year, he has had 3 relief appearances. As many of you know, Volquez has a very good history vs the Pirates, so I'm going to talk about that first. The last time Volquez faced the Pirates he went 7 innings, while only giving up 1 hit and had 10 strike outs. The link I usually use to find how players do vs teams in their career never works for Volquez, but from what I can tell he is 1-0 vs them in his career over 5 or so starts with no bad starts. Check out the stats here, and here are some notes:

• The only player who has more than 5 AB's vs Volquez is Doumit and he is 5-13 for a .385 average.
• Everyone else is 2-39 with 15ks.
• Volquez has a 6.75 ERA vs righties, but they are only batting .238 vs him. Out of the 10 hits in 12 IP vs them, 3 of them have been home runs.

I think Volquez is going to turn a corner tomorrow and have a solid 6 inning quality start (with a good first inning as well). I think he's starting to get more loose this year and should have better control tomorrow. This is just a prediction, not based on any quantitative analysis.

Pick to Click: Andrew McCutchen

Jeff Karstens vs the Reds. As you can see, the Reds have a very good history vs Karstens. Here are some of the notables:

• Ramon Hernandez (.250) and Jay Bruce (.273) are the only two batters to bat lower than .300 vs Karstens out of Reds who have more than 1 plate appearance vs him.
• The team bats .425 vs Karstens, 31-73 with 8 doubles and 4 home runs. The home runs are from Brandon Phillips, Jay Bruce, Drew Stubbs, and Chris Heisey.
• Joey Votto bats .714, 5-7 with 3 doubles, and also has an .800 OBP with 3 walks.
• Phillips is 6-15 with a HR and 5 rbi.
• Jonny Gomes is 4-7.
• LHB destroy Karstens over the past three years they bat .306 and have 18 home runs in 50 innings and a 6.93 ERA.

Pick to Click: Hard to pick one...but I'm going with my gut here Drew Stubbs. (Joey Votto seems too easy of a pick..)

I think the Reds win big again on Sunday, as all of the numbers show. I wouldn't be surprised to see Dusty sit Phillips one more day because of our past success vs Karstens, but I'd like to see him start.

Off topic shenanigans:

-The 7 runs scored in the 5th inning yesterday were the most we've scored in an inning all year.

-Interesting stat I ran into...Denard Span has 49 steals in his last 63 attempts. Very solid ratio, until you consider he's been picked off 21 times during the same time span!

-FanGraphs talks about Bruce's slow start.

-Bass fishing is now a high school sport in Illinois. Never thought I'd see the day..sounds pretty cool though.

Didn't have time to try all the in depth FanGraphs for Sunday's game, maybe tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @EricLilly7