Cardinal advent calendar, Day 7: Dennys Reyes
| B-Ref name | den reye |
| Contract Status | under contract for 2010 ($2 million), 2nd year of 2-year deal |
| 2009 stat | Led team in appearances (75) |
| Career stat | The Cardinals became his 10th different team to play for in 13 seasons |
| 2010 Projection | 3.86 FIP (Bill James) |
| Quote | "On paper, sometimes you don’t see it because you come in and get one out or maybe two, but if you see it, we’re always coming in with base runners on and in some tough situations, and it really takes a lot of pride to come in and do the job and help the team win." — 4/9 |
Signed after a 0.6-WAR year with the Twins, which featured a 2.60 K/BB, Reyes regressed to his career norms (1.57 K/BB in ‘09, 1.63 career), but still provided value. The durable and portly portsider matched his career-high in games played, answering the bell for Tony La Russa 75 times. Even though he seemed at times to be the team’s secondary LOOGy option, he had almost the same game leverage index (1.10) as Trever Miller (1.11). Perhaps part of the reason for Reyes’s slight decline was that La Russa deployed him with a platoon advantaged less often (40%) than Twins’ manager Ron Gardenhire did in 2006 (51%) and 2008 (46%); indeed, Ron Villone (53%) and Randy Flores (51%) had it better in 2008 … Posted a 3.29 ERA, which belied an unhealthy 4.44 xFIP, worse than Jason Motte’s (4.27) … Suffered a 4.61 BB/9 … Upon arriving, he explained the pronunciation of his name: "It’s like the restaurant."
