Ryan Hanigan: Harbinger of Victory?

Scott Rolen was a great catalyst for the 2010 Reds' offense. And there is no doubt that Joey Votto is the greatest offensive force on this team, and one of the great offensive talents in all of MLB.

Then you have a guy like Ryan Hanigan, who puts up solid (for a catcher) but unspectacular offensive numbers. Take heed when he produces, though, as the Reds are (all records for 2010 and 2011 combined):

9-0 when he homers
37-8 when he scores a run
25-9 in his multi-hit games
17-1 in his multi-RBI games

To some extent, there's an obvious explanation. If a bottom-of-the-order guy is racking up hits and run production, it's often because the game is a blowout. But that explanation only takes you so far, and doesn't fully account for the records above.

Here are some other fairly interesting Reds situational records (retrieved from baseball-reference):

24-4 in 2010/11 when Rolen has multiple RBIs
56-23 in 2010/11 when Rolen scores a run
13-4 in 2011 when Stubbs scores multiple runs
13-4 in 2011 when BP has multiple RBIs
8-0 in 2011 when Bruce steals a base

I find these splits (generally) to be more informative than simply "records in starts" because those are meaningless in the abundant cases where that particular player did not contribute much/anything to the victory. Want a perfect example? The Reds are 44-36 this year in Janish's starts, and it's not like he's been a catalyst. As with any numbers, they have to be considered in context of other numbers as well as detailed observations of the games.