After the recent series loss to the woeful Royals and the sweep at the hands of the Cardinals, there is a lot of negativity in Reds country. And the below post from Mo Egger, apart from being extremely depressing, outlines the overall morass the Reds have found themselves in during the past three years.
It’s been a purgatory of .500 baseball, not too low but certainly far below the “championship” expectations that ownership promised in 2006. It’s hard to peg exactly what has gone wrong during the intervening years, but the ups and downs of the Reds young core from that year certainly play into it.
Since Elly’s debut, the Reds rank 24th in batting average, 24th in wRC+, 16th in slugging, and 17th in on-base percentage, not at the bottom of the league by any means, but far enough from the top to be uncompetitive. And those numbers are extremely disappointing given the young talent that we thought would be the players to propel us to the top of the division.
After being called up in 2023, and the flashes of success we all saw that year from Elly, Matt McLain, Spencer Steer (who actually played in 28 games in 2022), Noelvi Marte and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, the future looked as bright as it could be. But things simply haven’t worked out the way many thought it would, and the blame for that runs from the front office all the way down to the coaches and the players themselves.
To be fair, it hasn’t all been disappointment. Since his debut, De La Cruz has gone on to slash .258/.331/.453, wracking up 72 home runs while posting a WAR of 15.4, good for 11th in the majors during that span.
He has consistently lived up to expectations, both at bat and in the field, all the while doing it on a minimum contract. At times, he’s looked like one of the few bats that can actually carry this offense over long stretches of the season.
The same goes for Spencer Steer, who has turned into one of the Reds more reliable hitters. His slash line since June of 2023 is .243/.329/.421 to go along with 65 home runs. His WAR of 4.8 is solid and he’s played numerous positions doing everything Cincinnati has asked of him day in and day out. His 1,891 plate appearances are second only to Elly’s since 2023.
But the Reds rookie class of 2023 has its share of disappointments as well.
And none are more confounding than Matt McLain. In 2023 he burst onto the scene to hit .290 with 16 home runs, 50 RBI and a slugging percentage of .507 along with a WAR of 3.2. But since then he has managed to hit just .214 and his WAR has fallen to 1.7, thanks almost exclusively to his defense. His strikeout percentage has ballooned to 27.3% while his production has fallen flat.
The same can be said of Christian Encarnacion-Strand, who only managed to hit just .233 since June of 2023, after posting a .270 average and a 113 wRC+ rate during his debut season. He had no place in the field either, leading to him to become a negative WAR player (-0.6) as he was eventually traded to the Baltimore Orioles for cash considerations.
And surprisingly, the jury remains out on one of the 2023 class’s most polarizing players, Noelvi Marte. In his first season Marte slashed .316/.366/.456 and had a wRC+ of 120 in a breakout year. But his numbers fell off the next two seasons, his batting average fell 75 points to .241 and that impressive wRC+ plummeted to 79 as Marte lost momentum at the plate.
But the truth is that there are plenty of reasons to believe he can still be a productive contributor at the major league level. Marte continues to show flashes of his offensive prowess during his time in the minor leagues. After being sent down in 2026 he rocked opposing pitchers to the tune of a .369 average, and also slugged .575 in AAA with a wRC+ of 156. And he has two hits in two starts in his return to the major league lineup this year as he works his way back.
But it’s not just player falloff that has crippled the Reds’ chances, but also a series of poor trades and acquisitions that have not only failed to improve the roster, but have wasted millions of dollars. A perfect example is the now notorious signing of Jeimer Candelario on a three-year, $45 million contract signed in December of 2023.
In his injury-plagued 554 plate appearances for the Reds, he hit just .207 with a WAR of -0.9 and a wRC+ mark of 76. He was never close to the player Cincinnati expected they were getting for the millions invested, and for a small market team that misfire is extremely costly.
More recently, the trade for third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes and committing roughly $38 million to keep him on the payroll through 2029 made observers across Reds county scratch their heads in confusion. And it was yet another move that seems to have failed utterly. In 306 plate appearances for the Reds, Hayes has slashed .194/.265/.291 and put up a WAR of -0.2, which is worse than it appears given that it is based almost entirely on his defense, meaning his bat is one of the poorest in the league.
This is money the Reds cannot afford to torch, and yet the front office continues to do so on players that not only fail to help the team, but actually drag it down. They have made quality moves including most recently bringing in JJ Bleday and Nathaniel Lowe, which they do deserve credit for, but on balance the missed chances have hamstrung any progress the Reds have made over the long term.
And Major League Baseball isn’t making it easy. The Reds 2026 payroll is 20th in baseball at $128M, over $270 million less than the Los Angeles Dodgers and $180M less than the New York Yankees. And while that disparity makes it incredibly difficult to compete for things like World Series titles, it’s not an excuse for failing to compete in the division, where the Cardinals and Brewers have similar budgets, coming in at $99M and $131M respectively.
The main difference is that those teams have made quality signings, managed their minor leagues properly, and maximized the dollars they do spend. It’s translated into sustained success for the Brewers, and an extremely quick rebound for the Cardinals after a few down seasons.
Something has to change, the problem is that there are almost so many problems that even a competent organization would have a hard time fixing them all. When you factor into the equation just how the Reds ownership and the front office have underperformed, solving all the things wrong with this team seems impossible.
