A Midsummer Red's Dream

The will of man is by his reason sway'd

A man has walked through the desert for longer than he can remember. An oasis appears. Is it real? He has no choice but to hope reality is not serving up another illusion and so he slowly approaches. The image does not fade but grows clearer with each step. He now stands before a pool of water. Does he dare to drink what he has so longed for?

AP Photo/Aaron Doster

Welcome to the world of being a Reds fan in this 2023 season. One that is a “pinch me am I dreaming” series of events. A season that not even the most overtly optimistic of fans or pundits would have imagined back in March. And if they were being honest, the Reds front office would acknowledge this is a season they thought wasn’t possible until at least 2024. The Reds entered the All-Star break as the leaders of the NL Central and so as a fan of team I spend entirely too much of my time thinking about… Is it time to take the plunge? Drink the Kool-Aid? Move all in with my hopes and dreams? Many of you have already accepted the wise words of Michael Scott, “No question about it. I am ready to get hurt again”. If I had to put a category on my current stance it would easily fall into the “it’s complicated” relationship status.

I’m the moron standing in that oasis, holding water in my hands, and I’m still a bit cautious if there is actually water to drink. And I’m certain that my skepticism of it all disappearing is a driving factor of my current mindset. After all, I have been a Reds fan from my earliest days and there have been far more valleys than peaks across the years. I was raised a fan of this team… born into it really. And as I look back on my journey as a fan, I can’t help but see a broad spectrum of views being applied to this 2023 Reds team.

As an elder Millennial, I’m fortunate enough to not only remember but also to have attended a World Series game in 1990. I witnessed the Reds last advancement in the playoffs at the 1995 NLDS. I was on pins and needles from my dorm room for game 163 in 1999 when Al Leiter become my mortal enemy. I vividly remember the excitement of the Griffey trade and then the lost decade that followed after. My 20s were a disconnect from the team as I was finding myself, as we all do at that age, while the Reds couldn’t seem to find the win column. However, I circled back around in 2008 as the excitement of Jay Bruce’s debut captured my attention. The 2010 season rolls around, and it most likely will be one that remains unmatched in my life as a Reds fan. It had the reverberations of my youth as it quite literally made me feel like a 9-year-old again. That pure fandom that had yet to be tainted by the realities of the world, time, and older age (Perhaps this will be a parallel for another generation of Reds fans if this year’s team continues to perform). I’ll skip over the lost season of 2011 and move to the highest peak of my adult life as a Reds fan which was 2012. The best Reds team since the 1990 club. And then it all starts to slowly crash down. A wildcard appearance in 2013 and then the crowning achievement of the Castellini era with the Home Run Derby in 2014. This era of the Reds was over, and it barely seemed to have started. This franchise would wonder through the desert for nearly a decade and come out the other end seemingly ready to finally participate in modern baseball free agency. Then COVID hits and everything changed, including me. It brought a different perspective to how I was a fan of this team and in general with sports. Family life provide plenty of other places to allocate my time and I moved to being a more passive fan as Twitter, box scores, and highlights became how I consumed most of the games. And then of course the entire franchise changed as a fire sale kicked off another rebuild. But this time something odd happened, things went the Reds way… a lot. And so here I am. Writing this brain dump for you to read. Tepidly excited for what remains of this season but still cautious about investing too much.

I spewed out all of those words in short to say I think it’s great if you are all in on this team. I think it’s great if you aren’t. I think it’s great if you have a foot in and a foot out. We are all at different paths along our journey of being a fan of this 2023 team. What I think unites us is that despite where you personally project this team ending up, we are all in agreement that we get to watch the most exciting baseball team in a generation of Reds fans. And I believe that is something we can all join together on, while we eat each other alive fighting over the details.

As I try to figure out where I mentally sit with this team, I think it’s always wise to see my previous thoughts before projecting where I think things will go. I always try to tackle things logically and so the first thing I must do is to promptly eat crow by reviewing my preseason thoughts on this team. This should most likely dissolve you from believing anything I say moving forward but it’s good for my soul to do a comparison of things past and present.

The starting rotation is a Lamborghini pulling a rusted-out Airstream camper with a flat tire. The back end of the rotation is going to be pulling this team down all season and if any of the big 3 go out for an extended or combined period of time then things will get ugly very fast.

This is certainly a mixed bag. Having all of the big 3 missing extended time has occurred but somehow the Reds have avoided things getting ugly in terms of losses. No matter how you want to spin things, the back end of the rotation has been pretty ugly. It’s crazy to think the Reds have climb to the division lead with the starting rotation they have ran out there the past month. I never imaged Abbott making his way to the MLB club so early in the season and realistically he is saving grace for the starting rotation at this point.

The bullpen… It exists and may very well be a dumpster fire personified in human form. Maybe some good randomness happens. At least saves can be a stat some can get excited about as the backend has All-Star potential.

I can fully eat my words on this one. The bullpen, which started out very ugly, somehow morphed into a solid group of pitchers. Graciously it seems that ALL the randomness of bullpen pitcher performance aligned in favor of the Reds. I do feel they have overperformed and as we get into the back 1/3 of the season, I have some serious concerns on them running out of gas. Although, I did land that All-Star selection.

The offense has plenty of potential heading into the season. Some solid rebound/healthy seasons from India and Stephenson are needed, we hopefully learn Barrero can hit, plus the young players on the horizon that should be joining the team at some point this season pack some offensive talent. Also, maybe that Votto guy defies logic but I’m not bullish on that sentiment.

This team having an exciting offense was the one thing I thought could happen this season. India somewhat rebounded and Stephenson has finally started to turn things around. Additionally, I have found the usage of Votto to be very intriguing and it will be curious to see if it continues to work. We most definitely learned about Barrero, but I never imagined two things happening. First, the young guys coming up as soon as they did (I expected July) and second, them being All-Star level performers. Sure, you could see Elly De La Cruz making a big splash but seemingly every young player performing at a high level is beyond all expectations.

And that injection of talented young players is what led me down a rabbit hole. This is perhaps one of those rare teams where you kind of throw out the stats from one portion of the season to the next. This isn’t the same team from the first 1.5 months of the season. We all know what happened. On May 15th Matt McLain made his MLB debut and by the time Ell De La Cruz made his debut 3 weeks later, both Will Benson had already returned to the team a changed man and TJ Friedl was finally able to kick the injury bug. Before McLain’s injury the Reds had played 40 games. On July 5th, I decided to do a comparison before and after McLain joined the team. The Reds had played 47 games from May 15th to July 5th. They had played 40 games prior to his arrival. Not perfect in size or comparison but enough to obviously form grand conclusions. So, the following are the Reds offensive MLB rankings both before and after McLain joined the team (until July 5th).

wRC+ = 27th → 5th

AVG+ = 15th → 4th

SLG+ = 26th → 5th

ISO+ = 26th → T-7th

BABIP+ = T-8th → T-5th

R = T-22nd → 2nd

As you can see this has becomes a top 5 offense in all of baseball. And why do we like that?

Because they get on base

OBP+ = 16th → T-1st

BB% = 17th → 2nd

K% = 4th → T-22nd

SB = 13th → 1st

Sure, the Reds started to hit for more power (27th in MLB to 9th), which can probably be a little bit associated with the warming months and the talent increase of the club, but easily the biggest change is their ability to take a walk combined with their new strategy to be aggressive in stealing bases. I have joked on Twitter that an ISO+Stolen Bases stat should exist for the Reds because they have effectively turned a walk/single into a double more than anyone else. I think that is the difference between this team being a slightly above average offense and the top 5 juggernaut it has become.

And realistically, the Reds are fortunate that things have played out like they have on offense because the room for error perhaps got thinner over this same period of time. The Reds pitching is not nearly as fortunate during this same period of games.

ERA = 26th → 25th

WHIP = 29th → 24th

FIP = 19th → 28th

xFIP = 19th → 29th

SIERA = 16th → 26th

BABIP = 30th → 23th

Depending on how you like to look at things the pitching is relatively the same, or slightly worse, than it was in its first 40 games. The story has remained the same the entire season which isn’t too surprising given ownership wasn’t inclined to field anything beyond 3 legitimate MLB starters for the rotation. I mean before long they will be trotting Tim McAdams or Peter Anderson out there to pick up starts during the playoff push. And this is where I circle back around to my mental state when it comes to this team.

Nobody expected the Reds to be in this position at the beginning of the year. No one. If you gave the shiniest outlook possible you would have said the Reds could be a .500 baseball team in 2023. Heck, my personal opinion was that the if the Reds had more 72 wins, then this was going to be an amazing season where a ton went right for the team. Which I guess is correct but here they are… ahead of schedule, leading the NL Central with less than half a season to go. There is a lot of opinions of what the Reds should or shouldn’t do. I could ramble on about how tweaking a plan isn’t abandoning a plan but instead I think things boil down to something much simpler. We do not know what future seasons will hold but we do know that this season the Reds have a legitimate shot at the postseason. The postseason is where anything can happen, specifically with MLB playoffs. The city, fans, and the players deserve to have moves made that increase (not necessarily maximize) their playoff odds because those future seasons and their potential wins are always a discussion of fantasy. If you were to go back in time and talk to Reds fans in November of 2010 and tell them they would only have 6 more playoff games with this core group of players, I think most would have thought you were crazy.

But what should be done? Just the obvious thing that everyone else mentions… starting pitching. Generally speaking, I think acquiring a couple starters that can provide you slightly below league average performance (or better) is a great improvement to this team. You can’t guarantee that Lodolo and/or Greene are coming back fine from their injuries. You can’t assume that Abbott is going to be able to pitch into the postseason. And even if those all turn out to be possible, the Reds still need a couple of starters for the remainder of the season. Additionally, if this offense begins to slip at all then it could quickly turn into an ugly stretch of baseball. Maybe these young kids are built different, but everyone slumps, and everyone gets figured out by the league. When those things happen how will they respond? Will the pitching be able to pick up the slack? Because if it can’t this team is either in trouble during the playoff push or in the postseason.

I tend to think what gets lost in this conversation is the idea if the Reds make a move for a starter that it has to be something that breaks the bank. While it will cost something, I don’t think you have to break the bank to improve the team for the remainder of the season (perhaps even beyond). Additionally, with the front office strategy of acquiring the best talent regardless of position I think that the plan has always been to trade prospects to improve the team. It would be a crime to sit on their hands and do nothing to improve this team because there is no guarantee that next season, or any thereafter, will have them in this same position. And that is what I believe I’m waiting for... A commitment from ownership that they will reward this team and it’s fans by attempting to address the glaring hole that’s been there all season long. If the front office makes a move that is a legitimate attempt to fill that void, I think I can finally put down my guard and let that child-like fandom in again. I’ve had a lifetime of hearing about future. The future is here right now! It’s all due to these Cincinnati kids forcing their way onto the roster and then into the national conversation. I beg ownership to make the most of it. I’m tired of waiting. I want to be a kid again… one more time.

Too Long. Don’t Care.