The Reds Did Something Wild(ish), and the NL Playoff Race Persists

I was going to start this piece by acknowledging that a month ago, it would’ve been logical to write the Cincinnati Reds off. Then I remembered something: I actually did write the Reds off. From FanGraphs Dot Com, on August 29: “Unless the Reds Do Something Wild, the NL Playoff Race Is Over.”

Well, the Reds did something wild. As a rule, I try to caveat my predictions; rather than saying something absolutely will or won’t happen, I’ll use a frame like “This is extremely unlikely to happen; we’ll write about it if and when it does.” Well, from August 29 to September 22, Cincinnati went from playoff odds in the low single digits to a virtual coin flip:

Tuesday evening was unkind to Cincinnati. The Mets, Diamondbacks, and Marlins (who are still somehow not technically drawing dead) all staged dramatic come-from-behind wins, while the Reds grounded into double plays to end their last three offensive innings and seal a frustrating 4-2 loss to Pittsburgh. Still, those playoff odds peaked at 43.5%, and even after a night of the worst possible luck, the Reds remain very much in the hunt. Certainly more so than I expected them to be a month ago. How did they do it?

Well, since August 29, the Reds have hit .237/.307/.413, which is a wRC+ of… 95, tied for 18th in the majors. They’re 20th in pitcher WAR, 15th in ERA-, and eighth in K-BB%. So they’ve been kind of average overall.

Maybe the Reds are just pouncing at the right moments, performing well in high-leverage spots. Ohio’s other big mover over the past month, Cleveland, has been on an absolute tear in those moments. Since August 29, Guardians hitters are hitting .449 in high-leverage plate appearances, with as many walks as strikeouts. All told, that’s a wRC+ of 245. (Barry Bonds’ career high in wRC+ was 244.)

Cincinnati’s high-leverage wRC+ during the Wild Times? An unenviable 68, good for 24th in the majors. (It was 83 before the GIDP binge last night.) Reds pitchers held opponents to a wOBA of .288 in high-leverage plate appearances, which is 16th in the majors. That might not tell the whole story; Reds pitchers have the fourth-best FIP in the majors in high-leverage situations since August 29, and the third-best walk rate, a downright parsimonious 3.4%. But they haven’t suddenly turned into the 1971 Orioles’ rotation on top of the 2015 Royals’ bullpen or anything:

Nor is there a remarkable individual performance in here. A couple guys are having a good month. Spencer Steer is hitting the cover off the ball, and Matt McLain is showing signs of life. That’s huge, if it’s sustainable. Back in 2023, a lot of smart people said McLain was Cincinnati’s best young infielder, not Elly De La Cruz. But a torn labrum sidelined McLain for all of 2024, and he’s been one of the 10 worst full-time hitters in baseball after returning to the lineup this year. In fact, McLain is currently being outhit by Anthony Volpe, who’s in the process of being run out of New York on a rail.

So, yeah, don’t worry too much about the 1-in-3 strikeout rate and bask in McLain’s glimmer of productivity.

Cincinnati’s high-usage pitchers have been pretty good on the whole — very good, in the case of Hunter Greene and Emilio Pagán — and I don’t want to trivialize the impact of going through a pennant race without a key pitcher stinking up the joint. I mentioned high-leverage FIP since August 29 earlier; the Dodgers are dead last in the league, with a FIP of 7.27 under those conditions. Thank you, Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott.

The Reds don’t have a weakness like that, and it’s clear they’ve benefited. But I tried to find a guy on either side of the ball who’s gone berserk over the past month, so that I could pin all the credit for this turnaround on him. And such a guy does not appear to exist.

Over this 26-day span, 253 pitchers pitched at least 10 innings. Rank them by WAR, and there are no Reds pitchers in the top 25. Rank them by WPA, and Greene is the first name on the list at no. 18. During that same time period, 260 position players registered 50 or more plate appearances. Juan Soto leads the league in WAR, with 1.9, followed by Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, and Shohei Ohtani. How original. Seems like some combination of those guys leads the league in everything.

The top WAR-getter among the Reds? Steer, who comes in at 0.6, 60th on the list. Steer is 33rd in the league in WPA, and he’s the only Reds player in the top 60.

I guess this is where I give up the gimmick: The Reds only went 12-11 between the first article and this one. They’re 30-30 since the All-Star Break and 23-24 since the trade deadline.

It’s ironic that Soto has been on the kind of tear I expected to find from someone — anyone — on the Reds. Because the real reason the Reds have made up this much ground is that the Mets went 8-14, the fifth-worst record in the big leagues, over the same span.

This, however, the Reds can take some credit for, as they won a series against their Wild Card rivals two weeks ago. In fact, since August 29, the Reds are 8-2 against other NL playoff contenders (the Mets, Padres, and Cubs) and 4-9 against everyone else. The Reds aren’t climbing to the top of the pile; they’re dragging everyone else down with them.

I’ll end by quoting a parable I’m fond of. A joke, actually. You’ve probably heard it.

Two men are being chased through the woods by a bear. One of them stops, mid-pursuit, to change into his running shoes.

“You fool!” his friend says. “You’ll never outrun a bear, it doesn’t matter what shoes you have on!”

The first man replies: “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”

I love the Parable of the Bear and the Running Shoes because of the important life lessons contained therein. You can probably get away with taking two doughnuts from the box in the break room at work if you know someone else has taken three. You don’t want to be the drunkest person at a wedding, but being the second-drunkest is probably OK.

And even if you play average ball down the stretch, you can work your way back into the pennant race if the team ahead of you totally humps the bunk. Have the Reds been truly outstanding in any respect over the past month? Not really. But that’s fine. They don’t have to outrun the bear.