What’s Next for the Cincinnati Reds?

While the book isn’t completely shut on the 2024 Cincinnati Reds, with a 0.3% projected chance of making the postseason entering this week, only a plot twist out of left field could change the story. At 82-80, the 2023 Reds weren’t exactly good, but after entering the season with a bleak outlook, they comfortably beat most expectations. Given that their improvements last year largely came from their young talent rather than short-term signings, it wasn’t unreasonable back in March to believe this team could contend for a postseason berth. Five months later, as the Reds look more likely to play the role of spoiler in September than make it to October, now seems like a fine time to consider where they should go from here.

The first step would be to ask ourselves what were the reasonable expectations for the Reds in 2024. The ZiPS projections gave them an 80-82 record, but with enough uncertainty that if things broke their way, they could make a playoff push (35.1% odds). One man’s digital monstrosity isn’t the only fair outlook, of course, but our depth charts and Baseball Prospectus both had Cincinnati in a similar position, at 79 wins.

Right now, our depth charts and ZiPS have the Reds finishing with a 77-85 record, a disappointing result, but not exactly a massive miss relative to the projections above. If we’re going to figure out where the Reds go from here, we first have to understand how they got to this point, and that means looking back at the lessons they drew from their 82 wins last year.

Based on their offseason moves, it appears the organization decided – no doubt some unknown combination of ownership and the front office – that the general approach was to stay the course with their young talent and make mid-tier free agent signings to fill the team’s most pressing holes. The Reds made no significant trades over the winter, unless you count sending pitcher Daniel Duarte to the Rangers for cash in January after designating him for assignment as significant. It wasn’t until nearly Opening Day that the team made a move that would have an actual effect on the roster, picking up Santiago Espinal from the Blue Jays in the aftermath of the Noelvi Marte suspension.

Excluding the Espinal trade, the players signed in free agency made up the entirety of the external improvements from 2023 to 2024. Suffice it to say, I was not a fan of the specific signings they made. To sum up my general feelings at the time, I thought Jeimer Candelario was the right player for the wrong team. It doesn’t make much sense for a team overloaded with third basemen to sign a player who is most valuable as a third baseman and then make him a mediocre first baseman. On the pitching side, Emilio Pagán was a disaster waiting to happen, and $13 million was a lot to give Nick Martinez. Other pitcher signings made more sense: Brent Suter was a good addition and Frankie Montas was a reasonable gamble. The signings didn’t go exactly as I expected – some were worse, some were better – but they certainly didn’t do much to improve the club.

As a group, the free agents have performed a bit worse than projected, but not alarmingly so. By the end of the year, we project these nine free agents to be worth 5.1 WAR to the Reds, compared to the 7.3 WAR that was predicted. Two wins would not have salvaged Cincinnati’s season.

Injuries to some of the young talent has certainly hindered the Reds. Matt McLain, who made a convincing case for being one of the team’s foundational talents last year, injured his shoulder in the spring and has yet to play for Cincinnati this season. Christian Encarnacion-Strand didn’t get the chance to make up for his cold start because he underwent season-ending surgery in July after fracturing his right wrist in May, and while it’s not an injury, the team went without Marte for 80 games after he was suspended for performance-enhancing drugs.

However, the Reds also got some impressive breakouts on the flip side to compensate. For as exciting as they are, Elly De La Cruz and Hunter Greene weren’t expected to be in this year’s MVP and Cy Young races, though that’s where they stand in late August.

Moreover, injuries alone didn’t stop Cincinnati in its tracks. I ran the numbers on time lost to injuries two weeks ago, and the Reds ranked 11th out of 30 teams in potential value lost to injury, at 6.46 wins, right in line with the mean (6.5 wins) and a half-win more than median (six wins).

That leaves us with the conclusion that the Reds didn’t struggle this season because they were unlucky; rather, they did so because they were a roughly .500 team in terms of talent and didn’t get lucky. The path forward, then, is for ownership and the front office to recognize this so they can work to improve the team in the offseason instead of staying the course again and hoping for better results.

One part of this year’s plan — relying on the young talent — was justified and is worth doing again next season, as long as the Reds reinforce their core with more impactful veterans. Looking at the projections for 2025 now versus where they were six months ago, the Reds have lost a few wins, but their foundation is still quite solid.

(Rhett Lowder is not included here because he didn’t get a preseason ZiPS projection this year for 2025, so there would be nothing to compare with his current projection for next season.)

When I run some very preliminary projections for the NL Central in 2025, based on players who are under team control for next season, the division looks a lot like it did in this year’s the preseason projections, with all five teams roughly clustered around the .500 mark. That indicates that, with the right moves, the Reds could boost their playoff odds considerably this offseason.

Their plan to paper over holes this season by moving third basemen around has not been successful: The team ranks 25th in outfield WAR and 28th both in first base WAR and designated hitter WAR. Upgrading those positions with players who actually play them would go a long way toward turning things around. The rotation hasn’t been bad this season, but it is not good enough as it’s currently constructed.

It’s worth mentioning that the Reds did spend money on their roster entering this season, but they just didn’t do so effectively. Signing mid-tier free agents again this offseason won’t remedy the team’s woes. Yes, ownership almost certainly would balk at the idea of giving Juan Soto a blank check to play for Cincinnati, but it would be even more preposterous to spend the same amount to sign six players who are slightly above replacement level, which is kind of what the Reds did last winter.

Looking ahead, even though the upcoming class of free agents isn’t particularly deep, Cincinnati’s front office needs to strike the right balance of quality and quantity. Corbin Burnes is one of the best players available, and the Reds should make a serious push to sign him. Blake Snell has been on such a roll after his rough start to this season that it seems nearly certain that he will opt out of his Giants contract. The Braves have yet to extend Max Fried, so he seems bound for free agency, too. And while they might fall short, why shouldn’t the Reds go after Roki Sasaki if he gets posted this winter? After all, they made a bid to land Shohei Ohtani back when he was coming over from Japan.

On the offensive side, Anthony Santander would give the Reds the legitimate middle-of-the-order bat in the outfield that they currently lack, as would Tyler O’Neill and Teoscar Hernández

We currently have the Reds with a guaranteed payroll of just under $50 million for 2025, though that’s not including arbitration awards. They certainly have the ability to go after players who would make a real difference and still have a payroll well below that of the average team. A repeat of last winter’s approach would be a disaster; more of the same will likely lead to more of the same. The Reds quite possibly have more upside than any other team in the NL Central, but the time’s come for them to pick a direction rather than treading water.