CINCINNATI — You could hear the dejection in Terry Francona’s voice following a third-straight loss to the Cardinals Sunday that dropped the Reds to a pathetically miserable 2-13 inside their own division. They are 11-22 after opening 20-11. They are a season-low two-under .500 at 31-33 and with a schedule that features the Yankees on the road, six against the Brewers and three against the vastly improved Pirates. And the prospects look far more likely for a premature end to the relevance of this team than a turnaround that leaves fans believing this team can make noise in September and October, even with a watered-down wild card playoff format.
Francona’s words following a 5-3 loss in St. Louis Sunday spoke a tone of fierce determination and unwavering belief that things can magically turn around. His voice spoke an entirely different story.
“When it’s hardest to believe, you have to,” Francona said. “And when there’s doubt, you have to believe in each other and pick each other up.”
Francona is begging his team to not give up, despite the doubt that comes with playing .333 baseball for over a month.
“Run the bases with your pants on fire,” he implored postgame Sunday.
Obviously, better teams have overcome stretches like this to reach the playoffs. And yes, there are 98 games remaining. But this Reds team is not the Dodgers, Yankees or Braves. They haven’t demonstrated over any extended period of time that they’re capable of playing championship-caliber baseball.
This isn’t about what the fan base believes. It’s about the belief in the clubhouse. The Reds are playing like a flat, listless team and Francona can obviously sense this. That’s what the whole “pants on fire” directive is about. Their pitchers walk too many, their batters strikeout too much with runners on base and their injured list is far too crowded.
The Reds are in a spot right now where all three branches have to accept blame. Players and on-field staff, front office and ownership. When a team flounders, like the Reds are right now, fault can be found everywhere. Francona shoulders some blame for not pushing for more out of his starters not named Burns and Abbott. Lodolo and Singer simply have to be better and Francona needs to send a message to them that it’s on them to get into the 6th and 7th innings on a more regular basis. Francona knows his team’s fielding has devolved into a mess with Sunday’s game the latest example. His relievers can’t throw strikes and get ahead of batters. The bottom of the order can’t move runners along or hit with runners in scoring position. President of baseball operations Nick Krall and GM Brad Meador had what they thought was a productive offseason but Geno Suarez hasn’t worked out and neither has the overworked bullpen.
Dejection and demoralization is what many hopeful Reds fans feel at this point. Acceptance of another season without a championship is what is on the horizon for this group that has underperformed badly. Yes, they’ve had injuries to Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Emilio Pagan and Graham Ashcraft. But the brand of baseball the team is play with the rest of a still talented core is simply unacceptable. Far before Elly was injured against the Braves, this team was terribly underperforming offensively, far too reliant on De La Cruz, Stewart and Steer to carry them. JJ Bleday has been a pleasant surprise offensively, and so too has Blake Dunn of late. Nathaniel Lowe, a non-roster invite, has been very solid off the bench.
They’ve tried to make changes. They’ve demoted the likes of Noelvi Marte (in April) and Connor Phillips (in May) and TJ Friedl (in June). The list of Triple-A recalls reads like a Target list of bargain-basement shopping for relief pitching.
Jose Franco, Kyle Nicolas, Luis Mey, Zach Maxwell, Yunior Marte, Lyon Richardson and Brandon Liebrandt. That doesn’t even include the injuries to Caleb Ferguson, Pierce Johnson and Rhett Lowder, or the return of Tejay Antone from a third Tommy John or the trades for Zach McCambley and Chris Paddack. It has been an absolute train wreck with regard to the pitching staff. There’s no denying that.
The front office constructed a roster they thought would be much more productive offensively, a starting rotation that would be dependable and a bullpen that would offer Francona many more late-game options and quality depth to rotate arms. But the rotation has failed to give Francona the innings necessary to use the bullpen appropriately. And Francona hasn’t pushed the starters to go further.
If there’s one overarching legitimate criticism of the organization, it’s the abject failure to develop quality arms throughout the system that can come up and be ready to contribute. They’ve certainly had some success with starters Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Chase Burns, Rhett Lowder and Graham Ashcraft. The jury is still out on Nick Lodolo simply because of his blisters and the inability to give the Reds 6-7 inning starts consistently. The Reds desperately need depth in the bullpen and it hasn’t been there this season.
The only hope now is waiting out the storm. The Reds won’t and shouldn’t trade away their farm system pieces. Whether or not there’s a labor stoppage in 2027, they need to have a functional roster going forward. Trading away your best prospects is nuking any hope for competing as a small-market team, with or without a salary cap/floor going forward.
The Core:
Elly De La Cruz
Sal Stewart
Edwin Arroyo
Chase Burns
Hunter Greene
Rhett Lowder
Andrew Abbott
Spencer Steer
JJ Bleday
Underperformers:
Nick Lodolo
Matt McLain
Eugenio Suarez
Will Benson
Brady Singer
Tony Santillan
Tyler Stephenson
TJ Friedl (Triple-A)
Injured:
Elly
Greene
Emilio Pagan
Graham Ashcraft
High Potential:
Blake Dunn
Blue chip prospects:
Chase Petty
Alfredo Duno
Steele Hall
Tyson Lewis
Hector Rodriguez
“Sell the team” is a popular refrain among fans on social media. And certainly, the Castellini family hasn’t done themselves any favors with regard to public relations or optics in years past. Maybe father and son wake up one day and decide to put the team on the market. But that’s not very likely for now. And they have to live with the empty seats and apathy their lack of competitiveness since 2006 has created. Like the Bengals, the Reds have failed to live up to the public trust that fans expect when they put down money on tickets or TV packages.
Watching the Reds get dismantled by the NL Central for the last five years only grows the resentment of the fan base. They are left with little hope that the organization will ever be able to compete with the rock-solid Brewers (one of the best top-to-bottom franchises in the sport), the Cubs or the Cardinals (but don’t tell that to the spoiled Cardinals fan-base). The Pirates appeared to have finally figured out how to complement their talented pitching staff, even with Skenes getting rocked more occasionally this season. That leaves the Reds in an endless loop of purgatory. This is what grows the apathy of the fan base. The Reds are team stagnation.
Despite fleeting moments of regular-season promise or minor breakthroughs, the organization appears to operate more like an insular, small-market business trying to optimize profit margins than a Major League Baseball franchise trying to build a modern dynasty (like the Brewers). This systematic failure spans from a fractured on-field roster and an incompetent bullpen to a deeply uninspired front office and an ownership group that treats the team as a piggy bank rather than a civic treasure.
The most immediate crisis facing the team on the field is a combination of catastrophic medical luck and atrocious depth management. The roster is plagued by foundational injuries to its most critical superstars. Cornerstones like shortstop Elly De La Cruz and ace starter Hunter Greene are sidelined on the injured list, leaving a massive vacuum in both the heart of the lineup and the top of the pitching rotation. Without its elite core, the team’s margin for error has evaporated, revealing a complete lack of organizational depth. The offense has periodically plummeted into near-total dormancy. Young, expected contributors like Matt McLain and Will Benson have faced severe developmental regression and visible mechanical slides, putting an unsustainable burden on lone bright spots like Spencer Steer. The pitching staff is in equally dire condition. While highly touted young arms like Rhett Lowder have been rushed back from the injured list to stabilize the starting rotation, their efficiency is heavily marred by severe command issues and restricted pitch counts. This rapid churning of starting depth has triggered a domino effect, exhausting an already broken bullpen.
Can all of this turn around? Sure. But it could be a long, miserable summer of waiting for the worm to turn.
