It’s official. Baseball will be played this season, but it won’t be normal: there will only be 60 games and a universal DH. It took a long time for the owners and players to settle on this and the chaos is nowhere near over.
In such a significantly shortened season, some crazy things are going to happen: some players might hit for a .400 average, some may pace for 80 home runs and others 80 steals, but above all else, some strange teams will make the playoffs. One of these teams will be the Cincinnati Reds, but if they do it won’t be an indictment of the small sample size, rather because they’re simply a great team.
Of all of the mess that will be the 2020 season, one thing remains constant: the Cincinnati Reds lucked out on timing. First, with an overflow of hitters, a DH provides an additional lineup spot for someone that wouldn’t ordinarily get an opportunity. Second, the schedule construction, featuring an emphasis on games played in a team’s region, pins the Reds up against weaker opponents.
In recent years, the NL Central has been in the hands of the Brewers, Cardinals and Cubs; since 2015 that trio combined for eight playoff berths and the Pirates and Reds: only one.
The general fan’s perception of the Reds consists of guys like Jay Bruce, Brandon Phillips, Todd Frazier, Aroldis Chapman and Joey Votto, but those days are long gone. Since their core has dispersed to other teams or retirement, only a corpse of Joey Votto remains. Ever since their rebuild began in 2014 and 2015, the Reds have been acquiring talent to help them one day return to form.
In order to succeed in such a competitive division, a team has to be lucky in multiple facets, and for the Reds timing is key. Just as they’re about to become competitive once again, the Brewers, Cardinals and Cubs are faltering, making the Reds’ argument for the playoffs twofold: their weak competition and strong talent.
Weak Competition
Throughout the past decade, the Brewers have been well above average but in 2018 they leaped to being championship contenders. Prior to the 2018 season, their front office foresaw a potential breakout by trading for Christian Yelich and signing Lorenzo Cain.
In addition to those acquisitions, Jesus Aguilar, Travis Shaw, Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader broke out, making them the second best team in the National League at the All-Star break, trailing only the Cubs. Having been put in a legitimate position to compete for a World Series, the Brewers were obligated to win so they pursued mid-season trades for both Mike Moustakas and Jonathan Schoop.
Just one game away from a World Series appearance, the Brewers lost to the Dodgers. 2018 seemed to be the start of something special but Cain, Aguilar, Shaw and Jeffress would never return to their All-Star form and the Brew Crew’s fire fizzled out. Now approaching 2020, the only studs remaining from that majestic year are Yelich, Hader and a frailed Cain; everyone else is gone.
I project the Brewers for about 80 wins because other than Keston Hiura and Yelich, their offense is nothing to marvel at, and other than Brandon Woodruff and Hader, their pitching is dreadful.
In the past decade, the Cardinals were one of the most stable teams in all of sports. In the past half-decade however, they haven’t been below 80 wins, which is good, but also have surpassed 90 just once, which by the Cardinals’ standards is a failure.
The Cardinals have made a name for themselves by forming a roster of nobodies that, at the end of the year, make it a couple of rounds into the playoffs. Contrary to the typical method of signing big free agents, they develop their farm system and produce great players out of nowhere.
Since 2017, the Cardinals’ batting leaders in WAR were Paul DeJong, Matt Carpenter, Kolten Wong and Tommy Pham, at 10.5, 9.4, 8.7 and 7.8 respectively.
With 10.5 WAR, DeJong led the Cardinals through the past three years; in 2016 alone, Mike Trout matched DeJong’s score. This just goes to show that the Cardinals’ best hitter produced approximately a third of Trout’s production. Even for a team as unreliant on individual players, such as the Cardinals, DeJong and Wong as their two most valuable hitters is worrisome.
Following an MVP caliber year and record-breaking second half in 2018, in 2019, Carpenter looked shot. There’s still a chance that he can bounce back, but he’s 34 years old. Lastly, Pham is long gone from the Cardinals but the fact that he’s fourth in WAR through three years in just one and a half years of playing time shows just how underwhelming the Cardinals’ offense has been.
Through the past three years, at the beginning of every season, the Cardinals’ starting lineup looks bad, but they always end up in the hunt for the playoffs. I expect this year to be no different. In addition to their uncanny skill of finding needles in the haystack, Jack Flaherty is the best pitcher the Cardinals have had since Adam Wainwright was in his prime and he will surely help the Cardinals’ bid for playoff contention.
The common theme of the demise of once great NL Central teams continues with the Cubs. After about a century of being the laughing stock of baseball, in 2015, Kris Bryant won the NL Rookie of the Year, Jake Arrieta won the NL Cy Young and the Cubs made it to the NLCS. The following year, they infamously won the World Series, concluding their 107 year drought.
Though some major contributors like Arrieta and Jon Lester have turned irrelevant, the most impactful change of this Cubs roster was natural regression. At the Cubs’ highest point in 2015 and 2016, their biggest stars, Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Arrieta and Lester all had career seasons.
Arrieta and Lester quickly regressed to their mean after throwing sub-3.50 ERA both seasons and sub-2.50 for one season each. Bryant and Rizzo, though still solid starters, are no longer the superstars that they were at their peak.
The Cubs have tried to restore their World Series winning team, but at this point, it seems like it’s time for another Theo Epstein rebuild. Their manager left, Rizzo’s on the wrong side of 30 and there have been trade rumors surrounding Bryant. With all that, in just a couple of seasons, there might not be anything left from their historic 2016 roster.
The final NL Central rival of the Reds is the Pirates, and all that really needs to be said about them is that they’re still in the midst of a considerable rebuild.
Before COVID-19 changed everything, the Reds seemed to control their destiny to a division title with their opposition all simultaneously flustering. Now adding several games versus the AL Central further boosts their chances.
With literally any other division, the Reds’ playoff hopes would be in jeopardy, luckily for them, the AL Central is weaker than the NL Central. Of both divisions, the Twins are clearly the best team: they just broke the league record for team home runs and added Josh Donaldson to that deadly lineup.
Other than the Cardinals and maybe the Brewers or Cubs if they get lucky, the Indians are the Reds’ most evenly matched opponent. For years, they’ve had the best starting rotation in baseball and the same goes for this year with Shane Bieber, Mike Clevinger and Carlos Carrasco.
In just his sophomore year, Bieber threw for 214 innings, 3.28 ERA, 259 strikeouts and 2 complete game shutouts, most impressively, his FIP suggests that he didn’t overperform. Clevinger was playing hurt for a lot of 2019, but when he played completely healthy, he might’ve been the most dominant pitcher in the league. This leaves Carrasco who is certainly the biggest question mark. He’s coming off of a missed season due to leukemia, but when he was last seen on the field, he too was one of the best pitchers in the league. Even if he’s still able to perform, he’s a prime candidate to opt out of the season due to his weakened immune system.
On offense, Fransisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez will be great without a question, but they have to rely on Carlos Santana, Franmil Reyes and Oscar Mercado to also build onto their breakouts from last year. The elite starting pitching is a luxury that the Indians can rely on, but there will be some games that they’ll have to rely more on their offense, and that should worry Indians fans.
The White Sox are the last of the competing AL Central teams, but unless everything goes right, they won’t alter the Reds’ playoff hopes, but they may still steal a couple wins.
Strong Talent
From 2015-2018, the Reds finished with less than 70 wins and last place in their division, but a lot has changed in the past year. Things started looking up before the 2019 season started: Jesse Winker looked like a potential breakout, Joey Votto was a bounce back candidate and Nick Senzel would soon be called up. To quote myself from my 2019 MLB predictions, “if all goes right, they could be serious contenders.” Even just a month into the season, everything took a bad turn: Winker was hitting for a .238 average, Votto’s glory days were clearly behind him and Senzel’s call up was prolonged due to a position change.
Basically everything that was expected had gone wrong, but the unexpected went right. After three consecutive seasons of an ERA below 3.10, Sonny Gray had made himself known as an ace… then he went to the Yankees. The Yankees are good at a lot of things, but they didn’t mesh with Gray. In an interview with The Athletic, Gray recalled the Yankees making him throw his slider, which he usually used as a breaking ball, as his dominant pitch, “I want to throw my slider in the dirt with two strikes, and that’s about it. I don’t have that type of slider.”
When Gray left the Yankees, this quote spurred some discussion of a return to form in Cincinnati, but for the most part, he was irrelevant. Gray started out the year significantly better than what he had shown in New York, but in the second half, he performed well enough to finish seventh in Cy Young voting. After the All-Star Break, Gray threw 85 innings for 102 strikeouts and a 2.12 ERA. In August, he threw 36 innings for a 0.74 ERA. When a player breaks out to this extent, the sabermetrics usually suggest negative regression, but Gray’s back him up with a -0.55 ERA and FIP differential.
In addition to Gray, the Reds made a trade for Trevor Bauer at the trade deadline. After years of mediocrity, in 2018, Bauer led the majors in FIP and threw 221 strikeouts in just 175 innings. Since his FIP was so great, it looked like he could easily repeat his immaculate season; spoiler: he didn’t.
Bauer is known for his drone antics and throwing the ball from right center field to the third base line in warm ups, but a less publicized part of his personality is his drive to improve. Even though he just finished a nearly perfect season, before 2019, Bauer began tinkering with his pitch mix, which would lead to his downfall in 2019.
Before arriving in Cincinnati, Bauer was doing fine in Cleveland, but not great compared to his previous campaign, when he arrived in Cincinnati, whatever was left, fell apart. Through 56 innings, he achieved a horrendous 6.39 ERA. A positive outlook on Bauer’s tinkering is that he could fix his mistakes for 2020. His 2018 and 2019 were extreme examples of his best and worst case scenarios, his data suggests that he’ll perform close to the mean of the two seasons, still making him a great asset for the Reds.
Gray and Bauer alone are better than any Reds pitcher since Johnny Cueto, but Luis Castillo is a tier above them. Castillo didn’t have a great sophomore year in 2018, but he showed that he had great stuff, making fantasy fans hyped for his strikeout potential in 2019. Their investment in Castillo paid off instantly with a 1.45 ERA in March and April, thus establishing himself as an ace. Castillo cooled down as the year proceeded, but he still finished with a 3.40 ERA and 10.7 K/9.
According to FantasyPros, an average swinging strike rate is 12% and 16% or higher is considered elite; in 2019, Castillo’s changeup produced a score of 26.6%. His changeup might be the best pitch in the game so as the young star continues developing his other pitches around it, he has the potential to be one of the best in the game as well.
On offense, the Reds have made remarkable strides as well. Trailing Trout by one, Eugenio Suarez is second in home runs through the past two years while hoisting a .277 average. The 28 year old has shown no signs of slowing down, establishing Suarez as one of the premier power hitters in baseball.
Seeing that they could be in contention, preceding the 2020 season, the Reds acquired Nicholas Castellanos. In 2018, according to ESPN park factors, Castellanos’ former home park, Comerica Park, was rated 21st and Great American Ballpark: fourth. C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic overlayed Castellanos’ spray chart in Great American Ballpark, showing he could have more than 60 home runs now that he’s in such a favorable hitter’s park. Though the hypothetical park factors may not translate, Castellanos’ batting average through the past two seasons was .294, meaning that he’s guaranteed to contribute in at least that department.
The Reds also added Shogo Akiyama and Moustakas. Akiyama blew up the Japanese league with a career .304 average and close to 15 steals every year and is now expected to lead off for the Reds. The competition will be a lot better than what he’s used to but RotoChamp still projects him for a .283 average. Moustakas on the other hand is a veteran with elite power. Since 2017, he’s hit 101 home runs and should continue at a similar pace unless his age begins to show.
Beside all the additions, the Reds also have some exciting homegrown talent in Senzel and Aristedes Aquino. Senzel was a top prospect for a long time but injuries always kept him in the minors. He saw his first playing time in 2019 when he burst onto the scene with four home runs in his first six games. As the season advanced, his stats leveled out to about league average, but he still showed enough that, in addition to his prospect pedigree, it’s reasonable to think that his future could be bright. Aquino also debuted with the Reds in 2019, when in 16 games he smashed 11 home runs and a 1.353 OPS. After those 16 games, Aquino regressed to normalcy, but if he could be half as good as he was in his hot streak, he’d be yet another great stud for the Reds.
In the past two seasons, the Reds have managed to bring a once great team back to life, and now it’s their turn to take over the NL Central once again.
At this point in their rebuild, when the Reds make the playoffs, it’ll be a testament to their weak competition, but as they continue accumulating more talent and their competition weakens, they could make several consecutive playoff appearances. Code red NL Central: the Reds are coming.
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