Ke’Bryan Hayes was supposed to give the Reds something they could count on. Instead, Cincinnati has spent a rough season watching one of the game’s best gloves become a liability everywhere else, and Bleacher Report’s Zachary Rymer put him at the top of the wrong list: the worst player on the Reds roster this year.
The numbers tell the story in brutal fashion. Hayes has a negative WAR, a career-low wOBA, and a bat that has been so ineffective it’s hard to justify the playing time even with his defense.
Rymer didn’t mince words either, writing, "Even before 2026, Hayes dared to answer a question nobody was asking: How bad does a guy have to be at the plate before even his Gold Glove defense is no excuse to keep playing him? Well, now we're really finding out in 2026," Rymer wrote.
"Hayes has gone from a 63 OPS+ across 2024 and 2025 to a mere 20 OPS+ this season. The best thing he's done all year is make John Sadak blow his stack.
That's only because of the unavoidable yucks."
That’s the part that stings for Cincinnati: Hayes still brings elite defensive value, but even that hasn’t been enough to carry the load. He has 5 outs above average and 5 Fielding Run Value this season, solid numbers, but not the level of defensive impact he’s usually known for.
At third base, he remains a standout with the glove. At the plate, he’s been one of the league’s least productive hitters.
Across 92 games and 227 at-bats, Hayes is slashing .141/.194/.225 with eight extra-base hits and nine RBIs. The gap between his defense and his offense has never looked wider.
And the Reds are still on the hook. Hayes is under contract for $7 million in 2027, followed by $8 million in both 2028 and 2029. Cincinnati took the risk at the 2025 trade deadline, and so far it has not worked out at all.
The Reds’ season has been a disappointment across the board after last year’s late push into the postseason, with down years also coming from players like TJ Friedl, Noelvi Marte, Brady Singer, and others. But Hayes stands out as the clearest example of how badly things have gone.
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