The Reds’ season has spiraled into something historic, and not in any way Cincinnati wants to remember.
What’s been most jarring is how thin the lineup has become behind Sal Stewart and Elly De La Cruz. Stewart is sitting atop Major League Baseball in RBIs, which says as much about his production as it does about the lack of help around him.
De La Cruz, meanwhile, has spent the last month showing he can be the face of the sport. After that, the offense drops off fast.
The numbers are brutal. Cincinnati has four players with at least 200 plate appearances who are hitting below .200: TJ Friedl, Ke'Bryan Hayes, Noelvi Marte, and Matt McLain.
That stat, shared by Matt Wilkes on social media, puts the Reds in a tiny and ugly slice of baseball history. The only other club in the last 115 years to do that was the 2014 Chicago Cubs.
It gets worse from there. The Reds also have two players under .165 with 200 or more plate appearances.
Friedl is hitting .162, and Hayes is at .148. Wilkes noted on X that the only other team to match that was the 1968 Detroit Tigers.
That Tigers club won the World Series. Cincinnati, by contrast, is likely to be knocked out of playoff contention within the next couple of days.
This has become an all-around collapse. The Reds have been outscored 56-15 this week as they try to avoid both a winless week and a six-game losing streak.
The schedule offers little relief. The Dodgers come to Great American Ballpark on Monday for a four-game set, and then the Cubs close out the Reds’ final home series of the season over the weekend.
The pitching staff has been just as rough, if not worse. Friday night’s 20-0 loss to the Brewers was the latest gut punch.
Cincinnati is 20th in strikeouts, 28th in team ERA at 4.90, sixth in hits allowed with 1,289, third in runs allowed with 766, third in earned runs with 712, fifth in home runs allowed with 195, first in walks with 610, 28th in WHIP at 1.45, and 26th in batting average against at .255. On offense, they’re dead last in batting average at .230.
And that’s the real problem. Outside of De La Cruz and Stewart, there’s been no one to carry the load when the bats go cold. For a team trying to build something meaningful, this is the kind of season that forces a long, hard look in the mirror.
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The numbers point to a more troubling issue: the Reds have been near the bottom of the league in two-strike strikeout rate, opponent OPS with two strikes and average exit velocity in those counts. In other words, even when pitchers get ahead, they are not finishing at-bats often enough, and hitters are still doing damage in spots where the advantage should belong to the pitcher. [Read more 🡒]
Reds Pitching Collapse Is Making Brewers Dominance Even Harder To Watch
The Reds keep finding new ways to make a bad stretch look worse, and the latest chapter came in Milwaukee. Cincinnati has been outscored 34-1 in recent games, capped by a 20-0 loss to the Brewers that went down as the worst shutout defeat in franchise history. Even with Matt McLain scratched and Ke'Bryan Hayes and Juan Brito making defensive adjustments, the Reds could not stop the bleeding, and the sight of the division leader pulling away has only made the slide sting more.
Saturday brought a different kind of frustration, with the offense showing some life in a 13-9 loss while Hunter Greene had a rough outing and Eugenio Suarez went deep. The problem for Cincinnati is that one spirited night at the plate does little to change the bigger picture as the club approaches elimination from playoff contention. Chase Burns is lined up for the next start, and the Reds are trying to stabilize things before the seasons final stretch gets away from them entirely. [Read more 🡒]
Reds Pitching Collapse Just Hit An Alarming New Low
A bad stretch can usually be explained away by one rough inning, one untimely error or one tired bullpen night. What the Reds are living through right now is something far more alarming. Their 13-9 loss to the Brewers on Wednesday extended a historic collapse on the mound, with Cincinnati getting rocked again after a pair of blowouts had already sent the staff into dangerous territory. Brady Singers outing only added to the damage, as he lasted four innings and gave up eight runs while the Brewers kept piling on.
The bigger issue is the scale of the damage, which now feels impossible to ignore in the context of a season that still has plenty of baseball left. Milwaukee put up a franchise-record 33 runs across two games against the Reds, a jarring number even by the standards of a bad week. Cincinnati has to find a way to stop the bleeding soon, because the rotation and bullpen are no longer just struggling - they are making the wrong kind of history. [Read more 🡒]