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[et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text admin_label="Text"]Had I written this preview a week ago, I would have been telling you the sad story of a very promising team that had made aggressive moves to improve itself over the past two years but completely fell apart. The team had plenty of talent on offense and some top-end starting pitching, but got undone by its bullpen and its floundering lineup to the point where it found itself on the outside looking in despite an overly generous postseason format where a winning record isn't proving to be a prerequisite for participation. The Reds were 20-26 and in fourth place in a soft division, looking every bit like a dead team walking.
Fortunately for Cincinnati, they were on the part of the win spectrum where games still matter down the stretch. Major League Baseball may have taken the drama out of well-constructed 90-win teams (over a full season) jostling for a playoff slot late into September, but mediocre-to-bad ones? They've got a lot to play for, and can do a lot to change their fate. The Reds strung together five straight wins this week to slingshot them into a tie for second place with St. Louis. It's still not a winning record, but they're suddenly favorites to make the postseason with all the momentum they could ask for.
Should the Reds make it to the playoffs, they'll be sure to make it tough on their opponents, as they have the ability to throw Trevor Bauer and Luis Castillo, both of whom rank as two of the top ten pitchers in baseball this season. The White Sox won't face Castillo this weekend, but Bauer looms as a major test. The spin rate champion of the world, Bauer has been the best strikeout pitcher in the National League (37.4 percent) and owns the lowest ERA.
Backing these two is Tyler Mahle, who has moved away from his curveball this season in favor of a fourseam/cutter/splitter approach. Surprisingly, it's Mahle's cutter rather than the splitter which is the true swing-and-miss offering, though both are good for ground balls. If it weren't for that pesky base-on-balls, he might rank as better than a midrotation starter. Anthony DeSclafani has been horrid this season, and many suspect a pectoral strain from over the summer to be the underlying cause. Whatever the reason, DeSclafani has seen a big drop in strikeouts, a big rise in walks, and both his fourseam and sinker hammered repeatedly.
Offensively, the Reds have failed to live up to their billing, though they've been better of late. All of their struggles have happened despite carrying the best walk rate in the major leagues into the weekend; they've just lacked the hard contact to make it count, and it shows up in their team .244 (!) BABIP, which is the lowest in baseball by far. One of the bigger issues is that Joey Votto's 2019 decline has carried over into this season, and he no longer resembles the OBP machine who was one of the best players of the last decade. Votto can still draw a walk, but at age 36, he no longer hits the ball very hard, and it shows in his batting average. Also disappointing has been offseason acquisition Mike Moustakas, whose power output has declined and is striking out more than he ever has, resulting in a batting average down close to .200.
Cleanup man Eugenio Suarez belted 49 homers last season but has spent most of this year with a batting average starting with '0' or '1'. To his credit, he's hitting a more Suarez-like .261/.340/.674 in September, so he's made a strong effort to salvage his lost season. Nick Senzel and Brian Goodwin have struggled to muster much offense from the center field position, and leadoff man Shogo Akiyama has somehow posted a high OBP by walking 13.8 percent of the time while giving pitchers zero reason to fear him (.052 ISO). Add in that middle infielder Freddy Galvis has mustered just a 74 OPS+ without the glove to make it count, and that's a lot of issues.
The Reds have essentially had three bright spots in the lineup to try to make up for the deadweight. Nicholas Castellanos is actually murdering the ball, but has just a .234 average to show for it. There's nothing to blame here but bad luck, and he remains an extremely dangerous hitter despite relatively down numbers. Catcher Curt Casali has begun to siphon off playing time from Tucker Barnhart by virtue of chipping in 12 walks and five homers in just 78 plate appearances. Finally, in a batting order of bigger names, it's been Jesse Winker who has been the Reds' best overall hitter. He's essentially had Suarez' power output without the sagging batting average, and he's given Cincinnati some much-needed punch when spelling members of the team's regular lineup.
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The Cincinnati Reds have the fewest wins of any major league team since 2014, and although that stretch was preceded by three playoff appearances in four years, that's still a long time to remain underground. To put this into context, the last time the Reds were exciting, their legitimate ace was Mat Latos. A 25-26 record might be stretching the definition of "excitement", but there's every reason to believe that Cincinnati's playoff chase will go down to the wire. With Rob Manfred and company making Major League Baseball's crapshoot playoff format even crapshootier, Reds fans can focus on their two elite starting pitchers and approach the postseason tournament with optimism.
Probable Starting Pitchers
- Friday, September 18: Tyler Mahle vs. Jonathan Stiever
- Saturday, September 19: Trevor Bauer vs. Dallas Keuchel
- Sunday, September 20: Anthony DeSclafani vs.Dylan Cease
Probable Lineup
- Shogo Akiyama - LF
- Nicholas Castellanos - RF
- Joey Votto - DH
- Eugenio Suarez - 3B
- Mike Moustakas - 1B
- Brian Goodwin - CF
- Freddy Galvis - 2B
- Jose Garcia - SS
- Curt Casali - C
Pitching
- SP1: Trevor Bauer - RHP
- SP2: Luis Castillo - RHP
- SP3: Tyler Mahle - RHP
- SP4: Anthony DeSclafani - RHP
- SP5: Tejay Antone - RHP
- CL: Raisel Iglesias - RHP
- RP1: Amir Garrett - LHP
- RP2: Archie Bradley - RHP
- RP3: Michael Lorenzen - RHP
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This concludes the 2020 regular season team preview series on Sox Machine (Whaaaa? New wrinkle to this standard annual sentence???). The titles of each of this year's previews were taken from episodes of Netflix' hit series BoJack Horseman, and here's hoping that it finally takes home the Emmy it so badly deserves in its final appearance on the list of nominees. I hope you have found these some combination of entertaining and informative. For the first time since I began writing these back in 2014, see you in the playoffs!
(Photo by Lee Burchfield)[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column]
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