What a season for baseball! What a finish shaping up in the playoff races in both leagues!
All but seven of MLB’s 30 teams are within four games of playoff positions as the sprint out of the All-Star break begins!
Hope springs eternal across the land!
Well, most of the land.
Here in Cincinnati, some of the highest hopes in the league waned in May, died in June and gave way to the anticipation of bobblehead nights by the time the last sparkler was lit on the Fourth of July.
With 67 games left in the season – 16 before the Aug. 3 MLB trade deadline – the last-place Reds are 15⅟₂ games behind the first-place Brewers. They’re eight games out of a wild-card position – with six teams they’d have to pass to reach that position – and there are only three teams with worse records in the National League.
At least they have All-Star Chase Burns on a new seven-year, $105 million deal that offers some definition going forward – if not necessarily an answer for what they face the rest of this season.
“Obviously, we’ve got to play better. We haven’t played to our capabilities,” Reds rookie All-Star Sal Stewart said. “But if there’s any confidence I have, it’s in these guys.
“I feel like we’re gonna have a good second half.”
At this point that can be measured in two ways.
The one that involves how they approach the trade deadline, and the return they get on top trade chips, might be the most important, especially as a potential labor shutdown looms for next season.
With all that in mind, here are five reasons worth watching the Reds as the second half starts:
Can Reds have a sixe-game winning streak?
The Reds’ longest winning streak this season is five games, done twice in April.
Can they pull off six straight out of the break in Colorado and Seattle against teams with losing records, including the worst team in the National League (39-win Rockies) and a Mariners club that lost five of its last six before the break?
That would boost the Reds to three games under .500. And while that might seem like just window dressing for a team that’s earned a fire sale by the front office, a six-pack of wins in their first two stops out of the break would figure to pretty much be their only slim-to-none chance to stave off at least the decision to embark on an ugly breakup at the deadline.
Their face plant since finishing April with a high-water 20-11 record means that winning merely two of three in series between now and August won’t cut it.
Why not 7 – or even 9 straight for Reds?
Because come on.
The Cardinals in St. Louis follow the Rox and M’s on the Reds’ longest trip of the year. And have you seen the beat-down the rest of the National League Central has visited upon the Redlegs through 28 of this year’s 52 scheduled division games?
Nobody has done worse against their own division than the Reds. To wit, MLB’s worst records at the break vs. division rivals:
“That’s the reason we are where we are,” Reds president Nick Krall said.
Everybody else in the NL Central is at least .500 against division opponents. The Reds are 3-6 against the Pirates and have exactly one win against each of the three others.
Consider that if the Reds had won just five more of those 28 – which would make them a still-bad 11-17 (.393) in the division – they’d have a winning record (48-47) and be just three games out of a playoff position.
How much different would that feel with 67 games to play?
Instead, it feels like that quote from the old Rocky III movie that fans of a certain age might remember, when Clubber Lang was asked his prediction for the fight:
“Pain.”
Reds’ Hunter Greene: Savior now or savior later?
If the Reds don’t at least explore trading the former All-Star during this particular trading period, then they might as well skip the process altogether.
That’s because they’ve tried this competitive-window thing with the current young core for a few years now with very little to show for it. And the pitcher in the middle of it, Greene, has been dominant when healthy but hasn’t been able to avoid lengthy stretches on the injured list throughout his career.
And this: With so many teams in play for postseason berths and front offices these days behaving very squirrelly about win-now blockbusters for rent-a-stars such as Tarik Skubal, Greene could move toward the top of a sellers’ market for controllable, high-end starting pitchers.
Greene has two years left on a $53 million deal that might feel like a bargain to a bigger-market club – even with his $8 million salary this year scheduled to nearly double ($15 million) next year.
And with Burns now firmly in the middle of whatever the Reds envision next competitively, that may make trading Greene more palatable than it looked, say, a year – or even a week – ago.
What about Elly De La Cruz?
The Reds’ price on their two-time All-Star shortstop begins to rise dramatically through arbitration next season, with only two more years of club control after that before he rides off into the Cincinnati sunset toward free agency.
Some evaluators from rival teams looking at Reds deadline targets already have speculated among themselves whether the Reds would entertain trading not only Greene but De La Cruz as well. Don’t expect it to happen now, but it would be dereliction of duty not to gauge the level of interest with an eye toward planning into next year and beyond.
For now expect to see any or all of these short-term veterans traded: starter Brady Singer, relievers Brock Burke, Pierce Johnson and Caleb Ferguson, catcher Tyler Stephenson, and corner infielders Eugenio Suárez and Nathaniel Lowe.
The clearest need on the return in those trades would seem to be bats, but more important than that, this club needs to add plus gloves everywhere in the field. It’s been their biggest, most conspicuous deficit in recent years, especially against top division rivals.
Enjoy Elly, Reds while you can
Assume the Reds don’t trade their star shortstop and retain enough talent to talk plausibly about staying competitive short term.
Wait’ll next year?
Good luck with that.
As recently as a session with baseball writers the morning of this week’s All-Star Game, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred talked openly about the need for a salary cap (without using the specific term) and continued to insinuate the owners are ready to lose games next season – maybe a lot of them – to achieve what has historically been a non-starter for the union.
When finally asked in no uncertain terms whether they would actually risk a shutdown of any length for a cap, Manfred launched into a 176-word set of talking points.
“I believe that in order for this game to reach its full potential we need to continue to address concerns that our fans have, particularly concerns that go to the core of what we’re about: That is competitive balance. We need to make sure that fans and markets at the beginning of the season have a realistic belief that their team has a chance to win. …”
When he finally finished in the same vein, without answering the question, the writer quickly followed up with: “So that means yes?”
At which point, Manfred ignored the followup and waited during a brief awkward silence for somebody on the other side of the room to ask a question.
In other words, enjoy these final 67 games while you’ve got them to enjoy.
And be sure to get to Great American Ball Park early for the Terry Francona bobblehead Aug. 1 − just a couple days before the trade deadline.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Here are 5 things to watch in high-stakes, pivotal 2nd half for Reds
Reporting by Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
