When former Cincinnati Reds great Eric Davis stood up in front of that roomful of players last month and spoke from the heart about the Reds’ last championship, he might as well have been talking about Visigoths invading Rome or pyramids getting built in Egypt.
It’s been so long since the Reds were in the World Series in 1990 that not one player in the room had been born yet.
In fact, only six guys on the Reds’ Opening Day roster were around the last time the Reds won so much as a playoff series – a postseason home game even – in 1995.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t listen intently to Davis, whose unscripted speech was powerful enough to elicit multiple expletives of praise from manager Terry Francona. It just means the history they’re talking about making in Cincinnati this year is, according to modern baseball metrics, ancient.
It’s also this: About to happen.
Just ask anyone about to take the field for this team when they face the Boston Red Sox in the opener. Or even those close to the team who know what a championship-caliber Reds team looks like.
“I’ve seen everybody work with a purpose,” Davis said. “I haven’t seen this since Dusty (Baker) was here.”
Baker was the last to manage the Reds to a championship of any kind, the 2012 National League Central title.
This year?
“There is definitely expectation,” said Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, the NL MVP on that 1995 Reds team. “It has to do with the players, but it also has to do with the manager. The manager sets the tone.
“There is definitely an expectation to even go further than the first round or the play-in or whatever it is.”
Purpose. Expectation.
Confidence. Swagger.
Also starting pitching, a deeper bullpen and stronger middle of the order.
But mostly expectations for October that are bigger than they’ve been for this team than they’ve been in at least a decade – maybe three. Expectations for the Reds to do things that they haven’t done in any of their players’ lifetimes.
“The belief in the expectations is just different,” veteran closer Emilio Pagán said.
Maybe part of it was Davis’ inspiring speech − Francona said he wanted to go play. Or maybe it’s rising superstar Elly De La Cruz looking healthy again, and stronger, after playing through a quad injury that hampered his 2025 second half.
Maybe it’s adding reliable experience to the bullpen in guys like Brock Burke and Pierce Johnson. Or adding slugging old pal Eugenio Suárez to the middle of the order after his 49-home run season last year. Maybe rookie Sal Stewart’s beyond-his-years hitting acumen is part of it.
Or maybe it’s the sudden jolt of playoff experience at Dodger Stadium last October that marked a career first for 16 guys on the playoff roster – if not the sudden jolt of elimination in two days flat.
“Now I’ve got a taste of how it is,” De La Cruz said. “We want more.”
Said Matt McLain: “This group’s hungry.”
About halfway through spring training, the Reds’ area of greatest undisputed strength – the rotation – took a body blow when ace Hunter Greene went down for at least half the season because of bone-chips surgery.
The response: Business as usual.
The impact on that swagger: Roughly zero.
“We’re not gonna throw in the towel,” Francona said. “We’ve worked too hard.”
The Reds rotation was second in the majors to Philadelphia’s in FanGraphs.com WAR, and that was with Greene − the 2024 All-Star – producing a career-low workload because of a groin injury.
It’s part of why Davis draws comparisons to his and Larkin’s 1990 championship team, even as he cautions against the fairness of historical comparisons.
“But I see some similarities in our team, just because we were a relatively young club,” Davis said. “We had great starting pitching, and we had an excellent bullpen. We have a chance (this year) to be great in our starting pitching, and we have a chance to be excellent in our bullpen. Those are the similarities I think we can spin things off of.
“Even with Hunter being down, it’s just a big blow and stuff, but, geez, to turn around and go to a Chase Burns is phenomenal.”
Burns, the second-year right-hander who, like Greene, has a triple-digit fastball, set an expansion-era (post-1960) record by striking out the first five batters he faced in his big-league debut against Aaron Judge’s New York Yankees in June – and finished with eight.
He’s back, alongside Rhett Lowder, who made a six-start, 1.17-ERA debut in 2024 before back-to-back injuries (including a severe oblique) wiped out his 2025 season.
“Those guys can make up the difference for Hunter until he comes back,” Davis said.
In fact, the Reds went 39-33 when Greene was on the IL last year (44-46 when he was active), so they have a blueprint for at least survival. And depth to maybe do more than that.
Expectations?
“It’s high expectations. It’s always going to be high expectations for a team like this,” said Suárez, who signed a one-year, $15 million deal to return to Cincinnati just a few months after falling one pitch short of a franchise-first World Series with the Seattle Mariners.
“This is a special team.”
Maybe it goes without saying, but on paper it’s already the best Reds team Suárez has been part of. He reached the playoffs once in his career with Detroit before joining the Reds, then twice with Seattle since the 2022 trade from Cincinnati. The only Reds appearance was in the pandemic-abbreviated 2020 season.
Speaking of which, part of that on-paper strength of this team is a direct result of that trade as Suárez joined two guys he was traded for when he re-signed: Lefty starter Brandon Williamson and hard-throwing reliever Connor Phillips.
Even ownership seemed to get on board with the expectations in the moment, allowing the front office to extend a payroll budget that already was tapped to get Suárez back in the fold.
“We have a lot of talent here. A lot of young guys,” Suárez said. “Back in the day, we had a mix; we had veterans and just a couple young guys. But this year we have everything.
“We have a really good group of veterans and really good, talented young guys that already have experience in the big leagues, and they know what to do − and they know what they want.”
McLain, who’s back in the No. 2 spot in the order after struggling much of last year, is expecting a bounce-back season after a winter of conditioning, hitting work and analysis on a swing that never seemed right in his first season back from a shoulder injury that wiped out 2024.
His approach and contact during a torrid spring suggest he might be right.
But more than that, a group that broke in with him in 2023 and since might be hitting a collective career sweet spot of experience that might be ready to pay off.
That’s where McLain goes when asked about why the expectations are so high this season.
“You look first and foremost at the depth and the talent that we have in this clubhouse, and then the experience goes on top of that,” he said, rattling off names from his 2023 debut class. “With guys in my boat, (Noelvi) Marte’s boat, Elly’s boat − the more at-bats, the better you’re going to get. As long as you take those and learn from them.”
There’s also a buy-in heading into the second year with a Hall of Fame-caliber manager that has gone from hope and faith to certainty and, well, expectation.
“There was an expectation for Tito to get into the playoffs last year. There’s an expectation to get into the playoffs again,” Larkin said. “And that’s because it’s Tito Francona. And that’s what he does. He just wins.
“I feel like (the lineup upside) with Geno and with Elly, all of that is definitely a huge part of it. But a part that cannot be denied is the expectation because of who is leading the team. And that is Terry Francona.”
Said Davis: “He’s like Dusty.He’s been around a while. Championship caliber. Hall of Fame manager, who’s seen it all, who moves with a calm confidence. Trust me, players vibe to that. Players see it.”
Gold Glove third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes saw it as soon as he joined the club from Pittsburgh after the deadline trade last summer.
“The level of respect everybody has for him,” Hayes said. “Right away when I came over I noticed just how together everyone was here as far as staff, clubhouse, just kind of everywhere. The main goal is to win. It’s been great since I’ve been over here. I’m excited for a fill year here.”
At least three times in September last year, the Reds looked like their chances to make the playoffs were hopelessly lost. Francona’s message each time was to prepare for the next game, try to win it and see what happens.
Then they made the playoffs on the final day of the season, despite another loss.
If the first year of buy-in led to 83 wins and the back-door playoff berth, what can the second year bring?
“It’s big,” McLain said. “We didn’t get in how we wanted, but we got in. And having that feeling of that togetherness when we celebrated, how proud we were of that − and then on the flip side, we were gone in two days.
“Obviously it leaves us with a sour taste in our mouth. And just knowing how good that did feel even just to get in. Each round as you go on probably feels better and better.”
If nothing else, that was Francona’s biggest message of the spring, from Day 1.
“I want them to remember when they popped the champagne, how it felt,” Francona said. “But I also want them to remember what it felt like four days later when you’re being sent home before you’re ready to go.”
That’s where the hunger comes from.
If not the enormous increase in expectations by the group.
“Everybody wants that experience, for a little bit longer,” De La Cruz said. “That motivates us to come more ready this year to make something happen.”
With more knowledge of how to do it.
“If you were to ask guys at the beginning of last year, we expected to be a good team,” said Pagán, who earned a career-high 32 saves last year after winning the closer job in the opening days of the season. “We thought we were going to have a chance to be competitive.
“But now that guys have been able to experience playing postseason baseball, I think the belief in the expectations in the room for some of our less experienced guys in the big leagues is at a higher level.”
Pagán is quick to dismiss the ancient history nature of the Reds’ various October droughts. After all, he was on a Padres team that hadn’t been to the playoffs in 14 years when he got therein 2020 (and got to October) − then pitched for a Twins team that had lost 18 consecutive playoff games over the previous 19 years until his 2023 team won a series.
“We had very little impact on those 31 years,” Pagán said. “It’s now, ‘How can we impact now and moving forward?’
“If you were to ask fans and even people in the organization, they would probably say the same thing: It feels a little bit different now than it did just a short time ago.”
Next-level different. Next-level expectations.
Next-level October.
“I think we can do some damage,” De La Cruz said. “I believe in this team.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Why Cincinnati Reds expectations are sky high despite Greene loss
Reporting by Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
