NEW YORK – The baseball calendar just slipped past the traditional Memorial Day mile marker for measuring how your team stacks up.
Do you know where your Cincinnati Reds are?
They’re getting squeezed in the middle of a vise-like National League Central, that’s where.
Fully one-third of the way through the season, every team in the NL Central has a winning record – the first time in three years any division could claim that distinction through at least this late in the season (shout out to MLB’s crack research bureau for that 2023 AL East nugget).
More than that, there hasn’t been a team in the NL Central with a losing record since the Cubs dropped to one game under .500 on April 13. Nobody else in the division has had a losing record since March.
“It’s crazy,” first baseman Nathaniel Lowe said. “But it’s fun.”
Fun won’t begin to describe it if it continues into the second half, much less the September playoff drive.
Not for the Reds, who finished Memorial Day weekend in fourth place and just outside the playoff-position bubble.
“It’s the best division in baseball. And it looks like it’s going to stay that way for a while,” Reds general manager Brad Meador said. “So you better be ready to be in the fight.”
Lowe said it reminds him of his days with the Tampa Bay Rays early in his career when the American League East seemed to have at least four contenders annually – except this time it’s five.
“As of right now everyone in our division is a contender to win the Central or to get a wild-card spot,” he said, “just based on how they’re all playing.”
Is it possible this Central potency is sustainable for the six-month season?
“I don’t know why it wouldn’t be,” Meador said, echoing sentiment from the clubhouse.
“Across all the teams, all have pretty good pitching,” veteran Reds pitcher Brady Singer said, “and I think the lineups are really good as well. And a lot of us are very well balanced with power and the ability to steal bases.
“It’s really, really competitive.”
Singer spent the past two seasons pitching in two different divisions that produced three playoff teams each – the American League Central in 2024 before being traded to the Reds last year.
Even that doesn’t quite compare to this.
“Top to bottom is a little bit different,” Singer said. “This division is tough.”
And that’s the part that will make “fun” a bona fide “f” word for somebody – probably two somebodys – in the division if it holds up.
And for anyone who thinks it can’t happen, history says you’re wrong.
Until division play began in 1969, it was mathematically impossible for all the teams in a given standings to finish with a winning record.
Since then, it’s happened twice. Well, kind of.
In 2005, the National League East had four winning teams and a .500 last-place team (Nationals). Because there was only one wild card per league at the time, and because the Astros won that berth from the Central, only one team from that juggernaut NL East made the playoffs.
Even more remarkable, the 1991 American League West had six of seven teams finish with winning records and a seventh team finish .500 (Angels). There were no wild-card playoff berths in 1991. So only the eventual-champion Twins made it out of that division to the postseason.
“You’ve just got to keep going,” Lowe said. “It’s good that the division as a whole is playing well because it doesn’t feel like there’s any series where you can come off the gas. You’ve just got to keep going.”
If anyone knows how tough this division is, it’s the Reds, who have lost five of six to the Pirates and all four meetings against the Cubs so far, including three consecutive walkoff losses at Wrigley Field in early May.
They’re 2-10 overall against NL Central rivals before playing a game against division-leading Milwaukee – and, after taking the first two games against the Mets in New York this week, 27-15 (.643) against everyone else.
“The challenges are definitely if you scoreboard watch,” Lowe said. “Say you take two of three and the other team also takes two of three or they sweep, you feel like you’re not really gaining ground. So it’s the cycle that all comes back to you of you can only take care of what’s in your clubhouse.
“It should be good for this group when the rest of the division is playing well for us to realize we can only play our games and only win one game at a time.”
That’s one of the reasons Reds manager Terry Francona refuses to engage in these kinds of bigger-picture looks at landscapes and trends.
“It’s pretty impressive what our division’s done so far,” Francona said. “But it doesn’t really mean anything more than that right now. It’s just something maybe fun to talk about for you (media wags). Other than that, we’ve got a game today.”
If this Fab Five holds up in all it’s Fab-ness deep into the season, Lowe figures the Reds playoff experience last season will play a factor in who survived to play in October. Sixteen members of last year’s Reds made the postseason for the first time in their careers, and most of them are back.
“That’s a great sign, because you get a taste of what it’s all about,” Lowe said. “You play to win the wild-card series, then the division series, and then the CS and obviously to win the whole thing when it counts.
“But you’ve got to get a taste of it first to understand how good it can be when it all goes well.”
And you’ve got to withstand the rigors of your division in a given year, even with the schedule more balanced these last three-plus seasons, with teams now playing division opponents 13 times each instead of 19.
For what it’s worth, that juggernaut AL East in 2023 – the first year of the more balanced schedule – had winning records all-five deep into September.
This one? With the $250 million Cubs dropping like a rock since rocking the Reds and the low-budget Pirates boasting the elite talents of Paul Skenes, Konnor Griffin and a nearly-back Jared Jones?
Who knows, says Lowe.
“It’s the end of May,” he said. “Anything can happen in the next 100 games.”
Based on what the Reds have seen of the rest of the division, Francona doesn’t sound like he has a strong opinion on the NL Central’s all-winner sustainability, either.
“If it’s not, I hope it’s not us (who falls off),” said Francona, who also doesn’t buy that Memorial Day, Independence Day or Labor Day is any more important a mile marker on the baseball calendar than Christmas.
“The biggest marker is the last day of the year,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Will NL Central’s Fab Five make history and what’s it mean for Reds?
Reporting by Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
