The Cincinnati Reds made the call to not get Hunter Greene two starts before the end of the regular season during their day-off on Monday, instead sticking with the planned rotation featuring Brady Singer
in the series opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
They did that while knowing that imminent Cy Young winner Paul Skenes was slated to start the second game of the series against Pittsburgh. It wasn’t karma that thumped Singer in the 2nd inning of his start as Cincinnati dropped a must-win in the series opener, it was more the sound of inevitability. And when Greene was a) predictably wonderful but b) not quite as predictably wonderful as Skenes last night, the Reds dropped their second straight game to the woeful Pirates while still somehow clinging to hopes of sneaking into the postseason anyway.
That’s because nobody, it seems, really wants the spot.
The Chicago Cubs, who the Reds just swept in a 4-game series over the weekend, are in. So, too, are the San Diego Padres, who took an L by the Milwaukee Brewers yesterday. The Reds are tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks – who lost yesterday, too – at 80-78, just a game back of the New York Mets who, as you probably already knew/guessed, lost to the Cubs last night, too.
No National League team hunting the playoffs via this route is truly peaking this time of year. If anything, they’re all rolling towards season’s end in reverse, with the speed at which they roll the only thing left to be determined.
I’m still hung up on Cincinnati’s decision to eschew getting Greene a pair of starts during the season’s final six games, the idea being that he’d be set up to start Game 1 of a postseason series they may not even make. I get it, the entire thing about not having actually won a postseason series in 30 years means making the playoffs this year and losing in the first round with Greene never actually being able to get a start because you pushed him in the regular season would go down in the annals of Reds Misery history. Still, starting him in a game no also started by Skenes would’ve given the Reds a lot better chance of being 1-1 through the first pair of games this series than 0-2, and there’s always the chance he wouldn’t have even had to pitch on the final day of the regular season if Cincinnati had taken better care of business in the five-game run-up to it.
The casual nature with which this franchise has approached this vital playoff push is, quite honestly, reminiscent of the same laissez faire attitude they had at the 2023 trade deadline. Hold tight, stick with your gut, and simply hope it works out. The only thing bailing them out as of Thursday, August 25th, is that the rest of the teams lumped in this Wild Card mess seem equally uninspiring.
None of these teams look like they’ll beat the Phillies. While the Brewers, on paper, always look kinda beatable, nobody has really beaten them at anything all year – all decade, really. And the Los Angeles Dodgers are the Los Angeles Dodgers, and they’re going to hit you with three to six future Hall of Famers on each and every night.
I don’t think anyone around these parts had delusions of World Series grandeur for the Reds in 2025, but simply taking care of business in strategic fashion to actually play a night game in October where the whole world watches seemed oh-so attainable – if they’d just get out of their own way and take it. They haven’t, so far, even though the Baseball Gods keep giving them chance after chance after chance.
So, they’re still in this mess, and will be again at 12:40 PM ET today against the Pirates. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll seize this particular opportunity.
