Nathaniel Lowe swatted a walk-off homer against the Detroit Tigers and future Hall of Famer Kneley Jansen on the night of April 24th, the final swing in a roller-coaster 9-8 victory. In that game, the Cincinnati Reds had overcome a 5-0 deficit only to give it back with a 3-run Top of the 8th by the Tigers, with Lowe rectifying things with one mighty cut in the Bottom of the 9th.
It was a game that’s something of a microcosm of the Reds season so far. It was a 1-run win. It featured the bullpen forking
over the lead. It also featured dingers a-plenty, with Lowe socking two and Matt McLain swatting a pair in one of his precious few good games of the season.
Aside from that, it was something of a nondescript outing in the annals of baseball history. A good win, an entertaining one, but merely one data point in the billions of data points we’ve got in this great game’s vast history.
If you choose that data point to look closer at the offense of the Cincinnati Reds, though, you’ll begin to see something that’s both spectacular and completely unheard of through the lens we viewed their brutal start to the 2026 season as a team.
Counting that game, the Reds have played 28 games since dawn on April 24th, 2026. And since dawn on April 26th, zero teams have hit more homers than the 41 the Reds have launched. Zero! Their .191 ISO in that span ranks 3rd behind the New York Yankees and Washington Nationals (both at .194). Their .435 SLG ranks 2nd behind only the Bronx Bombers (.440), while their .333 wOBA similarly ranks behind only that of the Yankees (.341).
It’s not fluky, either – at least by xwOBA. The Reds sport the 2nd best expected wOBA in the game in that span at .340, ahead of the Yankees (.339) and behind just the Los Angeles Dodgers (.344). That’s right – for over a month of the season, it’s been the Reds sandwiched between the behemoths on both coasts for the honors of being the single best offense in the sport.
It’s a cherry-picked date, obviously. It’s also a date that fully encompasses the evolution of the regulars in the lineup, however. Each of Lowe and JJ Bleday have assumed almost daily use in that time, with Bleday having not even been a part of the offense since being called up for the first time on April 25th. We’ve also seen the gradual phasing out of TJ Friedl and Ke’Bryan Hayes, with the latter eventually landing on the IL over the weekend with lingering back problems. In other words, it’s cherry-picked, but pretty accurately overlaps with the Reds beginning to eschew their strict defense-first lineup decisions in favor of letting their big bats bat early and often.
And, it’s paying off in spades.
