Some will say that it doesn’t really matter how the Cincinnati Reds got into the playoffs, and all that really matters now is what they do next with the opportunity.
That’s true, to an extent. It’s a clean
slate for all twelve teams participating in the postseason, with short series on the docket to earn the right to play in slightly longer ones, all with the World Series at the end of the postseason bracket. Still, it’s impossible to overlook that the Reds now fly west to face the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers on California turf for at least two games, possibly three, and will potentially play as many as five postseason games before they ever have the chance to host one themselves.
That’s what 83-79 got them this year. It’s a mountain they’d failed to climb in a full season in at least a dozen years, though if you want to count actually making it to a postseason ‘series’ and not just a one-game play-in, it’s been a baker’s dozen. The good teams – the teams that won a helluva lot more games during the regular season – are rewarded handsomely in this expanded playoff system that Rob Manfred has created, with the Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, Toronto Blue Jays, and Seattle Mariners all off for an entire round before playing host to whomever shows up as their opponent. Meanwhile, the Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees, and Cleveland Guardians all stay home in the Wild Card round, their opponents coming in as the road clubs for the entirety of the first round.
Despite the celebration, the general feeling of accomplishment, and the honest and genuine fun the players, staff, and fans had yesterday, let’s not forget there’s actually a big trophy and a prize now on the table for the Reds, and let’s definitely not forget that there are easier ways to pursue that trophy baked into the system that the Reds did not manage to qualify for.
Making the playoffs is great. It’s cool. We’re going to get to watch them in October on national television! I’m texting people I stopped having baseball conversations with years ago about this particular team, and they’re replying back with legitimately joful responses. It’s big deal!
But, it’s a big deal because we let it get to this. The team let it get to this. The owners, in particular, let it get to this.
A letter so old they probably printed it.
Cincinnati is a baseball city, and has been for longer than anywhere else. It’s a place that’s hung banners in print, on radio, and on black & white television. They’ve hung banners when there were just three channels, and even hung a banner when Pearl Jam was cool. For generations of Reds fans, the idea of making the playoffs was an afterthought, an assumption, a birthright. It’s what every 40 year old Braves fan assumes is part of the ticket package each offseason, what Yankees fans still consider a fireable offense for their managers.
It’s an accomplishment, no doubt. It’s a mountain that has been climbed. But from the top of this mountain it becomes easy to see that there are many, many more mountains – bigger mountains – behind it, mountains you can only begin to see when on top of this first one.
What if the Mets won yesterday? Is this the kind of front office and ownership group that really exudes the idea of being devastated by that development? Do you really get the impression that score in that one game in Miami yesterday being different would’ve prompted them to push the pedal down on trying to actively win more games next year than they did in this one?
What I’m saying here, I think, is that the celebrations yesterday were worth it. This team earned it, and they’re on a bigger stage. I have zero doubt that the players in that locker room, in that dugout and bullpen, are going to play their asses off in Los Angeles and try to win as many games as often as possible until it’s the end.
What I’m also saying, though, is that I hope this ownership group and this front office view this as means, and not as ends. I hope they view it objectively, that they needed a loss by the Mets on the final day of the season to get the worst seed in the bracket, and that there’s still a ton more work to be done to host games in Great American Ball Park in October of 2026. I hope they see that enough things worked out this year to get them to this point, but a lot of things failed badly to keep them from hosting a Division Series next week while other, less successful teams do battle this week.
The beauty in it having been since 2013 since the Reds played for six months and then got a tiny postseason spotlight is that we now see how trite that year was. All that work, all those 90 wins, just to be dumped right onto the golf course after a couple hours in Pittsburgh. We celebrate that year a bit now because it’s the last time we really tasted even a sip of proverbial playoff Budweiser after a six-month grind, but the reality is it wasn’t that special after all. If you’re only going to make the playoffs once ever decade and a half, and when you do it’s an immediate and complete bust, well, you’re going to exhaust being able to celebrate making the playoffs even when you do.
As a reminder, 1995 was a horribly long time ago, yet we remember that team as iconic as much for what hasn’t happened since as for what happened during those playoffs. We didn’t know those good times were actually that good until we saw how bad they could truly get.
Make the playoffs once, and you’ll get remembered for a bit. Make making them a routine, and you’ll pick up fans who didn’t know you before. Actually win some games in the playoffs, and you’ll create a new generation of fans that you missed out on once, twice before – and you’ll be able to play your games in front of them, with the sights and sounds of playoff baseball searing memories in their brains.
Tomorrow when Hunter Greene toes the rubber past your bedtimes on the east coast, it’ll be awesome. I’ll have chills. We’ll be nervous together, Reds fans all over. But sooner rather than later, he needs to be on the mound in GABP for that, with all of us physically together in the stands, for Cincinnati to really become a baseball city once again. They were pretty good this year – better than most – but still need to get much, much better for us to have that opportunity again.
Tomorrow’s a great first step. But, it’s a first step nonetheless on a path I implore this ownership group and front office to continue walking – even though it is uphill, and it is steep.
