Once dead-last in all of Major League Baseball in almost every major statistical category offensively, the Cincinnati Reds have managed to make a push towards being not-worst among their 29 peers.
Though their team batting average of .230 still ranks in the cellar, their collective .308 on-base percentage ranks…wait a minute, that still ranks dead last on the list, too. If you’ll give me one second here I promise I will come up with a way to describe how not-worst they are…
…and there it is! They are
slugging a robust .397 as a team, and that ranks 21st overall. You can thank the surge from Eugenio Suarez and Elly De La Cruz over the last month for that one! As a result of that power binge, Cincinnati’s team wOBA now sits at .311 – tied with the San Diego Padres for 23rd overall (even though a dip back to as much as .306 would have them tied with Cleveland for 2nd worst in the game).
Because wRC+ adjusts for Cincinnati’s home park in a brutally honest way, though, that still leaves them with just a 92 mark there – tied with the woeful Los Angeles Angels and ahead of only the miserable Colorado Rockies (90) on that leaderboard.
The team, as we all well know, is top-heavy. Elly has been transcendant, Sal Stewart a significantly above-average rock all year, and since the moment he woke up on August 4th after the trade deadline sent him nowhere Geno’s .401 wOBA ranks as the 10th best in the entire sport (just beind pending MVP Pete Crow-Armstrong’s .404).
It’s what isn’t that trio on the roster where things get dicey. Not just dicey, I should say, but downright cataclysmic.
349 MLB players have logged at least 200 PA so far this season. That’s a lot of baseball hitters! You’ll likely be unsurprised to hear that with a wRC+ of just 20, Cincinnati 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes ranks a clear 349th among them. You may also not be surprised to hear that TJ Friedl, at 35, ranks 347th. Ranking just behind TJ is Noelvi Marte (46) at 346th.
You’ve read that correctly – the Cincinnati Reds actively deployed three of the four worst hitters in the sport at this level this season, and every single one of them is still on the roster.
I’m honestly not even sure what’s worse here – that the front office in charge of putting together a big league roster so egregiously failed at assembling offense that they’ve sought out and employed three of the four worst hitters in the sport, or that they still, at this juncture of this awful season, think all three are still deserving of roster spots heading into the offseason.
It’s been a masterclass in roster construction failure. At least we can rest well knowing they’ll all be back making the same decisions again this winter.
All stats courtesy of FanGraphs.com.
