Elly, Chase, and Expectations – Part 3

Today’s article is the final of a 3-part series, broadly investigating expected results for a team that can boast the kind of young talent that the Reds have in Elly De La Cruz and Chase Burns, who combined for over 10 WAR and made up roughly 1% of the team’s overall payroll.  We’ll start by highlighting five teams that both had similar players in value and relative cost to the 2026 Reds.

2019 Chicago White Sox (72-89, finished 3^rd in AL Central, didn’t qualify for postseason)

Top Hitter: Yoan Moncada,

5.1 WAR, $575K salary

Top Pitcher: Lucas Giolito, 5.4 WAR, $573K salary

Combined salaries: 1.3% of team payroll of $89.4M

Injuries:

• Lost Carlos Rodon (a 2 WAR pitcher the year prior) for all but 34 innings in 2019.
• Free agent signing Jon Jay was a way below average outfielder in 2018.  He lost roughly 4 months to injuries in 2019.
• The team lost a bevy of relievers for large chunks of the season, but none who were significant contributors the year before.
• Summary: There are stories out there about the number of injuries the ’19 White Sox had to deal with, but the data tells a story of a team that was only modestly impacted.

Dead Weight:

None that I can find.

Surprising Breakthrough:

• The point of this section is to examine if the two best players on the team were projectable.  In other words, was there reasonable expectation during the offseason last year that these two would be as good as they were?
• Yoan Moncada played a season and a half at second base for the White Sox in 2017-18.  2018 was a full year of him hitting for a 714 OPS and contributing 1.3 WAR.  He had been a consensus top 10 prospect across all of MLB for a couple of years before that.  Still, I don’t think anyone would have guessed that a 2019 move to third base would have also coincided with a 200 point jump in OPS and a nearly 4 win increase in value.
• Similarly, Lucas Giolito had also been an elite prospect who demonstrated a massive leap forward in 2019.  The 2018 version of him allowed the most earned runs in MLB and he posted a 69 ERA+.  He might have been the worst pitcher in baseball, who then transformed into one of the best, placing 6^th in Cy Young Award voting in 2019, with a 134 ERA+ across 176 innings.

Position Player Depth:

• The White Sox were very good at catcher (James McCann, 3.6 WAR) and shortstop (Tim Anderson, 4.2 WAR), and serviceable at second base and centerfield.
• Conversely, the right field platoon of Jon Jay and Ryan Cordell was easily the worst in the league.
• Overall, their position player group was a bottom-third outfit in MLB.

Starting Pitcher Depth:

• Pretty bad.  Giolito was the breakout star and Ivan Nova was a league average pitcher but the rest of the rotation descended quickly into madness.
• Particular shout-out to Dylan Covey who managed an ERA just a shade under 8 but still was able to convince his manager to send him to the mound in 18 different games.

Relief Pitcher Depth:

Very good as a unit, anchored by Alex Colome and Aaron Bummer.

Did the 2019 White Sox fail to prepare appropriately for the combination of Yoan Moncada and Lucas Giolito?

Not even close.  The team was a 62 win embarrassment the year before and Moncada and Giolito came somewhat out of nowhere, despite the heralded prospect status that both had enjoyed.  This was a franchise that was very clearly in rebuild mode, and two seasons later, when the White Sox won their division with 93 wins, they still featured Moncada and Giolito, along with wunderkind Luis Robert Jr and mainstays Jose Abreu and Carlos Rodon.  Moreover, they increased payroll dramatically as the youngsters matured, adding catcher Yasmani Grandal and starting pitcher Lance Lynn, who both played prominent roles in the division winning season.

***

2000 Milwaukee Brewers (73-89, finished 3^rd in NL Central, didn’t qualify for postseason)

Top Hitter: Geoff Jenkins, 4.5 WAR, $282K salary

Top Pitcher: Jeff D’Amico, 5.0 WAR, $175K salary

Combined salaries: 1.3% of team payroll of $35.8M

Injuries:

• Jeff D’Amico had a shoulder surgery that cost him all of 1998 and basically all of 1999.  He started 2000 on the DL, didn’t appear until May and missed most of June.  He was still the team’s best pitcher by far.
• Starting pitcher Jamey Wright also began the year on the DL and didn’t make his season debut until late May.
• Otherwise, the team appeared to be largely free from significant injuries although the data isn’t very complete/reliable on this.
• Summary: Except for the part about their best pitcher only making 23 starts in 2000, the Brewers appeared to have about as good of injury luck as a team can hope for.

Dead Weight:

The Brewers traded for Jamie Navarro before the 2000 season.  Navarro was in the final year of a 4 year contract and he was set to make $5M in 2000, or about 14% of the Brewers’ team payroll.  He made 5 starts, to the tune of a 14.95 ERA and was released on the final day of April.

Surprising Breakthrough:

• The point of this section is to examine if the two best players on the team were projectable.  In other words, was there reasonable expectation during the offseason last year that these two would be as good as they were?
• In 1999, 24 year old left fielder Geoff Jenkins played 135 games, hit 313/371/564 for a 135 OPS+ and was valued at 4.6 WAR.  In 2000, Jenkins played 135 games, hit 303/360/588 for a 137 OPS+ and was valued at 4.5 WAR.  To essentially repeat his ’99 season was easily imaginable.
• As for Jeff D’Amico, his injury history has already been touched on.  His prior seasons (1996 and 1997) were relatively unremarkable.  He finished 7^th in the ’96 Rookie of the Year voting with a 5.44 ERA.  He was only marginally better in 1997.  Then the shoulder injury that stole away two full seasons.  There was nothing to suggest a breakout campaign in 2000.

Position Player Depth:

• Outside of left field, the Brewers weren’t *good* anywhere, although they were solidly competent/average at C/1B/2B/SS/RF.
• They were particularly bad at 3^rd base (Jose Hernandez) and centerfield (a rapidly aging Marquis Grissom).
• Overall, their position player group was a bottom-third outfit in MLB.

Starting Pitcher Depth:

• Pretty bad, outside of D’Amico.  You need to give your eyes a minute to adjust to the era of steroid-ball, but the staff had an aggregate ERA of 5.05, which includes D’Amico’s masterful 2.66 ERA season.  But…an average ERA, adjusted for era and ballpark was somewhere just north of 4.5, so you could squint and see mediocrity.  That said, more than half the team’s starts were taken by pitchers who were replacement level or worse.
• This is a Reds’ article, ostensibly, so we’ll shout out Jimmy Haynes, who wowed scouts and fans with an unusual accomplishment: 199 innings, 100 walks, 88 strikeouts.  The Reds liked what they saw and would sign him a couple of years later.

Relief Pitcher Depth:

10^th ranked bullpen in the majors, even despite trading away closer Bob Wickman at the deadline.

Did the 2000 Brewers fail to prepare appropriately for the combination of Geoff Jenkins and Jeff D’Amico?

Let’s start with this.  The 1999 Brewers won 74 games.  They hadn’t been an above .500 team  since 1992.  And they clearly couldn’t have seen the breakout season of Jeff D’Amico coming.  However, there were a couple of moves that backfired:

• They traded their best player (Jeff Cirillo) and an average starting pitcher (Scott Karl) for Jimmy Haynes, Jamey Wright, and Henry Blanco.  In doing so, they filled an extra rotation slot but got worse, especially given that three days later they signed Jose Hernandez to man third base.  Cirillo had been excellent for three straight years, but was nearing free agency.
• They traded Alex Ochoa, a solid hitting 4^th outfielder still in his prime, to the Reds for Mark Sweeney, who would be worth 0.0 WAR for the Brewers over the next two years.

What I find notable is that they were budget conscious, and were willing to make difficult decisions (e.g., jettison Cirillo), but didn’t fully commit to a rebuild effort.  One can almost hear the echoes of what was whispered around the Reds’ trade deadline “efforts” in 2026: they were willing to move guys but only for “major leaguers”.  In sum, they didn’t fail to prepare for D’Amico because no one saw that coming, but there was a general failure to have enough solid players on the roster to take advantage of the surprise breakout.  Languishing in no man’s land for years, the Brewers would reach the postseason next in 2008.

***

2008 Chicago White Sox (89-74, finished 1^st in AL Central, lost in ALDS to Tampa Bay)

Top Hitter: Carlos Quentin, 5.3 WAR, $400K salary

Top Pitcher: John Danks, 6.4 WAR, $400K salary

Combined salaries: 0.7% of team payroll of $121.2M

Injuries:

• 3^rd baseman Joe Crede lost most of the second half of the season to back injuries.  He was having a solid season.
• Starting pitcher Jose Contreras tore his Achilles tendon in August, ending what was basically a league average season.
• None of the other starting pitchers missed a start all year and the other 8 starting position players all logged more than 500 plate appearances
• Summary: The injuries they did suffer were costly, but as a team, this was a season on the fortunate side with respect to missed time.

Dead Weight:

Basically none.  I’m tempted to include the fact that the Sox traded for a 38 year old Junior Griffey mid-year, paying several million dollars for the privilege, but he didn’t really hurt the team at all.

Surprising Breakthrough:

• The point of this section is to examine if the two best players on the team were projectable.  In other words, was there reasonable expectation during the offseason last year that these two would be as good as they were?
• Carlos Quentin had been a top 20 prospect in the league, but middling seasons with the Diamondbacks caused them to give up on him, making a trade with the White Sox before the 2008 season.  His 5.3 WAR in 2008 represents more than half of his career WAR.  2008 was a surprise to everyone, including Carlos’s mother.
• John Danks had been a good prospect, but never cracked the top 50 in the most reputable rankings.  In his rookie season of 2007, he struggled across 139 innings to the tune of a 86 ERA+.  He did have over 7 K per 9 IP, however, back in a time when that meant something.  He had a live lefty arm and was probably seen as projectable by the team, although it would have been folly to expect a 6 WAR season.

Position Player Depth:

• Chicago was a good team for reasons almost entirely to do with their pitching.  Except for the left field manned by Quentin, the Sox were league average or worse at every single position
• That said, they were a league average team hitting wise (102 OPS+), and their collective health meant that they had very few automatic outs in the lineup from day to day.  Their worst hitter (Orlando Cabrera) still provided enough value with the glove to be worth 2.6 WAR.  There were no stars, but they were solidly professional from top to bottom.
• Relative to the rest of the league, they weren’t very good at catcher, first base, or centerfield (Pierzynski, Konerko, Swisher) and the position players ranked in the bottom third of MLB.

Starting Pitcher Depth:

• Very good and deep.  Danks had the best season, but Mark Buehrle was the established ace and he had a very good year (121 ERA+).  Remaining starters Javier Vazquez, Gavin Floyd, and Jose Contreras gave very few games away.
• This was the 2^nd most valuable rotation in the game.

Relief Pitcher Depth:

Also very good, led by Bobby Jenks and Matt Thornton, each of whom contributed more than 2 WAR to the ledger.

Did the 2008 White Sox fail to prepare appropriately for the combination of Carlos Quentin and John Danks?

No.  The 2007 White Sox only won 72 games, but they knew who they were.  To wit, four-fifths of the starting rotation and the top two bullpen firemen were exactly the same, year over year.  However, there were six position regulars who posted a WAR value below 1 in 2007:

• Tadahito Iguchi (2B) was traded before the ’07 season ended, making way for the team to sign Cuban Alexei Ramirez.
• Juan Uribe (SS) was demoted to a bench role, although he ended up filling in for the injured Joe Crede in the back half of 2008.  Before the 2008 season, the White Sox traded pitcher Jon Garland (who was good!) for Orlando Cabrera.
• Josh Fields (3B) played out of happenstance, namely Joe Crede’s injury troubles.  Crede was healthier to start 2008 and Fields was sent to the minors.
• Scott Podsednik (LF) was released, which made room for the Quentin trade that worked out beautifully.
• Jerry Owens (CF) was…well, nothing really happened to him, but the White Sox traded for Nick Swisher so they wouldn’t have to play Owens.  Swisher had a bad year in 2008.
• Jermaine Dye (RF) stuck around and got just as much playing time.  This was probably a function of a highly paid aging ballplayer being untradeable.  The White Sox got a bit fortunate that he bounced back in 2008.

All told, not every move was a home run, but I find it fascinating that the White Sox were aggressive in looking to correct so many of their 2007 deficiencies.  It can be noted, fairly, that the White Sox were a big payroll team at the time, ranking 4^th in MLB in both 2007 and 2008, but spending money and addressing gaps are two separate skill sets and the White Sox were good at both.  There’s no way that they saw the success of Quentin and Danks coming, at least not to that magnitude, but they were definitely building a foundation with a high enough floor to take advantage of the surprise breakouts.  You could say that they made their own luck, to coin a phrase that has never been used before.

***

2001 Houston Astros (93-69, finished 1^st in NL Central, lost in NLDS to Atlanta)

Top Hitter: Lance Berkman, 6.5 WAR, $305K salary

Top Pitcher: Wade Miller, 5.3 WAR, $241K salary

Combined salaries: 0.9% of team payroll of $60.4M

Injuries:

None to speak of, as best as I can find.

Dead Weight:

Jose Lima was paid $6.25M (or more than 10% of the Astros payroll) to throw 53 innings of 7.30 ERA baseball at which point the Astros had seen enough, sending Lima (and plenty of cash) to the Tigers for Dave Mlicki.

Surprising Breakthrough:

• The point of this section is to examine if the two best players on the team were projectable.  In other words, was there reasonable expectation during the offseason last year that these two would be as good as they were?
• Lance Berkman had been a top 20 prospect in the league and in his rookie season in 2000, posted a 949 OPS en route to a 6^th place finish in Rookie of the Year voting.  I’m sure team management was expecting improvement in year 2, both due to increased playing time and familiarity with the level, but probably didn’t pencil in a 4.5 win improvement.
• Wade Miller had been a good prospect, but never cracked the top 50 in the most reputable rankings.  In his rookie season of 2000, he struggled across 105 innings to the tune of a 97 ERA+.  He did have over 7 K per 9 IP, however, back in a time when that meant something.  He had a live arm and was probably seen as projectable by the team, although it would have been folly to expect a 5+ WAR season.

Position Player Depth:

• Berkman was the breakout star on an offense that was already stacked.  Future Hall of Famers Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio were no longer in their primes but they were still well above average baseball players.  Moises Alou was “merely” a future Hall of Very Good candidate and he, too, was in his post-prime-but-still-very-productive phase.
• The only spots the team was below average was at catcher, third base, and shortstop (Ausmus, Castilla, Lugo), but only Ausmus could be considered bad.
• The overall position player ranking was 7^th in MLB.

Starting Pitcher Depth:

The Astros’ rotation was 6^th best in the game although they employed a boom-or-bust approach.  Youngsters Wade Miller and Roy Oswalt paced the group, with veteran Shane Reynolds also contributing strongly.  Those three combined to start roughly half of Houston’s games and the remainder of starts were handled by pitchers who generally ranked as bad or worse.

Relief Pitcher Depth:

The team also had the 6^th best bullpen in MLB, led by Billy Wagner and Octavio Dotel.

Did the 2001 Astros fail to prepare appropriately for the combination of Lance Berkman and Wade Miller?

They did not.  The Astros were division champs from 1997-99 before a down year in 2000.  Their offense was essentially locked down from year to year.  Bagwell and Biggio were never leaving and their other best players (Alou and Richard Hidalgo) were also brought back.  The team’s main moves were to give Berkman the full time LF spot (supplanting the disappointing Daryle Ward) and to jettison pitcher Chris Holt to make room for Roy Oswalt.  Oh, and closer Billy Wagner came back healthy from an injury-riddled 2000.

In short, this was a veteran team with a not-too-distant history of success who identified and gave opportunities to young prospects who had already shown quality at the big league level or, in the case of Oswalt, were near the top of the league prospect rankings.

***

2009 Los Angeles Dodgers (95-67, finished 1^st in NL West, lost in NLCS to Philadelphia)

Top Hitter: Matt Kemp, 4.9 WAR, $467K salary

Top Pitcher: Clayton Kershaw, 4.7 WAR, $404K salary

Combined salaries: 0.9% of team payroll of $100.4M

Injuries:

• Starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda had an eventful year, managing an 8-7 record around an April oblique injury and an August concussion caused by a line drive to the head.
• Otherwise, the team appeared to largely be healthy.

Dead Weight:

In 2006, Jason Schmidt was an all-star.  That offseason, the Dodgers signed him to a three-year, $47 million contract for which they received fewer than 45 innings.  He was worth roughly 15% of the Dodgers payroll in 2009 and appeared in four forgettable games.

Surprising Breakthrough:

• The point of this section is to examine if the two best players on the team were projectable.  In other words, was there reasonable expectation during the offseason last year that these two would be as good as they were?
• Matt Kemp put up a 3.9 WAR season in 2008 at age 23, before gradually improving to 4.9 WAR in 2009.  There was nothing extraordinarily surprising about his 2009 season.
• Baseball Prospectus ranked Clayton Kershaw as the #5 prospect in baseball before the 2008 season.  That year, as a 20 year old, Kershaw struck out 100 batters in 107 innings and posted a nearly league average ERA.  He was already decent at age 20 and I can’t imagine that a 4.7 WAR season in 2009 was shocking to anyone.

Position Player Depth:

• It was a really deep team.  The only position LA was below average at was first base, and James Loney only barely fell below league average at that spot.
• More to the point, all eight every day starters put up at least 2 WAR in 2009
• The overall position player ranking was 3^rd in MLB.

Starting Pitcher Depth:

The Dodgers’ rotation was 9^th best in the game.  While Kershaw was the best on the team, there were very few starts given to pitchers who weren’t at least league average.  The team was deep with quality arms, bolstered by a couple of pickups at the trade deadline.

Relief Pitcher Depth:

The team had the 7^th best bullpen in MLB, with a young trio of Jonathan Broxton, Ramon Troncoso, and Ronald Belisario anchoring the unit.

Did the 2009 Dodgers fail to prepare appropriately for the combination of Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw?

No, of course not.  The Dodgers had been to the postseason in three of the previous five seasons and the addition of Kershaw and the improvement of Kemp was a re-loading of sorts.  Additionally, three of the Dodgers’ worst four players in 2008 (Brad Penny, Angel Berroa, Juan Pierre, and Jeff Kent) were not relied on either in practice or theory, as Penny, Berroa, and Kent left in free agency, creating an addition-by-subtraction element to the team’s construction.

******

OK, let’s try to wrap this thing up.

The 2026 Reds got exactly 25% of the required WAR necessary to field a 90 win team from two players who accounted for a combined 1% of the team’s payroll.

They needed 42 WAR to be a “good” team.  They achieved 17.6 WAR.  Given that WAR replacement level is a 48 win team, we saw the equivalent of a 66 win team on the field this year.  That they actually won 75 speaks to a measure of luck and good fortune that I don’t think we’re ready to honestly tackle just yet.

The math, once again, leads to the conclusion.  If you need 42 WAR and you get two players contributing 10 WAR off the bat, you need 32 WAR from the remaining 24 roster spots.  A bunch of those are back up catchers and bullpen arms and utility infielders that will never contribute much.  Said differently, what differentiates the teams who can take advantage of young all-stars and those that can’t are the number of average-to-good players on the team.  “How many 2+ WAR players do you have?” is a very useful benchmark. 

In 2025, the Reds had 8 such players:

• Andrew Abbott fell from 5.4 WAR to 1.4 WAR year over year.  This was an extreme regression that centers primarily around a loss of control (his walk rate nearly doubled).  The “why” behind this probably requires a deep dive, but this kind of drop off was genuinely surprising.
• You could nearly rinse and repeat with Nick Lodolo, dropping from 4.7 WAR to 1.1 WAR, driven by a more-than-doubled walk rate and innings missed due to a recurring blister problem.
• Hunter Greene had 4.2 WAR in 2025 and then his arm fell off.
• Elly De La Cruz added 2 WAR to his 2025 figure of 3.6.
• Brady Singer was a 3 WAR player in 2025 and then sub-replacement in 2026.  This time the culprit was a home run rate that nearly doubled.
• Tony Santillan contributed 2.9 WAR in 2025.  In 2026, he was the kind of pitcher for whom injuries helped limit how bad his stats would be.
• TJ Friedl was a 2.4 WAR player in 2025 and then sub-replacement in 2026.
• Finally, Nick Martinez contributed 2.2 WAR in 2025 and became a free agent after the season.

One way to look at the above is to lament the bad luck.  They brought back seven of the eight quality players from 2025 and all but one got worse.  And a lot of them are young!  This isn’t a story of older players falling predictably off the cliff.

As it turns out, 8 players at 2+ WAR is exactly the right benchmark.  Of this season’s playoff teams, the average number of 2+ WAR players is 8.4.

So, back to the Reds.  They had 8, lost one to free agency, but signed Eugenio Suarez, who was over 3 WAR last year.  Mission accomplished!

Let’s look at last year’s 8 players through a slightly different lens:

This, in a short little table, basically demonstrates the difference between bWAR and fWAR.  fWAR, particularly for pitchers, is calculated on stats that are more projectable.  A significant portion of the 2025 Reds success was based on numbers that were highly unlikely to repeat.

Did anyone in the front office see this coming?  Who knows.  Did the 2026 Reds get unlucky?  Yes.  Were they designed to fail?  Also, yes.

The 2026 Reds had two breakout stars to whom they paid relatively little.  They had $140M of additional payroll with which to build around De La Cruz and Burns.  They finished in last place, yes.  But why?

The team failed to anticipate obvious negative regression.  The team had obvious spots of weakness at 2^nd base and 3^rd base and failed to adequately address either.  The team has been bad in the outfield forever and at present do not employ a single outfielder who can be projected to even sniff league average.

The two most relevant teams in the five that I examined earlier are the 2000 Brewers and the 2008 White Sox.  The ’00 Brewers were caught in a pattern of trying to not bottom out while not having a discernible plan.  Call it “banking on hope”.  The ’08 White Sox aggressively addressed their weaknesses from a year before while integrating young talent at the same time.  Call it “having a strategy”.

Did the 2026 Reds fail to prepare appropriately for the combination of Elly De La Cruz and Chase Burns?

Most certainly.