Joey Votto went 2 for 4 with a run scored and an RBI, and the Cincinnati Reds raced to an early 6-1 lead over the Chicago Cubs that would turn into a held-onto 6-5 victory over their division rivals.
The win moved Cincinnati to a full 10 (ten!) games over the .500 mark at 59-49, and they were fresh off a victory in a road series out west against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Most importantly, they held the lead in a highly competitive National League Central division over Milwaukee of 1.5 games.
It was
trade deadline day in 2023. I hesitate to rip off that band-aid any more than I already have, since you already know the tale of how that Reds season shriveled up like a slug under a pile of salt.
That’s mostly what we have around here, memories that are as jaded as they are faded of Cincinnati clubs who authored collapses or stumbles in ways we wish we simply could not recall. The 2023 vintage, though, will perhaps always stick out due to a) the frequency of deep, dark rebuilds it took to get to 1st place on July 31st, 2023 over the previous decade and b) the team’s naivete, narcissism, and stubborness at said deadline that resulted in their lone addition being left-handed middle reliever Sam Moll.
I’m of the opinion, actually, that the 2025 Cincinnati Reds club was a better club through the end of July than the 2023 one even though they were neither in 1st place in the division or even in ownership of a playoff spot at that time. The stubborn front office tended to agree with me – either that or they finally feel the shame of passing on 2023 – and they opted to make some more significant moves at this deadline, even if they weren’t at all the moves any of us would have made.
Ke’Bryan Hayes was brought it, and has done a damn fine job of things as he takes over a 3B job that’s been a revolving door of untapped promise for years. Said acquisition moved Noelve Marte to the outfield, and while his inexperience out there has already caused a ruckus, he gives the club a legitimate bat in the grass that they’ve not had in years. Even Zack Littell has been more than fine as a rotation addition, one that became needed as key pieces of the rest of the staff got banged up in untimely fashion.
The problem with the 2025 team that was so good through July, though, is that the core on which this club was built (and held tightly to for so long by the front office) simply cannot hit anymore. You can raise a pretty good argument that they really couldn’t hit before the end of July, either – at least most of them – but now even the ones who could slap it around a little bit have fallen completely flat at the most key time of the year. The stress it’s building has put a heightened emphasis on getting every pitch in the absolute correct spot, on making every single possible defensive play, and the precision needed to thread such a needle has simply cracked this team down its spine.
Elly De La Cruz is a superstar. He’s their superstar. He’s also been, for the most part, the lone bat in the lineup for so long that it’s almost comical to note he’s hit just one (1!) homer in his last fifty-six (56!) games and still leads the team in dingers. If that’s not an all-time record, it damn well is likely to be a modern era record – how often do you hit one dinger in 56 games after ~135 games of a season and still hold your team’s lead?
Not since Four-Sleeves McManus of the 1857 South Bend Studebakers have we seen such a feat!
The club that’s been built around him is a barrage of 7-irons in a sea of drivers, and it’s put the onus of their offense on the single most difficult thing to do in modern baseball – string enough hits in a row to move a runner across the plate in an era when every other PA is a strikeout. I know I said this 2025 was better than their 2023 counterparts – that club was built with many of the same exact players who are around right now – but at least the 2025 club had given the front office two more years worth of data to realize exactly what they had, and how to augment it.
And the augmented it with Hayes, another 7-iron.
That’s why 2025’s collapse, which they’re smack-dab in the middle of, feels so much more painful. They were better this time. They knew more about each and every piece they had this time. Yet rather than address the glaring issues they had on the current club, they simply doubled-down on what they already had – and even did so with the future in mind with almost no regard for the present.
Cincinnati is now just a game over .500, closer to being behind the rebuilding St. Louis Cardinals club that beat them last night in the standings than they are to a surging New York Mets club that spend their trade deadline adding an actual outfielder when they needed an outfielder and adding actual relievers when they needed actual relievers.
FanGraphs has the Reds playoff odds at just 2.5% this morning. They’re a 3rd place team flirting with being in 4th place by weekend’s end.
This is precisely what Nick Krall has taken five years to build.
