The Cincinnati Reds are a mess. Stop me if you’ve heard that before!
Mired in last place in the NL Central once again, the Reds have somehow managed to not just be bad, but to collapse in the most hilarious manner imaginable. For instance, despite 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes, 2B Matt McLain, and OF TJ Friedl having been perhaps the single most woeful trio offensively to begin the year, the Reds managed to pile up wins in one-run games and surge as many as nine games over .500 by the end of April. All that came without Hunter Greene, who missed most all of the first half of the season after elbow surgery!
As things got so bleak with Hayes and Friedl, in particular, we saw an IL stint come for their 3B and an outright demotion for Friedl, who at one point recently was one of the better leadoff men in baseball. And the moment those two got demoted, the team simply became incapable of winning anything!
Old heads will point to the fact that the entire back of the bullpen (Emilio Pagan, Tony Santillan, and Graham Ashcraft) as well as Eugenio Suarez and Elly De La Cruz getting hurt at the same time may have helped derail the season. Twitter reply folks would beg to differ, however.
Either way, the Reds are flirting with being double-digit games under .500 after owning the single worst record in the game through May and June, and are heading into the All-Star break destined to be sellers once again. That is, of course, barring a miracle series against the Cubs at home to wrap the season’s first half, in which case they’ll probably try to maintain status quo until the absolute last seeing as they simply have no initiative in either direction ever.
