Reds Notebook: Matt McLain’s struggles were predictable

Over at CBS Sports this afternoon Chris Towers wrote about the second base position in 2025 from a fantasy baseball perspective. And one of the disappointments he wrote about was Matt McLain. While there are certain things that matter in real games that don’t matter in fantasy baseball (defense!), a lot of things matter in both. And Towers points out that there were plenty of reasons that people should have been concerned about the Cincinnati Reds infielder entering the year.

First, let’s go back to 2023 when Matt McLain showed up in May after a hot start in Triple-A Louisville and then kept that going for the next four months before landing on the injured list and missing the final month of the year. When he was on the field in 2023, he was very good at the plate as he hit .290/.357/.507. That was good for a 127 OPS+, which essentially means after we adjust for all of the ballparks he played in during the season that his OPS was 27% better than league average.

We all know what happened in 2024 as McLain injured his shoulder in spring training, had surgery, and then missed the entire year (a late season injury to his rib cage halted his rehab in August. He was healthy enough to play in the Arizona Fall League after the MLB season ended).

With Matt McLain’s strong 203 season there were some things that could have left one thinking that without some underlying improvements that he was going to struggle to repeat his success in 2025, and that was completely ignoring the fact that he had also had shoulder surgery.

The first thing was that McLain had a high strikeout rate. While that probably feels like the case for most hitters these days, McLain was striking out 28.5% of the time he stepped to the plate. Among players with at least 400 plate appearances that ranked 185th of 212 players. You can strike out quite often and still be productive, but that almost always requires a player to both hit for a lot of power and walk a lot. McLain did not walk much. He did hit for a good amount of power, though.

The other big thing for McLain is that his BABIP was .385 (BABIP is batting average on balls in play – it does not include home runs since those are not “in play” in the sense that someone can catch them). That was the 3rd highest mark in MLB in 2023 among players with 400 plate appearances. While hitters do have more control over their BABIP than pitchers do, .385 is a mark that no one seems capable of routinely repeating. The league average rate these days tends to be around .290.

In 2025 the strikeout rate for McLain remained the same as he struck out 28.9% of the time he stepped to the plate. His power, unsurprisingly coming off of a shoulder injury, fell off in a bit way. And his BABIP also fell off, dropping to .292 on the year. His walk rate did climb a bit, but was just 9.5%.

The warning signs were there and they all played out. That doesn’t mean that things can’t get better in 2026. Above it was noted that hitters do tend to have more control over their BABIP than pitchers do. There’s a few reasons for that and one of those reasons is speed. Guys that are very fast tend to pick up a few more infield hits than guys who aren’t. Matt McLain is very fast. Not only is his sprint speed near the top of the leaderboard, but he gets out of the box and to first base quickly, too.

That speed played worse in 2025 on infield hits than it did two years ago. In 2023 he hit .158 on balls fielded by infielders, but that dropped to .128 in 2025. That’s would be about five additional singles if he matched 2023’s average on those plays.

The larger issue, though, was the drop off in power. He simply wasn’t hitting the ball as hard and that probably also had something to do with his lower BABIP, and of course much lower slugging. Shoulder injuries are tricky to figure out. Some guys have them and it takes them some time to recover and return to the norm, but they eventually get there. But some guys just never get back to where they were before the injury. We don’t know where McLain is going to wind up on that scale. If he’s able to get back the power he showed as a rookie then things could start to look quite a bit better for him as a hitter even if his BABIP doesn’t return to the .385 mark that it was in 2023.

What is pretty clear, though, is that something or multiple things are going to have to improve in his profile if he’s going to continue being a starting second baseman in the big leagues. Whether that’s finding more power, making more contact, walking more, finding a way to raise his BABIP to well above a league average mark, or some combination of those things – something has to change.

Viewership was up for the Reds

The good news for the Cincinnati Reds is that a lot more people watched their games in 2025 than have in the past. There’s plenty of reasons for that, but a large part of it is likely due to the fact that fans could stream the games directly through FanDuel Sports Network without having to have cable/satellite/streaming service that offered the channel. In today’s age of cord cutting and non-traditional “cable” bundles through other streaming services that left plenty of sports fans without their regional sports network left plenty of fans unable to tune in, but in 2025 they could pay for this option directly without bundling it with another $50+ “cable” bill.

More people showed up on more traditional television, too, but the gains there were much smaller (a 6% increase according to the Reds press release, versus a 278% increase in “streamers per game”).

It’s always good to have your product available to more people. And easier to access, too. When people can’t access it easily they learn to live without it and that’s never what you want. 2025 was a big step forward for fans, and ultimately that’s good for the Reds as it not only helps retain fans but also bring in new ones. Long term you need that.

Speaking of long-term, though, the Cincinnati Reds deal with FanDuel Sports Network was only for the 2025 season. Last November the club announced that the 2025 season was going to be distributed and produced by Major League Baseball. It was going to be available on your local cable/satellite provider and available via a non-blackout streaming package. But two months later those plans changed as the Reds went with FanDuel Sports Network.

While the press release was put out to talk about how successful things went for both sides in 2025 there was no mention at all about what was going to be there for 2026. There’s plenty of time to figure that out – spring training games won’t start until late February. But right now we also don’t really have any information as to where fans are going to be tuning in to watch those games.