The Cincinnati Reds have the day off on Thursday. They just completed a 5-1 road trip and enter the day in 1st place in the National League Central at 16-9. Despite having the 4th best record in baseball, the Reds are only a half-game up on the Chicago Cubs in the division, and even the last place Brewers are within two games of the Reds. The division so far has been the best in baseball as a whole.
The Cubs do not have the day off today. They’ll play this afternoon at home against the Philadelphia Phillies, who have lost eight games in a row. The Phillies are sending out their ace, Cristopher Sanchez, but it’s possible that before you sit down to eat dinner tonight that the Reds are tied for first place.
Tomorrow Cincinnati will begin a homestand with a 3-game series against the Detroit Tigers. It begins the club’s Hall of Fame weekend celebration. Following the game on Friday there will be a question and answer kind of thing with Brandon Phillips, who on Saturday will be inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame along with Aaron Harang, Reggie Sanders, and Lou Piniella. Phillips, on Saturday, will sign a one-day contract with the Reds so he can “retire” as a Red.
Early Successes and Struggles
Despite the team having one of the best records in baseball, not every player is finding success. And some of the ones who have aren’t exactly getting there in normal or likely sustainable ways.
Connor Phillips has a shiny 2.25 ERA. And he’s only allowed two of seven inherited runners to score. He has certainly gotten his job done. But the right-handed reliever has also racked up 14 walks and hit two batters in 16.0 innings. For those who hate math I will be sure to tell you that means he’s either hit or walking a batter every inning that he is pitching, on average. You aren’t going to continue finding success by doing that. Fortunately the past isn’t going to be altered, so those numbers are what they are. What he’s going to have to do moving forward is just throw more strikes.
Similarly, but very different, is Brandon Williamson. It was a great story this spring as he returned to the mound after having multiple arm injuries and performed well enough to earn a spot on the big league team. Injuries led to him getting a spot in the rotation out of the gate rather than working out of the bullpen in sort of a long-relief situation behind either Chase Burns or Rhett Lowder once a week.
Things haven’t gone so well for him as his ERA through five starts is 5.40 and he’s walked a league worst 16 batters. He’s also hit three others. That’s 19 free passes in 25.0 innings and he’s only struck out 15. Unlike Phillips, Williamson has paid the price for his inability to avoid sending a lot of guys down to first base for free.
Nick Lodolo is expected to make a rehab start in Dayton on Sunday. If that goes well he could be returning to Cincinnati very soon. And at least for the time being it would seem that Williamson would be the one moving out of the rotation to make room for him. Where that leaves him in terms of the bullpen or being sent to Triple-A is something that we’ll have to wait and see.
On the flip side of that is basically most of the position players at the plate. Ke’Bryan Hayes is 5-59 this season. His OPS is a number lower than 16 qualified hitters in MLB have for a batting average – .305. He’s been making plenty of contact and has as many walks as strikeouts – six – but he simply is not getting hits at all. TJ Friedl has an OPS of .447. Tyler Stephenson has an OPS of .543. Matt McLain is only slightly better at .583.
The offense has basically been carried by Sal Stewart and Elly De La Cruz. Stewart is hitting .297/.389/.615 while leading the league in RBI and slugging percentage. De La Cruz is hitting .265/.330/.549. Both have eight home runs, which account for 16 of the team’s 27, and is tied for second in the National League (James Wood leads with nine).
It’s basically impossible for all of the guys that are struggling to continue to hit so poorly. Even if we accept that some of them are declining in skillset, they are hitting at the expected level of your random guy from A-ball or Double-A right now and they are all better than that.
Noelvi Marte is hitting in Triple-A
Another early struggler for the Reds was Noelvi Marte. He hit just .138/.194/.138 with 10 strikeouts in his 31 plate appearances in 11 games. One could argue that he wasn’t exactly put in the best situations to find success as he was pulled from games or set up in matchups that didn’t favor him more than a few times. But at the end of the day when he was in the batters box he flat out couldn’t get the job done.
Cincinnati sent him back to Triple-A last week and in his seven games with the Bats since he’s really turned things around. The outfielder is hitting .370/.433/.741 with two doubles, a triple, and two home runs – that’s five extra-base hits, accounting for half of his overall hit total thus far.
Some Fun History
This offseason the Chicago White Sox signed Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami. He struck out a lot in Japan and that left plenty of people concerned about his ability to hit in the big leagues where the overall talent level of pitching is a little bit higher and guys throw a little bit harder.
Through the first 24 games of the season a few things are clear – he’s going to strike out plenty in MLB, he’s walking a ton, and he’s hitting the snot out of the baseball. Murakami has 10 home runs (and no other extra-base hits). He’s also struck out 30.8% of the time he’s stepped to the plate. That’s a high rate of strikeouts, but it’s also a rate that we’ve seen work for a lot of hitters as long as they supplement it with walks or power (or both).
Why are we talking about a White Sox hitter, though? Well, Mike Petriello of MLB.com decided to see how often a player in baseball history has been able to slug over .600 in a month and have a strikeout rate of at least 30%. He found that it’s happened 51 times in baseball history. Most of those seasons have come since 2012, but only one of them ever happened before 1992. That month? August of 1970. The hitter? Tony Perez. He would hit .276/.361/.610 with seven doubles, two triples, and eight home runs that month while striking out 36 times.
That was only his 4th best month of the season that year. When he ended August he had 39 home runs and 122 RBI.. But that final month saw him hit one home run and after driving in at least 19 runs in each month of the season before September, he only drove in seven in his 26 games. Perez would finish in third place in the MVP voting that year with teammate Johnny Bench winning the award with 22 of the 24 first place votes.
ABS Updates
Entering Thursday’s games here’s how individual groups have succeeded/failed in challenging calls so far in 2026:
Catchers – 60% success rateHitters – 46% success ratePitchers – 39% success rate
Overall the players have been successful in 53% of their challenges. The Cincinnati Reds have been more successful than most teams when it comes to their rate of success. They’ve won 60% of their challenges, trailing just the Texas Rangers (61%) and the Kansas City Royals (65%). The Reds, though, don’t challenge often. They’ve asked for a review on just 3.1% of calls, which ranks 26th in baseball. Interestingly, no team in the top nine in terms of challenges has won half of them. Among the top half in baseball only two teams have won more challenges than they’ve lost (the Athletics at 58% and the Mets at 55%).
