In 2019, the Cincinnati Reds had first baseman Joey Votto ($25M), left-handed starting pitcher Alex Wood ($9.65M), and right-handed starter Sonny Gray ($7.5M) as their three highest-paid players on the roster. In 2020, the Reds have Votto ($25M), right-handed starter Trevor Bauer ($17.5M), and right fielder Nicholas Castellanos ($16M) as their three-highest paid players.
Safe to say the team has signaled to the rest of the league that they are ready to compete.
On top of signing Castellanos this winter, Cincinnati went out and signed second/third baseman Mike Moustakas, starting pitcher Wade Miley, outfielder Shogo Akiyama, and reliever Pedro Strop, and added Bauer at last year’s trade deadline. This influx of talent, while impressive on paper, has also contributed to the increase of the team’s payroll.
Combined between these six players is $59.325 million for just 2020, on top of Votto’s $25 million price tag for the 36-year-old. Money has not been a huge factor for the Reds to worry about for a while, yet here they are with a pricey salary total and a need to improve upon their basement-dwelling status of late in the National League Central.
While making the playoffs would be an easy way for the Reds to justify their shopping spree this offseason, making that jump the first season may actually hurt them more than help them. With expedited success comes higher expectations, and if the Reds were to put all their chips in the middle of the table a year or two too early, then their future could become as bleak as their past few seasons has been up to this point.
Their first step is restoring a sense of relevancy to the NL Central race for Cincinnati, which has been controlled by everyone not named the Reds or the Pittsburgh Pirates for the past five-plus seasons. If the Reds want to even sniff the playoffs, they need to start with putting together a much better record against their divisional opponents in 2020.
75-87 last year earned them a cushy fourth-place finish in their division, a healthy six games ahead of the awful Pirates but nine games behind the underachieving Chicago Cubs for third place, and 16 games back of the divisional champs, the St. Louis Cardinals.
In 76 games between their divisional foes, the Reds only won 33 of those contests, dropping 43. They only produced a winning record against one divisional foe (11-8 against the Cubs), as they went 8-11 against the Milwaukee Brewers, and 7-12 against both the Cardinals and Pirates.
It is one thing to lose the vast majority of games against superior talent within your division, but it is another thing to put up the worst record against the worst team in your own division, showing that you have a long, long way to go. If they can even improve by five games in ‘20, they would produce a .500 record against inter-divisional foes, going 38-38.
In comparison, the Brewers were 14 games over .500 against divisional teams, the Cardinals were 16 games above the watermark, Cubs were two games below, and the Pirates were 20 games under .500. The difference between the two levels of play is stark, as both the Brewers and Cardinals made the postseason, while the rest of the teams did not.
Outside of improving inside their division, Cincinnati’s offense ranked near the bottom in most offensive categories – 12th in runs scored (701), 13th in total at-bats (5450), 13th in hits (1328), 7th in home runs (227), 11th in total bases (2298), 12th in runs driven in (679), 12th in average (.244), and 12th in OPS (.738). The lone bright spot offensively was the rate in which this team hit the long ball, which should only improve with the boppers they brought in to complement their roster.
Their offensive struggles lie in their average – Colorado led the NL with a .265 average, which was tied by the 2019 World Series champions, the Washington Nationals – which will need to improve greatly if they want to have success. If the Reds continue to rely on the home run ball but also sprinkle in more clutch hitting and moving their runners around the bases by keeping the ball in the park, their overall offensive approach will reap dividends that will, in turn, take the pressure off of their pitching staff.
Speaking of pitching, all five starters produced 21 or more starts last season, with Luis Castillo and Gray being the only two to win double-digit games in 2019. Castillo led the team with 15 victories while Gray produced 11, and those two are going to form a deadly combination with Bauer as one of the more intriguing starting rotations coming into this season.
Outside of those three, Miley is a sturdy veteran that has seen success in the Central with the Brewers previously, so the soft-tossing southpaw will look to recapture that efficiency yet again. After Castillo, Gray, Bauer, and Miley fill out the top four spots in the rotation, Anthony DeSclafani looks to be the most likely candidate to become the team’s fifth starter, after he produced a 9-9, 3.89 ERA across 31 starts in 2019, a very respectable line for DeSclafani.
The team’s bullpen is held down by incumbent flamethrower and closer Rasiel Iglesias, who saved 34 games last year. A putrid 3-12 record is nothing to write home about for Iglesias, but with a better team around him this year, the hope is that his save total will increase and his W/L record will become much more efficient this time around.
The biggest question mark on this team may be its bullpen, even with Strop being thrown into the mix. Michael Lorenzen, Amir Garrett, Robert Stephenson, David Hernandez, Jared Hughes, and Wandy Peralta all led the team in appearances last year, and only Garrett, Stephenson, and Lorenzen remain on this team, meaning that new guys like Sal Romano and Lucas Sims, among others, will need to step up.
By working towards improving their divisional record, using the home run ball as less of a crutch and more of a boost, and relying more on their stout starting rotation, the Reds have a fighting chance to justify their 16th-highest payroll in MLB for 2020. Surrounded by players who were finally able to cash in and sign long-term deals worth their market values, the Reds may have found a core that can help them get back to the postseason in 2020.
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