I wrote a column two months ago, right when the Reds’ season was starting to cross over from its earliest stages into that period in mid-spring when we’re able to partially gauge what a team is and whether it will be in a position to add pieces for a playoff push or unload players and essentially concede defeat.
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I opined that by the time the season reached the July 31 trade deadline, the Reds would be sellers. The team entered the season with modest outside expectations and then subsequently lowered them by losing eight of their first nine games, so I had little faith it was going to play well enough to put the front office in a position where adding players to aid a mad dash to the postseason was the only option. It was admittedly not the most cheerful take, and I’ll own up to hating myself a little more than usual for being the guy rushing to remind everyone that the Reds were probably not going to be as good as everyone had hoped.
The piece was edited, published, responded to, and since it’s tweeted at me every time the Reds win consecutive games, it was bookmarked. Which, great. I’ll admit though, that not long after it went live, I felt a little uncomfortable with what I’d written. It wasn’t that I feared ultimately being wrong – as a Reds fan, I badly wanted to revisit the topic later in the summer and take everything I’d written back. It was that the more I thought about the notion of the Reds being buyers or sellers, the more I thought about how much more nuanced the discussion would likely be as the deadline drew closer.
The Reds were probably never going to be buyers in the way we’ve come to define championship-hopeful teams that add whatever pieces at whatever cost. They also weren’t going to be sellers in the way we’ve long positioned non-contending teams. Reds President of Baseball Operations Dick Williams was never going to spend blindly the way I did on Prime Day this year, but he wasn’t going to be unfurling banners outside Great American Ballpark touting his team’s liquidation sale either.
Fast forward to now, with less than two weeks remaining before the deadline. The Reds are not completely out of contention, yet not wholly in the hunt either. A 2-4 post-All Star break road trip has them planted alone and rather firmly in the basement of the NL Central, where they have resided by themselves for most of the season. Their record probably is an incomplete indicator of how well they’ve truly played, and few teams this season have been as interesting to watch and follow on a daily basis. But the one thing the Reds might be league leaders in is besides one-run games is grey area. The Reds are better, they’re just not good enough. They’re OK. Decent. They’re not quite as good as some would try to convince you when things are going well, yet not the stumbling, inept outfit others would portray them as when they aren’t. They’ve been just good enough to command attention deeper into the summer than usual, just not enough to make anyone look at the standings and believe they’ll be a factor in the fall.
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The Reds are difficult to characterize amid a close jumble of National League teams that have done little to distinguish themselves from the others. The Reds can’t be buyers. They don’t need to be sellers.
What they can be, and what they need to be, is smart.
Doing what’s smart requires complexity in thought and action. It means achieving a balance between short-term desires and long-term goals while weighing emotional pros and cons with the benefits of responsible behavior. The good news is, the Reds have been doing this, at least for a little while.
Like when Williams flipped Dan Straily for future ace Luis Castillo. Or when he invested in Eugenio Suárez’s remaining prime years at an extremely team-friendly cost. Or when he was able to coax away four breathing human beings for Homer Bailey, including one who might hit 40 home runs this season. Or when Sonny Gray was acquired, and instantly extended in a deal that, paired with pitching coach Derek Johnson, might make the 2019 All-Star one of baseball’s bigger bargains.
Or when the front office refused to acquiesce to the fringes of the fan base that was supposedly going to lose its collective mind if Billy Hamilton was ever traded, and when it didn’t cater to the knee-jerk desire some had to see Scooter Gennett get unnecessary, more-expensive deal. It was smart when the Reds decided that maintaining status quo this past winter would have been a failed strategy. It was even smarter when the upgrades that were made came without compromising the franchise’s top young talent.
The Reds were wise last winter in assessing what they were and what they weren’t, and as Williams and the baseball operations staff has tried to advance a rebuild, there have been few decisions that have either torpedoed its goals or completely backfired. Sure, it made little sense to have Matt Kemp start this season on the roster despite trading for him. Yes, I would love to have seen if the team’s early-season struggles would’ve been mitigated with Nick Senzel on the team. But the theme of how the Reds have been run over the last little while has been one of prudence and logic, not an insignificant development considering how often those things seemed absent in the middle of the decade.
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The result has been a team that, as frustrating as it can be, has a core of players most of us can envision being a part of a genuinely good Reds team and a minor league system that seems markedly healthier than it was even a year or two after the rebuild began.
The progress hasn’t come without a steady stream of relatively inexpensive players here to either compete for open roster spots, serve as minor upgrades, provide depth or fill holes. I don’t know what kind of impact players like Derek Dietrich, José Iglesias, Curt Casali and Jared Hughes will have in the coming seasons, but it is comforting that the people in charge have established a track record of obtaining relatively cheap, effective talent.
The smart teams do that. They also know how and when to spend money.
The Reds have two players with eight-figure salaries committed to them next season. Even if it’s fair to wonder what kind of player Joey Votto will be as he makes $25 million per season over the next four years, he’s performed well enough for most of his deal that it’s hard to call the contract a total disaster. Given how many players on the current team are either approaching or in their arbitration years as well as how many of Votto’s teammates have a chance to walk this winter, it’s hard to argue that the Reds are being swallowed by the money Votto is owed.
Quite the contrary, in fact. Factoring in the few players locked into a specific salary in addition to the guys due for raises in arbitration-eligible years, the Reds stand to have somewhere between $75 and $80 million committed in 2020 to players on the 2019 team. Given that this year’s Opening Day payroll was around $125 million and the sense that taking a step backward next season would be disastrous, there’s both flexibility and incentive to spend some money, wisely, this offseason.
Which, of course, means free agency. And trades involving guys that aren’t entering their walk years, both this winter and this month. It can also mean extensions for Reds players with no contract for next season.
This is a lot to weigh, for us as fans but more importantly to a front office that has done solid work in making the Reds better. The challenge is balancing the need for short-term help, the desire to not want to bail on the season, and potentially taking this year’s somewhat average club and transforming it into a really good one next season.
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Meaning that whatever moves the Reds make must occur only after Williams and staff have thoroughly assessed things like the odds of leapfrogging nearly the entire National League to qualify for the playoffs and how one or two moves might strengthen their chances, and whether it’s forgoing a last-ditch, long-shot effort for the sake of hanging on to long-term assets. They need complete appraisals of the market for controllable upgrades, which of their own prospects might be expendable, and whether acquisitions they could make at this deadline might come cheaper this winter.
They need to accurately gauge what the market could be for Yasiel Puig if he hits free agency and determine the true risk/reward/financial fallout equation involved in attempting to keep him. They also need to have a strong idea of what the backup plan is if Puig is not a part of their plans moving forward, and whether the gains in a possible trade of their right fielder by July 31 outweigh the void left by a player who’s among the team’s most popular, and recently, one of their most productive.
There has to be a fair measurement of how much the quality starting pitching the Reds have had in 2019 will carry over into 2020, and whether last offseason’s mandate to get the pitching can turn into an effort to get even better pitching.
If they Reds sell, how will they replace what they’ve parted with? If they buy, how can they justify the cost? If they aim to go for it this year, how much will they have compromised their chances of winning next year and beyond?
I don’t know the answers. I hope Dick Williams does.
But figuring out what the right approach will be as the deadline draws closer is not as simple as glancing at the standings and categorizing the Reds as either buying or selling. It instead requires detailed, nuanced thinking and difficult decision-making, and the willingness to eschew what might be instantly emotionally satisfying in favor of what might reflect shrewdness and intelligence.
For Dick Williams, it means more of the same.
(Top image: Reds President of Baseball Operations Dick Williams. Joe Robbins / Getty Images)