The 2022 Reds Could Be the Worst Team Ever Assembled
What can you say about the Cincinnati Reds? The Not-So Big Red Machine has been losing with mechanical precision of late. Their 3-22 record as of Cinco de Mayo puts them on pace to finish the season with a 20-142 record. That win percentage (.120) is lower than the worst single-season win percentage in the sport’s history, a .130 mark set by the Cleveland Spiders all the way back in 1899.
That Spiders team lost an astonishing 40 of their last 41 games, and the way the Reds have been playing, they may just challenge that record too. Wednesday’s 18-4 blowout in Milwaukee represented just the latest humiliation in a string of lackluster performances. Surely the Reds can’t be this bad and will at least clear the 40-win threshold before the season is out, though… right?
The offseason consisted of Reds management taking one PR black eye after another, selling off or parting ways with many of their high-impact contributors in Jesse Winker, Nick Castellanos, Sonny Gray, Wade Miley, Eugenio Suárez and Tucker Barnhart. These cost-cutting moves were made, in the words of Reds GM Nick Krall, to “align our payroll to our resources”. The Reds’ payroll previously sat at a record $149 million before the pandemic messed with the 2020 season, and it now sits at around $111 million according to Fangraphs, with Joey Votto and Mike Moustakas’s salaries taking up a massive chunk of that ledger. To make matters worse, team president Phil Castellini, son of Reds’ owner Bob Castellini, couldn’t even pretend to sympathize with their depressed fans. His response to fans who are frustrated with the team? “Well, where you gonna go?”
As a testament to how loyal the Reds’ fanbase truly is, they’ve still managed to rank 19th in average attendance so far this year despite their atrocious product. Their attendance is almost surely bound to freefall deeper into the summer if their losing ways continue, however. Even the venerable Joey Votto has been a Votto-Mattic out to this point, with an uncharacteristic 35 wRC+ and -1.1 WAR perhaps as indicative of his frustrations with the state of the team as they are his advanced age. One of the team’s few significant additions over the offseason, left-fielder Tommy Pham, candidly explained why he settled for signing with the Reds in this buzz-worthy quote: “I’m playing to get my numbers, man. I’m being dead honest with you…I’m playing to get some numbers. I don’t care about anything else. I’m looking out for me.” Humorously, he went 1-26 in the season’s first nine games after giving this comment, but it goes to show that no one truly wants to be in the Reds’ dugout right now. The team’s morale must be at an all-time low after a now nine-game losing streak of one punishing defeat after another.
The Reds’ .585 team OPS this season is predictably 30th in MLB, but their paltry .203 team batting average is somehow one spot above last at 29th (the Diamondbacks are hitting just .191!). We know the ball is dead this year, but is it really that dead? Pham has ironically been their best hitter after his lousy start, with an overall line of .247/.348/.468 (133 wRC+), but pretty much no other full-time position player has been even average – and the pitching staff hasn’t been any better. Their -87 run differential through 25 games dwarfs the second-worst Royals and their -39 differential. The Reds’ top five innings-eaters so far this year have been Tyler Mahle, Vladimir Gutierrez, Hunter Greene, Reiver Sanmartin, and Nick Lodolo. Now, want to hear their ERA’s? 7.01, 8.86, 6.00, 13.78, and 5.52, respectively. Big yikes. Luis Castillo might be back from the IL in a few days, but let’s face it, he’s not going to save them. If he’s lucky, he’ll have a new locker by July.
Sports fans in Cincinnati will have to spend their discretionary income on Bengals games this year and boycott the travesty taking place at Great American Ball Park. One of the most storied franchises in the history of baseball has become nothing less than an unmitigated disaster. The only good news for Reds fans this year is that things can’t get any worse… until they do.
