Five Dumb Predictions for the 2024 Cincinnati Reds
They’re dumb, and they’re spectacular!
It has been something of an odd year for the prognostication corner of Red Reporter HQ.
Gone is Joey Votto, stalwart that he was, the sabermetric dream of a player who graced the roster of the Cincinnati Reds long before they themselves embraced sabermetrics - and long after. In his stead sit a pile of inexperienced youngsters, the small sample size bugaboos we long ago learned not to trust until they’d given us much more data to process. Said youngsters are talented, though - at least, the ones who are still healthy and unsuspended, that is.
In the place of the Cincinnati Reds we’ve grown up knowing are the Cincinnati Reds we’ll follow this year, a club who eschewed the nostalgic options in favor of a youth movement through and through. Reclamation projects and position-shifters as imports alongside young players versatile enough to seemingly be ‘the answer’ at any and all positions should someone else fall around them.
And, as the fates would have it, fall around them they have.
It’s Opening Day in Cincinnati, a day revered in its locale as much as any day anywhere. And while there are nearly zero guarantees located on the roster of the Cincinnati Reds for 2024, there are just enough unknowns with nearly limitless upsides that something is bound to break towards the positive this year.
With that in mind, here are Five Dumb Predictions for your 2024 Cincinnati Reds.
Nick Lodolo leads the Reds in IP, WAR
Hunter Greene has had Tommy John surgery and just spent time on the 60-day IL in 2023 with a hip issue. Graham Ashcraft spent time on the 60-day IL last year, too. Brandon Williamson is going to begin the year on the IL, while Frankie Montas - the team’s Opening Day starter - missed nearly all of 2023 after having major shoulder surgery, too.
Still, I just get the feeling that Nick Lodolo has been tabbed as ‘the injured guy’ more than his peers so far in his barely existent career, and that seems odd to me. When I’ve watched him pitch when healthy, the guy looks more like an ace-in-waiting than any of the other guys listed.
Though he fought a tibia issue in his lost 2023 and that lingered into spring training, he’s healthy now and ready to take a spot in the rotation within the second week of the regular season, and I think the guy we saw pitch to a 119 ERA+ in 19 starts as a rookie in 2022 is more of who we’ll see in 2024. In fact, I think he takes a step beyond those marks while emerging as the best starter on the roster.
168 IP, 3.22 ERA (3.44 FIP) and a 4.40 K/BB worth drooling over is my call.
Elly De La Cruz joins the 25/80 club...creates the 30/80 club
The painted yard lines on the concrete turf at Riverfront Stadium still managed to flutter in the wind as a Red donning the jersey with 44 on its back sped past at unimaginable speeds.
While the turf there eventually took its toll on the great Eric Davis, it’s undeniable that the work he put in across 1986-1987 remains some of the most elite the baseball world has ever seen. In 261 games across those years, he logged a ridiculous 64 dingers and 130 swiped bags, in the process adding a 25/80 and 35/50 year to his one-time Hall of Fame caliber ledger. As Baseball Reference notes, he and Rickey Henderson are the only two players to ever join the 25/80 club, while Reds legend (and Hall of Famer) Joe Morgan hopped into the 25/60 club twice in his illustrious career.
Elly De La Cruz might still strike out over a quarter of the time in 2024, and his OBP may struggle to top .310, but I remain convinced he’s the kind of game-changing talent with his bat and legs to make the homers/steals clubs shake within their boots. I think he bonks his way to 37 homers in an homage to the previous wearer of #44, and does so in a season where he swipes 81 bags to one-up him.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand hits 42 homers
Christian Encarnacion-Strand is going to hit 42 homers.
Fernando Cruz leads all Reds relievers in K/9
Fernando was drafted in the 6th round of the 2007 MLB Draft, the same draft that produced the likes of now-finished guys like Madison Bumgarner, David Price, likely Mike Moustakas, and Devin Mesoraco. Still, Cruz didn’t even make the bigs until late in 2022, and his 4.91 ERA across 66.0 IP in 2023 doesn’t look all that impressive on the surface.
Thing is, he’s a pitcher who seemingly needed the right advice along the way, and he didn’t get that until 2022 with the Reds and minor league pitching coach Casey Weathers. As relayed by The Enquirer’s Charlie Goldsmith, the splitter that Cruz threw was always a portion of his arsenal, but it was Weathers who suggested he make it the pitch he built his entire pitching process around, and Cruz’s underlying numbers - including his stellar 2.83 FIP last year - reflect how good that approach could be.
He boasted a tremendous 13.4 K/9 last year, so this is hardly a step way out on a limb. That said, I think Cruz emerges as a very, very valuable member of the team’s late-inning bullpen this year, and this is the best way I can emphasize that despite the bigger money signings they brought in around him.
The Reds win 86 games and make the playoffs
84 wins got the Arizona Diamondbacks into the playoffs last year. While I don’t think 86 wins gets the Reds to the mountaintop of the NL Central in 2024, I do think it will be enough to sneak them into the vast expanse that is the modern day MLB playoff system.
This is an incomplete team dealing with major injuries to key players, but I am at least optimistic that the injuries this time are are to their position players while their arms are mostly healthy. I think this is a team that, fingers crossed, actually ends up leaning on its pitching as they work their way to a better ending than last year, even if it will once again put them in a position in late July to make a move to better the present at the cost of the nebulous future, something Nick Krall has yet to commit to at any point.
Still, I think that may well be good enough in a murky National League outside of the West.
This is also me wearing my optimist helmet.
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Happy Opening Day, folks!