The Reds are in scramble mode, and they aren’t scrambling well at all

Another one-run loss punctuated their series in Los Angeles.

The Chicago White Sox began giving away their best players last season as they embarked upon a deep rebuild, and they dealt ace Dylan Cease to the San Diego Padres as the 2024 season was on the horizon. The Miami Marlins, meanwhile, made their big deal with the Padres in early May, waving their own white flag after a dismal start by sending batting champ Luis Arraez out of town as they punted on this season.

The Los Angeles Angels, meanwhile, watched Shohei Ohtani sign across Los Angeles with the Dodgers and then saw superstar Mike Trout once again go down injured. The Colorado Rockies are, as they have been forever, simply a complete and abject disaster.

If you think that’s an odd way to begin an article about the Cincinnati Reds, well, I’ll point you to the MLB standings on this, the morning of May 20th. Right now, only the White Sox, Marlins, Angels, and Rockies have fewer wins than the Reds, who at 19-28 once again reside in their familiar home in the basement of the National League’s Central division. It’s been a painful and pitiful slide, one devoid of both entertainment and production, their offense a complete black hole as they try to weather their way back to full strength at some undefined point on the late-summer calendar.

This Reds team cannot hit. This Reds team, unlike last year’s, has no ready-made alternatives waiting at AAA who can at least reset the clock on the frustration. This is what they have, who they have, and they’re just going to be forced to figure it out for another few weeks until they can maybe, maybe get a couple of reinforcements back into their lineup.

Only the Marlins (.284) and White Sox (.272) have worse collective wOBA marks as a team than the Reds (.292). The Reds are hitting .217, for those who prefer to be perturbed by a different disastrous statistic - that’s second worst in all of baseball. Over the last 30 days, their .212 average is the worst in all of baseball, as is their .326 slugging percentage, .276 wOBA, and 72 wRC+.

The lone saving grace in our lifelong hope that this franchise finally finds some positive footing is that their record in one-run games is positively hilarious. Last season, you may recall, saw they both play in more one-run games than any other club and win more one-run games than any other club, the kind of coin-flip luck that carried their flawed club deeper into the playoff chase than their underlying metrics suggested they deserved. This year, however, they’re an embarrassing 1-11 in said one-run affairs, and while their underlying offensive metrics make ‘one-run’ feel like an entire touchdown gap, there’s some belief that they may well be due some serious regression in that going forward.

Will they, though? Or is this just already a cosmic correction for last year’s buena suerte?

Here it is, May the 20th, and the two things we’re looking at to salvage the season are a) there’s nobody to call up so they’re just going to have to not suck so bad until they’re healthier in a coupla weeks and b) maybe they’ll get luckier.

If you happen to come across a Cincinnati Reds voodoo doll in the coming days, maybe do us all a solid and un-stab it in the heart.