If the New York Mets went out like chumps, then it can fairly be said that the Cincinnati Reds went in like chumps. These two outfits, plus maybe the Arizona Diamondbacks, entered into a revolving door and spun around for a while, dizzy and confused, and when the door spit the other two out into the cold, the Reds fell backward into relevance. They lost their final game of the regular season and still had a champagne party afterward.
Cincinnati did not surge proudly to the finish line. Often, in a contest with the Mets, it pays to wait for gravity to do its thing, and it has once again chosen to collect first the team from Queens. The Mets played to a miserable 38–55 record after June 12, third worst in the majors; meanwhile the Reds played to an entirely ho-hum 48-45 record. They outscored their opponents over this span of 93 games by a total of two runs. The last time these guys were better than third place in their division was May 7. Their record was below .500 as recently as Sept. 16. They lost a series at home to the Pittsburgh Pirates not even one week ago. When the Reds had a chance to clinch their wild-card spot with a win Sunday, they managed just five hits and two runs and lost, 4–2 to the Brewers, then had to wait around for the Mets to also lose. In the end, it is the Reds who claim the glory of becoming just the fourth team ever to make the postseason with fewer than 84 wins. The last club to do so, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, won the World Series, so perhaps anything is possible.
It's not the big heroic storming of the gates that a team might have imagined during the preseason. Gavin Lux compared the Reds to cockroaches Sunday, and he plays for the team. "You can’t kill us," Lux said, per the Cincinnati Enquirer. To extend the analogy: When you do see them, you might feel compelled to try to kill them. They are the first team in MLB history to have no qualified batter hit at least .270, no batter reach 25 home runs, no pitcher collect 15 wins, and no pitcher record at least 200 strikeouts, but still make the postseason, per Opta Sports. They are simply not serious: The Reds rank 19th in baseball by active payroll, per Spotrac, and 23rd in baseball by total payroll commitments. This is matched well to their offensive production: Per MLB, they rank 19th in team OPS (.706), and 21st in team slugging (.391). They don't even have fun on the bases anymore: After ranking first and third in swiped bags in 2023 and 2024, respectively, the Reds stole just 105 bases this year, ranking 19th in the majors.
The Reds pitch well, and staff ace Hunter Greene is fun when healthy. He only made 19 starts this year, but he pitched to a 0.94 WHIP, and notched a complete game shutout in his penultimate appearance of the season. Cincinnati's pitchers were good all year, and the front office went out and got Zack Littell from the Rays at the deadline, which allowed them to move Nick Martinez to the bullpen. The bullpen held opposing hitters to a .228 average, the fourth-lowest figure in baseball. And due to a combination of Cincinnati's pitchers being reasonably durable and manager Terry Francona being ancient, those relievers threw the sixth-fewest innings this season, meaning that at least in theory, they should be among the fresher bullpens in the field.
The Reds do have cool guys on their roster. Elly De La Cruz wasn't quite as productive this season, but he's still the answer to the question, "What if Oneil Cruz were any good?" Ke'Bryan Hayes didn't exactly light it up in 52 games post-deadline, producing a ghastly but characteristic OPS+ of 78, but he's great to watch in the field, and somehow makes perfect sense in a Reds uniform. The idea of Noelvi Marté is interesting. The idea of Chase Burns—a rocket-armed 22-year-old starter who has to practice yelling at Nick Martinez in order to light his competitive fire—is tantalizing. It's just that baseball fans are conditioned by experience to regard every potentially cool new Reds player the way a seasoned tomato farmer regards yellow blossoms in late August: cute and interesting, but unlikely to thrive in October and in no way encouraging of multi-seasonal growth.
Cincinnati will face the Los Angeles Dodgers in a best-of-three wild-card series starting Tuesday night. The Reds went 1–5 against the Dodgers this season, and were outscored 30–15. On the other hand, the last time the Reds won a playoff series, it was in a sweep of the Dodgers. Cincinnati's best pitcher that year was Pete Schourek. Their best position player was Reggie Sanders. The current head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes football team played 33 games for those Reds. The year was 1995.
The Mets needed just one dead-cat bounce over the final month of this season to slink into the playoffs, and spare owner Steve Cohen the indignity of having to apologize to fans for the second time this season. Instead the force of their collision with the pavement reverberated in Cincinnati, and trampolined the Reds into the postseason for the first time in a non-shortened season since 2013. Like cockroaches, you can totally kill these guys. Also like cockroaches, first they have to find their way into the light. That part is usually an accident.
