I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that you, like me, consider yourself a hardcore Cincinnati Reds fan. Here’s what tipped me off: You’re still reading about the Reds after Labor Day. I have more experience than most when it comes to watching this franchise long after it became clear they were dead in the water, so it’s time to put together our survival guide for September in a lost season.
I offer four instructions, developed over 30 years of (usually) watching this exact scenario play out, for finding real joy in a team that’s mathematically finished. Print it out. Laminate it if you have to. I fear you’ll need it most years.
Your Cincinnati Reds are 69-75, last in the National League Central, 19.5 games behind Milwaukee with 18 games left to play. I waved the white flag in this space back at the trade deadline and, in a development that will not surprise any of the Devoted Readers of this column, I was completely correct. And yet over Labor Day weekend our last-place club gave us an entertaining stretch of baseball on the home turf. Saturday’s 5-3 victory was powered by a Matt McLain go-ahead homer and Emilio Pagan escaping a bases-loaded jam in the ninth inning. The following day, the Redlegs won 12-8 in a game that had no business being that entertaining in a September such as this one. (Thank you, Elly De La Cruz.)
That’s the first instruction: Watch the game in front of you. Sometimes it will be fun!
I know how this month usually goes. Since the 1990 World Series, the Reds have reached October six times in 36 years (and that’s including 2020 and 2025, both of which feel fraudulent). The rest of these Septembers have looked exactly like this one. But baseball is a different sport. What do they always say? The best teams will lose 60 games and the worst teams will win 60 games and everyone is just fighting over the other 40. There will still be fun games the rest of the way, as this weekend showed us.
Second instruction: Pay attention to what Elly De La Cruz is doing. It’s remarkable and seems to be mostly going under the radar, even here in Cincinnati. Charlie Goldsmith wrote about it over the weekend, and he’s right. Elly is hitting .281/.361/.498 with 24 homers (including another last night in Los Angeles) and appears to be finishing the season strong for the first time in his young career. The kid is special, and he’s only getting better.
I used to counsel fans to watch every single Joey Votto at-bat, because players like him don’t pull on a Reds jersey very often. I feel exactly the same about Elly, and local radio voice Mo Egger may have put it best: “He plays hard. He plays hurt. He plays everyday, probably to his detriment. By all accounts he’s a terrific teammate. He seems to take his craft seriously. The Reds have myriad problems. Anyone who includes Elly’s performance on the list of them either isn’t really paying attention or is asking him to live up to an impossible standard.”
Third instruction: Hunt for the kid who just got here. This is the one joy dead Septembers have occasionally provided around these parts.
Let’s start with the most famous version for most of us. In 1997, with the Reds sputtering down the stretch, Cincinnati traded for two young nobodies from Kansas City named Chris Stynes and Jon Nunnally. Both caught fire immediately. Nunnally hit 13 home runs in 65 games while Stynes hit .348 in 49 games. Reds fans lost their minds for a few electric weeks. Sure, neither player ever became a star and both were out of baseball a few seasons later. Who cares? For one September, they were magic and here I am still writing about them nearly three decades later.
Fast forward 10 years. The 2007 team was one of the worst I’ve ever seen, a 72-win club that was 16.5 games out of first by the end of June. Just a miserable summer. But then, on September 4, a shy kid from Canada made his big league debut, striking out as a pinch hitter. The following day, hitting eighth in the order, he went 3 for 3 with a home run and a walk. Joey Votto had arrived.
Some of these September stories become the opening chapter of a legendary career. Some become great trivia questions. In real time, we often don’t get to know which one we’re watching. That’s the fun of it.
Who will it be this year: Carlos Jorge or Juan Brito or Hector Rodriguez or, I dunno, Edwin Arroyo? I’m not going to bet the ranch on any of them, but I’ll be watching to see what happens. I’ll also be watching what might be the last chapter of Tyler Stephenson’s Reds career. His contract expires at the end of the season, and while he never became the All-Star many had hoped for after being drafted in the first round in 2015, he’s developed into one of the more reliable backstops in baseball over his six full seasons in Cincinnati. Here’s hoping he has a strong September that convinces the front office to bring him back on a new contract.
Which brings me inevitably to my fourth instruction: Separate the franchise from the baseball.
Ownership doesn’t love this team the way you do. It never has. It never will, at least as long as the Castellini family is in charge. But any hope we might have for 2027 is wrapped up in what’s actually on the field right now. Chase Burns is 15-3 with a 2.73 ERA after three innings last night in Los Angeles, already past last year’s innings total and being carefully managed the rest of the way with Brandon Williamson piggybacking behind him, as he did last night. Sal Stewart has 31 home runs and a league-leading 107 RBI and is going to be the NL Rookie of the Year. Elly is no longer just a prospect. He’s one of the two best shortstops in the majors.
That’s a real core. Whether it was built by accident or on purpose, I genuinely don’t know anymore, but it’s a genuine core.
Hope, though, as I’ve written every October of my adult life, is not a strategy. Unfortunately, though, it’s all we have. If you hand your September mood over to the Castellinis, you’ll spend the month furious, and fury is a rotten way to watch a baseball game. So don’t hand it over. Give the organization nothing. Watch Burns when you can, and enjoy Elly and Sal. When the Reds play a clunker, turn it off without a second thought. Come back tomorrow and see if something good happens.
I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this franchise to give me a real October. I guess I can wait one more winter if I have to. But last night I got to watch Chase Burns take the ball in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. That’s not nothing. In most Septembers, it’s all we have.
Chad Dotson helms Reds coverage at Cincinnati Magazine and is co-author of “The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Cincinnati Reds.” His newsletter about Cincinnati sports can be found at chaddotson.com.
