Perhaps my favorite thing about baseball is its inherent unpredictability. Even in this day and age when computer nerds control every aspect of the game—from transactions and contracts to lineups and defensive positioning—baseball has a way of making every “expert” look silly occasionally. As baseball writer Matthew Trueblood put it, “We have lots of tools for guessing how baseball might go, but baseball has even more ways of subverting our perfectly well-founded guesses.”
Three recent examples from the world of the Cincinnati Redlegs illustrate this point quite well. First up, let’s look at the Reds offense. As recently as last Friday, Cincinnati’s offensive output was among the very worst in either league. Going into the weekend series in Baltimore, the club’s hitting ranked 25th in the majors in OPS and no one with a bat in his hand had really distinguished himself.
And then the Reds went into Camden Yards and scored 38 runs in three games, winning two of three in the process. Now Cincinnati has 10 hitters with above-average offensive stats, and the club currently ranks ninth in the league in OPS. A perfect case study is our resident PED king Noelvi Marte. Before Sunday’s game, Marte was hitting .083/.154/.083. One game later he was at .316/.350/.579. Team-wide, an offense that had been struggling to dent the plate has now scored more runs than they’ve allowed, and the team was back to .500 (until last night). You can’t predict ball.
Perhaps it was luck, or maybe it was a reversion to the mean, but I have a different explanation for the Reds’ 24-run outburst in Baltimore on Sunday. The stadium giveaway that day was a bobblehead of Orioles owner David Rubenstein, a billionaire who’s spent next to nothing to improve the team since purchasing the club. I believe deeply that the Reds players saw the news of the giveaway and wanted to send a message back to Cincinnati’s ownership: Don’t get any ideas about a bobblehead, Bob. It won’t end well. Or maybe I’m just projecting. Who’s to say?
Anyway, Hunter Greene’s start on Saturday is another example of the difficulty of predicting baseball. He’d been on an incredible heater (no pun intended) entering the game, sporting a tidy 0.98 ERA. Over his last 30 starts, dating back to the beginning of last season, he was 11-6 with a 2.48 ERA. Not too shabby!
So, of course, Greene proceeded to have his worst start since 2023, allowing five runs in just three innings. But that’s baseball. As he said afterward, “This game is full of failure, and you’ve got to be able to bounce back. I wouldn’t be in the position that I am today if I wasn’t able to do that.” Indeed. I look forward to seeing how he bounces back.
And then there’s Jake Fraley. The 2025 season could not have started any worse for Cincinnati’s 30-year-old right fielder. As recently as last week, he was “hitting” .171, with a .216 on-base percentage and a .200 slugging percentage. Many fans were clamoring for Fraley to be sent to Triple-A, and they had a point. But then he got seven hits in five games and upped his slash line of .250/.339/.423. His OPS+ of 109 is not only above-average, it’s higher than Elly De La Cruz’s number.
Now Fraley’s defense has been spectacularly bad, and I’m not trying to convince you that he’s been a good player this season. I still wish the Reds had acquired another outfielder or three over the winter. But what I am trying to tell you is this: Don’t make any grand pronouncements about the Reds based on 23 games. There’s still a lot we don’t know about this year’s edition of the hometown nine.
One of the things I always try to remind fans (and myself) is this: A team is never as good as they look on their best day, and they’re never as bad as they look at their worst. The same goes for individual players in this, the most frustrating of games. Well, the most frustrating besides golf. Golf is maddening. (Note to self: I need to take my clubs to the local landfill and make a donation. I’m never going to be Rory.)
I’m sorry to tell you that this Reds team is not the 24-run juggernaut of Sunday, but maybe they’re not the 25th in OPS club either. They’re somewhere in the middle, as evidenced by their 11-12 record, I suppose. And this is good news, as far as I’m concerned. We really don’t know who the Terry Francona Reds are yet. They could be really good. They could be really bad. Or maybe—probably—they’re kind of a flawed, mostly average team that has a chance to sneak into the playoffs and give us some fun moments.
We’ll have more evidence to help elucidate exactly who and what this team is after the next three weeks. Thirteen of Cincinnati’s next 20 games are on the road, but all of them—including last night’s loss in Miami—are against teams who currently sport losing records. There may be an opportunity here for the Redlegs to make a move.
But don’t ask me to tell you how it’s gonna go. You can’t predict ball.
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,” revised, updated, and available in bookstores now. His newsletter about Cincinnati sports can be found at chaddotson.com.
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