Pretty exciting news in Reds Country this week, as Major League Baseball announced that the Reds and Braves would be playing at Bristol Motor Speedway next August. If you aren’t familiar with the world’s fastest half-mile, it’s a legendary NASCAR track in northeastern Tennessee that opened in 1961 and seats 146,000 fans. You’re telling me that Elly De La Cruz and the Reds will be playing a game against Ronald Acuña and the Braves in the birthplace of country music? I can’t wait.
Alas, I must be patient. There are almost 12 full months until that game, so I have little choice, right? I’ll purchase my tickets when they become available, and I’ll wait. But I have to say that I’m completely out of patience with the Reds otherwise.
I guess that’s not quite true or, at least, it depends on what we mean by “patience.” I’m perfectly willing to be patient with guys like Hunter Greene and Elly De La Cruz, and here in the digital pages of Cincinnati Magazine I’ve been urging all of you to do the same. It takes a while for the kids to develop and prove themselves at the big league level. And you know what? I was right! (I have to mark this occasion in print because it happens so rarely.)
Reds fans have been frustrated with Greene practically since the day he arrived in the big leagues. Early this season, complaints continued to ring out about his inability to pitch deep into games. But now we look up in mid-August, and the 24-year-old is a certified ace with a 2.90 ERA and his first All-Star Game nod under his belt. He’s exactly what Cincinnati fans hoped for when he was drafted in the first round in 2017.
Same with Elly. People will try to deny it now, and many tweets have been deleted, but a certain segment of the Reds fan base was screaming for him to be sent to the minors earlier this season. Four months later, and De La Cruz has far and away been the Reds’ best hitter and another first-time All-Star. With his next stolen base, Elly will become only the fifth big leaguer ever to collect 20 homers and 60 steals in a season.* In his first full season! The guy is even better than advertised, if that’s possible. [*Interestingly, when Elly steals that base, three of the five players to accomplish the feat will have been Reds. De La Cruz will join Eric Davis and Joe Morgan on the list, along with Acuña and Rickey Henderson.]
So, you see, I can be patient when it’s warranted. A century-plus of baseball history has shown us that we need to be patient with young players. On the other hand, I have completely lost patience with the folks running the Cincinnati Reds. Three decades-plus of Cincinnati baseball history has shown us that you should never, ever trust Reds ownership and management.
Paul Daugherty was a longtime local sports columnist at The Enquirer, and I will readily admit that I disagreed with many of his hot takes over the years. After retiring, he now pens a newsletter to which I happily subscribe—and one of his recent submissions tracked my thinking on the Reds pretty well.
Baseball seasons aren’t supposed to end in July, only around here they have for eight of the last 11 seasons, and that’s with giving the Reds credit for making the playoffs in the 60-game Bastard Season of 2020. And now, they’ve taken a standing-eight on 2024. I’m just tired of it. So damned tired.
I invented the term Lost Decade to describe the ’90s Bengals. What do we call the Reds since 2012? Groundhog Decade?
I’d love to give The Club some slack, but it hasn’t earned it. Trust the process? Why?
In 2006, Bob Castellini and his ownership group made some promises to you, the fan. “We’re buying the Reds to win,” he said at his introductory press conference. “Anything else is unacceptable.”
Yep, “unacceptable” is a pretty good word to describe what we’ve seen in the intervening 18 years. We’ve gone from “We’re buying the Reds to win” to “We’re trying to eliminate peaks and valleys.” The Reds continually ask us to be patient and trust the process while fans are forced to endure losing season after losing season.
I’m with Daugherty. I’m tired. Tired of waiting for ownership to demonstrate they have any interest whatsoever in putting a winning team on the field. Tired of listening to the powers that be tell us about the great young talent in the organization, while at the same time refusing to improve the club at two consecutive trade deadlines. Tired of watching the team neglect the holes on the roster over the winter, choosing instead to sign an infielder who has produced at a below-replacement-level clip and a pitcher who they promptly traded away for a bag of magic beans.
You can’t blame the Castellinis and Nick Krall for all the losses over the last 33 years of disaster, failure, and betrayal. But since taking over the club nearly two decades ago, what have they done to earn the benefit of the doubt? I’m seriously curious about this. If you’re willing to be patient and trust the process with this current Cincinnati management team, I’d love to hear your reasoning. Come over to X and give me your best arguments. I promise I’ll respond in good faith.
I love the Reds, and I always will. I’m hopeless, remember? But I’m tired of waiting for a Reds team that is a real playoff contender. I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with Cincinnati playing games at NASCAR tracks and in corn fields.
When does the Bengals’ season begin?
Chad Dotson helms Reds coverage at Cincinnati Magazine and hosts a long-running Reds podcast, The Riverfront. His newsletter about Cincinnati sports can be found at chaddotson.com. He’s @dotsonc on Twitter.
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