GOODYEAR, ARIZONA—From a narrative standpoint, the 2025 Reds don’t cleanly fall into any box. This core has never made the playoffs before, so they’re not the contender trying to take the next step. They’re not the rebuilding team hoping for prospects to develop into core pieces.
Players also aren’t telling themselves that they’re the upstart young team about to break the door down. They now recognize they made that mistake last year.
“In 2024, after missing the playoffs by a game in 2023, it was all optimism,” says TJ Friedl. “Everyone was pumped up. We had just barely missed the playoffs. We thought, Surely, let’s do the same thing we did last year and we’ll make the playoffs.”
After winning 82 games in 2023, everyone thought the young core would progress, develop, and get the Reds into the playoffs in 2024. They’d been basically as good as the Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2023 regular season, and the Diamondbacks went on to win the National League and play in the World Series.
Twelve months ago, the Reds’ clubhouse felt like certain that the club would break the door down and become the talk of the NL. They went 77-85.
“If you’re constantly focusing on expectations, every time you feel the ground shake you’re going to look up and see a giant bomb,” says Jake Fraley. “It’ll be like, Wow, how the hell are we going to get out of this?”
The Reds aren’t falling into the same optimism trap entering 2025. “We just want to go out and do it,” says Spencer Steer. “We’ve talked about it. We’ve failed. We haven’t lived up to expectations. The feeling is we know who we are and we know we have a good team. We all understand what went wrong last season. We’ll put our heads down and be better and go do what people expect from us.”
During the offseason, the Reds’ front office prioritized acquiring veterans who knew how to win. That started with manager Terry Francona, who’s getting to learn the personality of a young roster that had impressed him from afar. “I had heard early on we had a good bunch of kids,” he says, “and now we’ve actually signed some veterans (Austin Hays, Wade Miley).”
The core is young, but it’s also not as naive as it may have been heading into 2024. “Last year, everybody put an extreme amount of expectations on us,” Fraley says. “Expectation is the wrong route to take. Yes, you have to hold yourself accountable and have an insight to what you want to achieve. But those are things that need to be established, and then you push them aside.”
The 2024 season, according to Friedl and several other players, “punched them in the mouth.” It started with some terrible luck in Spring Training when Friedl broke his thumb and Matt McLain tore his labrum. Noelvi Marte, who was on track to be the everyday third baseman, got suspended for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
The Reds were climbing uphill before the season even started, and the weight of expectation made things worse. “Last year was a learning experience for everyone about how hard this game really is,” Friedl says. “You’re not just going to roll in here and have the same season you had last year just because it’s the same core group.”
There was a good team somewhere within the 2024 Reds, and their performances versus contenders like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Phillies reinforced the group’s talent. There were just some terrible mistakes on the bases and in the field that kept getting in their way. There were injuries.
There were a lot of one-run losses. After going 35-29 in one-run games in 2023, the 2024 Reds went 15-28 in one-run decisions. Cincinnati would play great baseball one week and then get steamrolled the next. They didn’t know how to win yet.
As the 2025 Reds figure out what they’re going to be, there’s talk of more accountability. There’s more focus on defense and base running.
Francona strikes a unique balance. He’s very easy to relate to, says Fraley. “When you meet him, you get the understanding of why he is who he is. The first time I talked to him, I felt like I’ve known him for 10 years.”
Francona also has a track record of getting teams to play the right way. He took the Reds job because he sees a lot of potential in this group. But all he’s talking about is the work in front of them.
He’s impressed by the personality of the roster and the maturity that the young core is starting to carry itself with. “We’ve got a really good group of guys,” Francona says. “I heard that before I was here. They look you in the eye. They listen. They speak. From a team standpoint, everybody realizes that we’d like to do better. That’s why we’re here. We’ll start working on that.”
Charlie Goldsmith has covered the Reds and Bengals since 2020, and his newsletter on the teams can be found at charlieschalkboard.substack.com. He’s @CharlieG__ on X.
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