What a time to be alive...
It's a fun time to be a Reds fan, if you can believe it!
As I write this, the Cincinnati Reds are in first place, a half-game ahead of Milwaukee in the National League’s Central Division.
This is still astounding to me. The Reds have been mostly awful for the last three decades. This isn’t news to you, I know. But for the last couple of weeks, it’s like we’ve been in a dream world. And I don’t want to wake up.
The 12-game winning streak that was snapped last Saturday came pretty much out of nowhere. Sure, the Reds had shown some signs of being competitive. They were fighting and scratching and clawing every single game, and collecting comeback wins more often than we should have expected. But as recently as May 25, the Reds were in dead last place, six games out of first. Last place. That’s pretty much what everyone expected, right?
Now, after a long winning streak that included an 8-1 road trip — with a sweep of the defending champs in Houston — the Reds are a legitimate contender for a playoff spot. I really can’t believe I’m writing those words, but it’s true!
How did we get here? Well, a bunch of the kids were way better than expected, way earlier than expected. That’s the short version. Literally no one predicted that Matt McLain and Elly De La Cruz and Andrew Abbott would be this good at the big league level in the first half of the 2023 season. No one. If I’m wrong, please show me the receipts. I want to see the person who sincerely thought those three were going to be among the Reds best players before we even reached July.
I don’t really have some hot take here in today’s newsletter — though you should immediately forward it to every Reds fan you know. (Just tell them that there are hot takes galore contained within each glorious missive from me.) I’m not going to try to analyze in granular detail how the Reds arrived at this point. (Short answer to that: huge kudos to the player development staff in the Cincinnati organization.) Instead, I’m going to do what I’ve been doing for years. I’m going to react as a fan first.
And this has been FUN. For a long time, I’ve been hoping for a fun team to root for. It has been many years since I hoped for a Reds team to be actually good. That’s not what we do, right? I just assume they’ll be bad most of the time. The club’s owners for pretty much my entire life have been an embarrassment, so why should I expect that any individual Reds team will be good?
At some point, beaten down by years of disappointment, I decided that I just need them to be fun. That’s where I am in my Reds fandom at this point. And while this year’s team, fresh off a 100-loss season, started the season poorly, I was still pretty happy. They were bad, but at least they were interesting! They were fun. And that’s all I feel comfortable asking for.
But now…is it possible that the Reds are both fun…and good? Maybe not, for reasons that I discussed in my column for the Mother Ship that is linked below. There are serious questions about the pitching, and based on past experience, I have little reason to believe that Reds management will seek to rectify that particular problem by the trade deadline. As they say: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me every single season for thirty-three long, painful years, shame on me.
But right now, in this moment, the Reds are fun. And they’re in first place. I feel guilty asking for more than that. Such is the life of a Reds fan in the year 2023.
But I do want more. And these Reds have me hoping that the best is yet to come.
What a time to be alive.
This week at Cincinnati Magazine: It’s been a Reds season for the ages so far
When the history of Great American Ball Park is written, last Friday night’s win over Atlanta will go down as one of the wildest regular season contests Reds fans have ever experienced. Before an exuberant sellout crowd of 43,086, Cincinnati extended its winning streak to 12 games behind 21-year-old Elly De La Cruz, who hit for the cycle, and 39-year-old Joey Votto, who clobbered two home runs in the 11-10 victory.
The way the Reds have been winning games—especially during the 12-game winning streak—is why Reds fans are in such a frenzy. The first piece of the equation is something we’ve been discussing here in the digital pages of Cincinnati Magazine all season long: these talented kids. De La Cruz was the star on Friday, becoming the fifth-youngest player in MLB history to hit a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game, but he’s far from the only rookie contributing. Matt McLain, Spencer Steer, and Will Benson are all well-above average hitters despite their inexperience, and lefty Andrew Abbott has been dazzling on the mound so far in his maiden campaign. More about the pitchers in a moment.
The second element in this winning mixture has been a lineup that doesn’t have a weak spot on most days, at least in the 1 through 8 spots in the order. Only De La Cruz has performed at a higher clip than Jake Fraley and TJ Friedl, and Votto’s strong return has strengthened a group that has opposing pitchers quaking in their cleats. Read the rest of this week’s Reds column over at Cincinnati Magazine.
What’s Chad Watching?
I’ve mentioned the last couple of weeks that our family is in the middle of a big move. We finally moved this week! There’s one lesson I’ve learned during this process of getting our home ready to sell, putting it on the market, bringing a realtor on board, selling the house, packing things up — donating, selling, or throwing away what we couldn’t take with us — and moving to a new home six hours away. And now, Devoted Reader, I’m going to share that lesson with you. It’s this:
If you’ve lived in a house for more than 15 years, never move. Just stay there for the rest of your entire godforsaken life.
We’re very happy to be in a new home and to be finished with the moving process. But now we have to figure out where everything goes here and settle in to the new place. So the work isn’t finished, but we’re actually in our new home. Hopefully things will return to normal soon, and I can get back to watching as many dumb movies as I can.
So anyway, the first movie we watched in our new place: “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” An absolute classic. I needed a laugh after this experience.
Also: Milk was a bad choice.
The World’s Most Dangerous Podcast: The First-Place Reds are the Hottest Team in Baseball!
The Cincinnati Reds have used a 12-game winning streak to take over first place in the National League Central division, and things couldn't be better! Nate and I discussed Joey Votto's return, Jonathan India's leadership, Elly De La Cruz's magnificence, and what the Reds should do about the pitching quandary. It's as much fun as we've had at The Riverfront in a long, long time! Come along for the ride with us.
You can find The Riverfront wherever you download podcasts (Apple, Spotify, etc.), or you can click here to subscribe (for free!). If you don’t do the audio thing, we have a YouTube channel, too!