The Reds - neither good, nor bad - are still kind of in this thing (for now)
Mediocrity in St. Louis precedes a trip to Yankee Stadium.
The rather mediocre Cincinnati Reds rolled into St. Louis last Thursday to do battle with the rather mediocre St. Louis Cardinals over the weekend, and an all sides agree to disagree result was had.
Each team won a pair of games. Twice the Reds looked like a quality team, twice they looked as if they could not be more aloof. As we all awoke on Monday morning, the standings show that just two - two - teams in the National League currently have fewer than the 39 wins the Reds currently have posted in their win column.
That’s a pretty precarious situation to navigate given that today, July 1st, means we’re officially within the same calendar month as this season’s official trade deadline.
However...
There currently are seven National League ballclubs who are clutching the same level of passive-aggressive mediocrity. Seven of them - seven! - have between the same 39 wins owned by the Reds and 41 wins on the season, meaning this neither good nor bad baseball club is tantalizingly close to thinking they are a whole lot more than that.
It’s perhaps a horrendous indictment of the modern state of the game, where 40% of the entirety of the league makes the ‘playoffs’ despite playing 162 times during the regular season. Simply staying within earshot of a ‘playoff spot’ throughout the season’s first 100 games means you get the opportunity to make a splash at or near the deadline and give your club a slightly better chance to be good for the only games that really matter: the final 60+ regular season games and the ‘playoff’ game you may earn with your 50.8% overall win percentage.
The Reds are not there yet. To get there, they’ll next need to go through the powerhouse New York Yankees at their home in Yankee Stadium, and only two clubs in all of Major League Baseball have lost fewer home games this year than the Bronx Bombers. That tantalizingly close spot in the standings the Reds hold close at the moment could, over the three days in New York, leave them instead just a game short of being ten games under .500, further burying themselves behind the muck and mire of those clubs slugging it out for the final sneak-in Wild Card spots this year.
Considering there’s now just 29 days left until the trade deadline, that could flip their intentions entirely. Flirting with being ten games under .500 when so, so many other teams are in need of good players for a playoff push could mean the Reds could be persuaded to become sellers rather than buyers - or even their patented position of hold-tighters.
All that stands in the way is Aaron Judge and Juan Soto and the biggest, baddest franchise in the history of the game.