Cincinnati Reds Are Selling Everything Except Their Two Best Young Players

The Cincinnati Reds spent the past week doing the thing they have done all season: winning just often enough to make you look up, then reminding you why the standings read the way they do. Three wins, three losses, one rainout and a doubleheader later, Cincinnati sits at 50-57, 16.5 games behind Milwaukee in the National League Central and ninth in the NL Wild Card order, six games out of the last spot. That is not a race. That is a countdown to Monday at 6 p.m. ET, when the trade deadline closes and Nick Krall decides how much of this roster is still here in August. (Yes, Monday. The deadline moved off July 31 this year.)

Six games, one rainout: the week in Cincinnati Reds news

The Reds opened the window at Busch Stadium and took two of three from the Cardinals. Friday's 4-2 win was a Rhett Lowder special: five innings, one hit, two runs, four strikeouts, and then five relievers stitching together four scoreless innings on one hit. Eugenio Suarez hit a two-run homer, Elly De La Cruz stole two bases, and Emilio Pagan closed it. Saturday was the opposite experience. Andre Pallante threw seven innings of two-hit ball with eight strikeouts, Gordon Graceffo mopped up with four more punchouts, and the Reds managed three hits total in a 7-0 loss. Hunter Greene gave up eight hits and seven runs in 5 1/3 innings; Suarez struck out four times.

Sunday they got it back, 5-3. Andrew Abbott needed 100 pitches to get through six innings with four walks but allowed only two runs, De La Cruz and Ke'Bryan Hayes homered, Nathaniel Lowe went 3-for-5 with two RBI, and Cincinnati broke a tie with three runs in the ninth off Matt Svanson. It was also the game where Spencer Steer walked off the field in the fifth inning, which turned out to matter more than the score.

The Cleveland series: a rainout, a doubleheader and a three-hit shutout

Monday's opener against the Guardians was washed out, pushing everything into a Tuesday doubleheader. The makeup game went badly and early. Chase DeLauter reached on an Edwin Arroyo fielding error in the first, and four batters later Kyle Manzardo hit a grand slam. Chase Burns was charged with five runs over five innings, only one of them earned. The Reds actually out-hit Cleveland 11-9 and led 5-4 after four on Sal Stewart's 22nd home run and a four-run rally, but the Guardians tied it on a sacrifice fly and won it 6-5 in the eighth on a sacrifice bunt off Sam Moll. Losing on a bunt is a specific kind of insult.

The nightcap was the best baseball the Reds played all week and possibly all month. Five pitchers combined on a three-hit shutout: Caleb Ferguson opened, Julian Garcia bridged, Jose Franco threw 3 2/3 scoreless for the win, Tejay Antone handled the eighth and Pagan finished it. Cincinnati got three hits of its own, one of them a JJ Bleday home run, and won 2-0 against a Gavin Williams start in which Williams struck out 12. Franco, for what it is worth, had been recalled from Triple-A Louisville that morning and was optioned back the next day. Wednesday was a 6-1 loss in which Brady Singer allowed four runs and none of them were earned, because two more Reds errors turned a manageable inning into a bad one. Joey Cantillo struck out eight in four innings for Cleveland, and Manzardo homered again.

Chase Burns and Sal Stewart are the reason to keep watching

Whatever happens Monday, the Reds already banked the two things that make a 50-win season tolerable. Burns, 23 years old, is 12-1 with a 2.40 ERA, 128 strikeouts and a 1.12 WHIP over 20 starts. He and Stewart were named National League All-Stars in early July, and on July 16 reporting surfaced that Burns had agreed to a seven-year, $105 million extension, described as the largest ever for a pitcher with under four years of service time and pushing his free agency to after 2033. Cincinnati has an ace under contract into the next decade, which is the rarest thing a small-market club can own.

Stewart is 22 and leads the club with 22 home runs and 79 RBI while hitting .253/.330/.472 with 12 steals. De La Cruz is at .274/.349/.493 with 18 homers, 47 RBI and 18 stolen bases, still striking out 109 times but still the most watchable player in the division not named Skenes. Tyler Stephenson has quietly gotten to .249/.325/.397 with eight homers. The problem is what surrounds them.

The bats are the problem and the math is unkind

Cincinnati has scored 440 runs in 107 games, the fewest in the National League. They have allowed 510, the fourth-most. By run differential their expected record is 46-61, meaning this team is actually four wins better than it has earned, which is a strange thing to have to say about a club 16.5 games out. They are 7-4 in extra innings and 12-12 in one-run games. The luck has been fine. The hitting has not.

• Ke'Bryan Hayes: .142/.196/.230 in 56 games, with a stretch lost to a lumbar bulging disc.
• TJ Friedl: .167/.254/.251 in 64 games.
• Noelvi Marte: .191/.236/.349 in 49 games.
• Eugenio Suarez: .204 with 113 strikeouts in 77 games, though 14 homers keep the slugging respectable.

They are also 23-30 at Great American Ball Park and 27-27 on the road, which is not how that ballpark is supposed to work.

Injuries keep eating the trade board

Steer landed on the 10-day injured list Monday with a right wrist sprain, hurt on an awkward 0-2 swing against Kyle Leahy on Sunday. Terry Francona's read was blunt: "He didn't fight me to come out of that game. That makes me nervous." The Reds sent him for imaging and an appointment with a hand specialist. Steer was hitting .238/.319/.421 with 16 homers and 40 RBI in 98 games and is controlled through 2028, so the injury costs Cincinnati leverage whether they were shopping him or not. Ivan Johnson came up from Louisville.

The rest of the list: Matt McLain (left calf strain), Nick Lodolo (blister), Tony Santillan, Blake Dunn, and Graham Ashcraft and Brandon Williamson on the 60-day. Greene is back from March elbow surgery but has a 7.06 ERA across four starts, with 29 strikeouts in 21 2/3 innings, which reads exactly like a pitcher whose stuff arrived before his command did.

Cincinnati Reds deadline outlook: who actually goes

Krall has said the front office will "at least listen on everybody" and is "trying to get the best return possible in any deal." MLB.com's Mark Sheldon laid out seven realistic candidates on July 24, all of them impending free agents: Singer, Stephenson, Suarez, Lowe, Ferguson, Brock Burke and Pierce Johnson. Burke is the interesting one, a 2.61 ERA across 54 appearances, among the most in baseball, which is precisely the profile contenders overpay for in August. Lowe is at .255/.331/.472 with 12 homers. Antone, at 2.16 in 33 games, is not on the expiring list but would draw calls.

Krall has been less definitive on the two names fans actually care about. Speaking to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he called Steer "a great clubhouse guy" and said "it'd be hard to move him," while on Greene he allowed that "we've got to look at everybody that's on the roster, and if there's something that does make sense for the organization, we have to have a conversation about it, and we might go down that road." That is not a denial.

The Pirates are in town for three, which is its own commentary: Pittsburgh is 55-54 and two games out of a wild card, shopping for the sort of veteran Cincinnati is selling. Paul Skenes faces Greene on Friday, a matchup worth the ticket regardless of what either team's record says. Then the Athletics come in for three before a trip to Washington. The deadline falls on Monday, an off day, so the Reds will find out who their teammates are over a travel day. Watch Burns and Stewart, and treat everything else as inventory.