GAME CHANGER: Why Terry Francona DESERVES Credit for Cincinnati Reds 2025 Playoff Appearance

GAME CHANGER: Why Terry Francona DESERVES Credit for Cincinnati Reds 2025 Playoff Appearance

I don’t understand where all the hate for Terry Franona comes from because the Reds don’t make the playoffs without him as their manager. [Music] You are Locked on Reds, your daily Cincinnati Reds podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. Welcome in to the Locked On Reds podcast. Locked on Reds is part of the Locked On podcast network, now the number one sports podcasting network in all of the land. Also, we are your team every single day. Thank you for doing your part to help make us number one. We appreciate you. My name is Stephen Offenbaker. His name is Jeff Carr. We love baseball. We love the Cincinnati Reds. We love talking about the Reds. We love talking about baseball. We’ve been covering this team in podcast form for a combined 14 seasons. We love talking about these things with you guys every single day. Thanks for being here on today’s show. A little bit later, we’re going to get into the 40man roster. Everybody’s favorite offseason topic because the deadline is coming for the Reds to make their additions in order to protect guys from the rule five draft. We’re going to get into that here in just a little while. We’re also going to talk about what exactly the manager of the year award is and who it should go to and what it means if you win it and what it means if you get votes. We’re going to dig into that here in just a little while. But where we are going to start is with a topic that is probably going to generate a lot of comments in the comment section, Jeff, because we’re going to talk about whether or not Terry Friends Kona deserves more credit than he’s been getting or doesn’t deserve the credit that he has been getting. We’re going to get into that on today’s episode that is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use the code locked on MLB for $20 off your first purchase. All right, Jeff, let’s get into this. I I think probably there’s keyboard smoking out there right now just based on our cold open and that intro about people’s opinions on Terry Francona because there are dudes out there that love Tito. They love Terry Francona. And I’m not just talking about players and guys in the industry. I’m talking about fans. There’s there’s baseball folks that love Tito. But there’s also a segment of the fandom out there. There is a segment of Red’s country that came at us with words like Terry Fran is overrated. They came to us with words like, “This is no different than if David Bell had been here all year.” And I think that’s unfair because you you nailed it. In fact, you stole my words for the Cold Open, which were, “The Cincinnati Reds do not make the playoffs if Terry Francona was not the manager of this team in September.” And I know 14 and 11 in the month of September is not worldbeating. It’s not overwhelming numbers, but of those 14 wins, a lot of those wins were because Terry Francona was managing this team each and every day like it was a playoff game. He was managing with urgency, something we haven’t seen from the last several managers of this ball club. And that is where I think Terry Francona made the difference for the Cincinnati Reds in 2025. I would like to uh ask the people watching on YouTube or if you’re listening on your favorite podcast app, uh get into the comment section on YouTube and tell me exactly what your beef is with Terry Francona. Now ask yourself, is that different from any beef you’ve ever had with any other manager? And if it’s not, then you know you’re being a good baseball fan. There is no good baseball fan who goes an entire year without complaining about their manager. We do not think that Terry Francona is perfect. We do not think that he is infallible. We believe that he makes mistakes, but there’s absolutely no realm of reality that David Bell gets that team to the playoffs through September. Terry Francona did it by the way that he managed this team. He did make some mistakes in September. He wasn’t perfect, but the way that he managed the bullpen, the way that he moved the lineup around, the way that he was able to manipulate the guys on this roster is the reason that they made it to October. And the reason that I say all of that, Steve, is is simply this. Who is this team’s MVP? See, this is a much harder question than it probably should be. And and because we can’t name him right away, it’s Terry Francona’s show, baby. You’re you’re you’re not wrong because the you know, the easy lazy answer is Ellie de la Cruz. And that’s really a response to hype in the face of baseball and all the things we thought Ellie was going to be. He’s the box score MVP. Yeah. Is not based on what he did day in and day out. His numbers were not MVP numbers, Jeff. You know, when you think about this Red’s roster offensively and and and I’ll throw you a real big curveball, pun intended. If I’m picking the team’s MVP right now, it’s Tony Santon, relief pitcher that got into 80 ball games out of a lot for the Cincinnati Reds. Nearly half of the games feature Tony Santion in some way, shape, or form. That’s amazing to me. That’s the guy I’m picking. But if you want to look at position players, if you want to look at guys that were, you know, in a majority of the games, and so you want to play a little qualifying game, so it can’t be Miguel Anduhar, it can’t be Sal Stewart, it can’t be guys that had a higher OPS plus somebody was here for longer than a month. Yeah. Yeah. and it lands on Ellie, but it barely. You’re talking about a player in Ellie de la Cruz whose claim to fame in 2025 is he played in all 162 games. We’ve talked about that. It was a bad idea. It was bad for the player. It was bad for the team. It shouldn’t have happened. You look at his numbers. His slash line, Jeff 264, 336, 440. 336. Okay, cool. 264 could have been worse. His OPS plus Jeff for the season was 109. He was only 9% better than league average. Now, when you drill into his statistics, he led the team in home runs. He led the team in hits. He led the team in stolen bases. And you you land on him, but you do it begrudgingly. You do it like, I got to pick Ellie, but I don’t want to. De facto. Yeah. It’s it’s because he was the best of the bunch, and the bunch itself wasn’t that impressive. like naming another hitter that can press him for team MVP. The next closest guy to him in OPS+ was Austin Hayes. Nobody’s saying Austin Hayes was this team’s MVP because he missed a good chunk of the season. And then you’re thinking of other guys who had nice stretches of baseball, but none of them put together an entire season. And so you have to look outside of the position side of things. You look to the pitching staff. I would argue Andrew Abbott deserves recognition here. He led the team in war, at least according to baseball reference, and he pitched really well. Almost pitched 30 starts, had 29 starts on the season. But again, this is a little bit of, look, we’re falling back on, okay, de facto MVPs by default, some guy that we’re just picking here. And that’s because the manager was able to bring these guys together when they needed it the most and get them into the playoffs. Because this is where the the complaints and and all the things because people got so up in arms about the fact that he finished second in manager of the year voting, not because they thought he should have won, but because they didn’t think he should have been considered a and I find that hilarious because he did a fantastic job to get this roster that if if I pressed anybody for if if we went around Great American Ballpark and asked 10 people, okay, we probably talked to more than 10 people, but let’s say we talked to 50 people, we would get a handful of answers. And I don’t think there would be a definitive majority. I I think people would say, “Well, yeah, Ellie, but that would and the guys and the guys that said Ellie, if you ask them why, I think you would find the the answers very interesting because I don’t think people could articulate it other than, well, he’s the face. He’s the guy that was supposed to be the guy. So, that’s the guy that’s the guy I’m that’s the guy I’m picking. And just real quickly, the reason I didn’t pick Andrew Abbott, because I agree with you, the 5.6 war is impressive. What Andrew Abbott did all season long is impressive. I just can’t stomach giving MVP to a guy that played in 29 games. I I just it’s hard for me to say that was the most valuable player on this team just be I mean, he was great, but he played in 29 games. I I find it hard to really I I think he had a great year for him. And and I also find it intriguing at least like the way that he was able to pitch in a year that we we we really saw Hunter Green struggle a lot with injuries and Nicolola was pretty healthy during this year, but ultimately the Reds were 17 and 12 in his 29 starts. So it’s not as if they were unbeatable with him on the mound. So, there’s a lot of different things. Like, if you really bear down on any of the candidates and and look, Tony Santion, the the 80 games that he pitched was super fantastic, but he only pitched like what, like two innings at most in any of them. And so, it’s it’s, you know, all of the total innings that he threw on the year don’t come close to what Andrew Abbott pitched innings-wise. And so you you can make plenty of arguments to the contrary of anyone that you pick because if somebody says Ellie, the first person that’s going to argue is going to be like, “What about the errors, right?” Like, so there’s going to be all this and they’re not wrong. So much and they’re not wrong about that. And they’re not wrong. So the fact that Terry Francona brought this group together and dealt with the weaknesses, dealt with the question marks, and somehow covered all that up, it’s not all just because the Mets collapsed. That’s part of it. Terry Francona led them to the postseason. And I I I think it’s intriguing because people like to belabor the second place finish in the manager of the year voting because they don’t understand the award for manager of the year. Hey, a Cincinnati sports team actually won this weekend. Yeah, it was the Cincinnati men’s basketball team. They beat Mount St. Mary’s 7255 on Sunday afternoon. Their next game is a huge one. They face Louisville. Quite frankly, that’s going to be a tough game and it’s going to be all over on FanDuel that you could take advantage of it. Whether it be the overunder when it comes to the total points in the game, whether it be the money line, and quite frankly, with this offer that they have right now for new users, the money line’s the way to go with most things because you place a $5 wager and if it wins, you get $300 in bonus bets. You’re not going to find that kind of odds anywhere on a bet that probably actually is going to hit. I mean, you could probably bet on the Bengals to beat New England on Sunday, but that’s really not going to happen. We’ll talk about that probably at some point this week. But I know this, the men’s basketball team for Cincinnati is doing their thing. Louisville might be a tough one. I I I will say the money line on that one might be a little bit tough, but the rest of the way non-conference man, especially when they play that team from Norwood, chef’s kiss, they going to get that dub. So, check them all out over at FanDuel. New users, $5 can win you $300 in bonus bets. Download FanDuel today. Thank you for making Lockdown Reds part of your everyday routine. If you are not an everydayer, we urge you to hit that subscribe button. make us your first listen. Appreciate those who do. And we want to thank you for making Locked On the number one sports podcast network here in the country. That’s awesome. You’re awesome. Please make sure you subscribe if you already aren’t. We’re going to be with you all throughout the offseason talking about all the rumors and stuff. Uh but really wanted to bear down on this Terry Francona finishing second and manager of the year award voting. And folks seem to be very upset about that. And not because they thought he should have beaten Pat Murphy, but because they didn’t think he deserved consideration. And I want to point out what the manager of the year award is because we believe that he firmly considered or firmly deserved consideration. Didn’t think he should win because we thought Pat Murphy should win because manager of the year does not just go to the best manager in a vacuum. And we’ll get to whether or not that should actually be the case. Manager of the year in both American League and National League go to the teams whose expectations did not line up with how they actually played in the year because the Brewers not really a whole lot of expectations going into the year. The expectations were well by default it feels like they’ll win the NL Central Centro but they didn’t seem to have that good of a team. 97 wins is a crazy amount of wins. And then on the American League side of things, the the Guardians were left for dead at the beginning of the season and then in the month of September had the craziest month of September ever and Steven Voke gets the win. The manager of the year award goes to the guy whose roster does not produce just otherworldly expectations as we go into opening day. I mean, you have to look at some of the things that went on in baseball and and it can really help you answer the question of what this award should be because ask yourself this, if the Dodgers had not won the World Series, Dave Roberts season would have been considered a failure. Yeah. The Dodgers winning the World Series isn’t considered a victory for Dave Roberts. It’s that’s exactly what was supposed to happen. It was an expectation. Pat Murphy, look, there were time you and I wondered last off seasonason the Brewers could win this division or they could blow that whole team up and start from scratch and and and come again a new in 2026. We weren’t quite sure what they were going to do and they just went out and were the best team in baseball. They just went out and won 97 baseball games when they should not have won 97 baseball games. That should not have been how this season played out. And yet that is how it played out. And and Pat Murphy is a big big driving force behind what that team was able to do and keeping those guys motivated and keeping those guys focused and being a differencemaker in a roster that should not have performed the way that it did. That’s why Pat Murphy is the manager of the year. And you you take those same metrics and you apply it to the Cincinnati Reds. We just talked about this. If it had been David Bell in the dugout in 2025, the Cincinnati Reds would not have continued to scratch and claw and fight their way through the month of September to be around to take advantage of the New York Mets collapse. They would have been far behind. They would have been gone. That would have been David Bell’s deal getting everybody ready for their vacations when the season ended. Terry Francona approached every single game like he had to win today because he did. He treated every game like a playoff game. And that’s why he gets manager of the year votes because he managed to keep them at 14 and 11 in a month where they could have just as easily quit on him. And he overcame Ellie’s errors. And he overcame a pitching staff that was getting tired. And he overcame a bullpen that had guys that appeared in 80 baseball games. He overcame all of that and kept that team focused and kept them relevant and ultimately got them into the playoffs. And it’s all about the results, right? Because you could have argued that um and and I’m I’m blanking on his name, but the guy who manages in in Detroit uh deserves some consideration because he had a nice year up until the month of September. And then you could argue AJ Hinch. AJ Hench. And then you could argue that Aaron Boone should have gotten some consideration because his team had one of the best records in the National League, but he didn’t get consideration because that’s what they were supposed to do. You don’t get credit for doing what you’re supposed to do based on your roster and how it’s built, your your payroll, and how big it is and all this other stuff. So, this award will always favor Central division teams because Central division teams never splurge on their roster. They never go crazy spending. And quite frankly, you could have made a pretty good argument for Mike Schilt in San Diego and and how all how the Padres’s played. But again, their roster was much talented than the likes of the Brewers and the Reds and and things like that. So there there’s this level of all right where’s your roster at? How good’s your manager got to be? There’s a very small gap there as to what exactly they are considering somebody who could be in this awards running. So that’s why Terry Francona was there because this roster changed very little. This roster still had a bunch of guys that were very unproven. And quite frankly at the end of the year, let’s answer this. How many of those guys proved a lot of stuff? not many of them. So when you don’t have all of those answers on the roster, it’s clear that the guy leading the roster deserves his recognition. And so that’s why he was in this manager of the year thing. Like we could argue in a vacuum who the better manager is in the league right now, but that’s not what this award is. And now should it be? That that’s the it’s the age-old question about like MVP and stuff like goes back to 2017 whenever Jean Carlo don’t call me Mike Stanton beats out Joey Vado for the MVP and I don’t I don’t recognize that Joey Vado is the 2017 MVP. But the reason that he did that is because he had more homers and RBI’s. So what is the MVP award? Is it a box score award or is it who was the most valuable to their team if you take them off that team and all this other stuff? There’s so many different ways to view these things, but understanding why they vote the way they vote for manager of the year makes it obvious that Terry Francona should have been no less in the final three absolutely deserving of the second and you know and listen I always and you know me I always have a problem with how these type of votes come out. Um, you know, I I’m leader of the leader of the charge to take away the vote for Hall of Fame from the writers. Leader of the charge to try and find a way to make these things make more sense. But this is a very a rare example of where I have no I have no complaints about how the voting came out. And you know, I want to be clear that we have we have spent a fair amount of time in calendar year 2025 calling Terry Franona out when Terry Francona needed to be called out. When he did things that didn’t make any sense, we said so. And we started on opening day when he used Ian Jabau to close a game. And and we didn’t back off of that. when he did dumb stuff. When he pinch hit for Will Benson with two strikes, we called that out because it didn’t make any sense. And at the same time, you can still call guys out when they make mistakes. It’s a human sport with guys making decisions. They’re not going to get them all right. It’s not going to be 100%. You can call those things out, but it doesn’t diminish the overall picture. It doesn’t change the fact of what they accomplished overall. The manager of the year award is not a trophy, a prize, a recognition that you just give to the guy that got the most wins or that won the World Series. Um, in this case for the Brewers, they did get the most wins and Pat Murphy did a lot with less and got those wins and wins the award. But just because Dave Roberts wins the World Series, doesn’t mean he’s manager of the year. Uh, the Dodgers spent $450 million. If Dave Roberts hadn’t won the World Series, he should be considered on the hot seat. So you look at how the voting played out and you look at who achieved success with less and you apply that to the voting and the voters got it right and this is exactly how it should have gone. Pat Murphy tremendous tremendous job in 2025. Terry Francona an excellent job. It wasn’t as tremendous as what Pat Murphy did, but an excellent job focusing a team that struggled mightily at times and still managed to keep them and their eye on the prize of getting to the postseason. So, I I have no qualms at all about saying that Terry Francona deserves the recognition that he’s getting. He deserved to be second in National League Manager of the Year voting. I I think Pat Murphy did a better job, but Tito’s right up there and I think he deserves that recognition. And those two guys are going to be fighting for it next year, too. I I firmly believe that. But I know this, Steve, there are two guys that the Cincinnati Reds will add to their 40man roster to protect from the rule five draft. We’ll tell you who they are coming up next. The NFL season is in full swing and honestly, there is nothing better than being in the stadium surrounded by fans cheering on your team. But let’s be honest, getting tickets can be a real hassle. Between the cues and the login screens and the prices jumping at checkout, it’s very, very frustrating. That’s where game time comes in. 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So, click the subscribe button in the audio feeds. just like right here on YouTube. All right, Jeff, this uh protect the players from the rule five draft, get them to the 40man roster. There is a lot less excitement and angst, I think, involved this year than there has been in some past years. Right now, the Reds 40man roster sits at 38 players. That leaves two spots on the 40man. And taking a a long hard look around the Reds minor league system, I see exactly two guys that need to be protected heading into the rule five draft. I’d agree with you. There’s one guy that they could possibly make an argument for, but I don’t believe he will be kept. But the two guys that will be kept are Edwin Aoyo and Hector Rodriguez. You’ve heard of both these guys. We’ve mentioned them at different times. Uh Edwin Aoyo is coming back from a major injury this past season. He did decently well in the contact department, but again, the power is still a bit of a question mark. And I know that there’s been some folks that kind of push back on that, but I’m looking at the isop power, not just the sluggy. And then Hector Rodriguez is a guy whose bat at least will be very intriguing for the Red Legs moving forward. Uh last season across uh double A and AAA. He put together a slugging percentage of 450 and an isolated power of 167. So pretty decent lead there. And kind of monitoring that moving forward. He’s a guy that man, when he makes contact, he can hit the ball a long, long way. The question will be his plate discipline and things like that. His his contact rate isn’t fantastic. Needs to improve a little bit before he makes a big impact on the major league roster, but he should be a guy that will be in the mix at some point next season. Same with Edwin Aoyo, though I think it’s it’s less obvious as to how he could get some playing time next year, but might get a cup of coffee, something like that. So, a lot of what Edwin Aoyo depends upon is I think he’ll start the season at DoubleA, although he did fairly well, right? If you look at his numbers for the the 2025 season, Jeff, he played 120 games for Chattanooga. Uh had a slash line of 284, 345, 371. He’s never going to hit for power. his slugging is always going to be kind of down there. Uh but uh his hitting improved and again he’s coming off a major shoulder injury, right? Uh we saw the same thing. Spencer Steer shoulder injury, Matt Mlan shoulder injury. Sometimes those take a lot of time to come back from. Edwin Royo got it rolling. I expect he starts the season for a very short stint back at Chattanooga and then gets that promotion to Louisville and then it becomes a question of what do you do? What happens against those players? if he performs really really well, he could be that next infielder up if an opening occurs. If somebody gets injured or somebody performs really really badly, he could be the guy. Uh but he’s going to have to play his way into that and he’s not quite there yet. You’re absolutely right. Rodriguez, on the other hand, is in a position where the Reds are desperate for anybody that can show some signs of life to be available for whatever is going to happen. We don’t know if they’re going to go out and sign up Boer. We don’t know if they’re going to bring back a Miguel Andrew Hard to play, you know, full-time, part-time, whatever in that outfield. We’re not not sure yet what the Red’s big league outfield is going to look like in 2026. There could be big opportunities for Hector Rodriguez. This spring training is his time to shine. He really needs to get to Goodyear this year and put on a show, get his name in everybody’s brain, and create an opportunity for himself the very first time there’s an opening, the very first time an opportunity presents itself. So, you take both those things into account. Absolutely. Those guys got to get protected. I think if they were left unprotected, they would both get selected in the rule five draft. And the Reds are currently at 38 players on their 40man roster. So, there are two empty spots, easy pickings. You just add these two guys and they are protected. The one guy that there’s a little bit of debate about, but I don’t necessarily know that it goes so deep that you would look to cut somebody. You could make the argument that there are a few guys that you could look to cut and add Leo Balazar to the 40man roster to protect him, but there are a couple of key caveats here. Leo Balazar in his minor league career has never really hit the cover off the ball. I mean, this past season across multiple levels. He was in Dayton and then he was in Chattanooga for a little bit. Across multiple levels, his slash line was 263, 339, 381. Now, I get it. He’s hitting the cover off the ball out in Arizona, doing pretty decently out there. But at the same time, this last year, his entire season, he put together a WRC, which is very close to uh OPS plus WRC plus of 106. He’s not exactly setting the world on fire. So, I could see the Reds opting to leave him unpredicted. Although, I do think someone Well, but he’s super young. they probably won’t take it they probably won’t take a chance on him in a rule five because again for those who don’t know if you are picked in the rule five draft you must be added to the team’s major league roster of who picked you and if you’re not then you are offered back to the team you were drafted from for $50,000 so they probably won’t protect Leo Balkasar yeah I I think I agree with that um and it keeps things simple now the the 38 players you know if if you’re looking at the Red’s 40man roster right now and one really we’re going to keep all of these guys. There are guys on there right now that will transactionally move off the 40man roster based on their injury history, based on what’s going on. You know, if Brendon, so there’s guys Brandon Williamson’s on there, Julian Aguiar is on there. These are guys that may not be ready on opening day. They’ll slide back onto the 60. Um they had to come off procedurally. They’ll slide back onto the 60. Create or on the 10 because if they put them on the 60 at opening day, then they’re out for two months period. They don’t just go back. Well, and I and I’m saying I think that could be the case for guys coming off Tommy John. they may not be ready until May, June. So, it it will be there there will be opportunities for more openings, but in order to just protect players right now, I think it’s super simple. Two for two. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t I don’t see a whole lot of drama happening here. The the bigger drama is going to be coming up at a different deadline that I think is coming up here. It’s a few weeks from now, the non-tender deadline. That’s where we could see some interesting decisions be made on some guys that the Reds could possibly open up some more room in that payroll for next season. But yeah, for this protecting of the rule five draft thing, don’t see a whole lot there. There’s a number of guys that are on the list and and some people may know the names and some may not. So, we’re not going to go through everyone on the list, but there was one other guy and and you you might remember this name because he was a first round pick once upon a time, but Austin Hendrik is due to be uh available in the rule five draft this off season. There could be a really really outside shot that somebody picks him just because he’s 25, but he is 25 and he’s never gotten to the AAA level. So, I think that there’s and again the caveat to that is he would have to play on somebody’s major league roster, right? In order to to be lost, which which I don’t see happening. By the way, the non-tender deadline November 21st, Jeff. And before we get out of here, this last but this last 30 30 seconds here, um unrelated to protection and and rule fives and all that, but related to the minor leagues, Alfredo freaking Duno, man. Yeah. three home run game in what was it? The semi the semi-finals of the Arizona Fall League. Yes. Yes. He hit three home runs in one game. That’s what I like to see. Amazing performance. Uh I I’m getting excited about this kid. I can’t wait to see what he does this coming season. I think this could be a year that jumpst starts him through the system a little bit and and advances him and gets him kind of where we had hoped he would be right now. uh which is good given Tyler Stevenson’s situation. So I was excited to see that. Just wanted to make mention of it uh because we saw it and we haven’t talked about it. He he could make him an interesting part of the conversation there at the end of 2027 with a big 2026, but I think it would take a big 2026 to jump start. I think it’s more likely we’re talking about him in 2028. But no, it’s it was great to see his bat. It’s it’s nice to say, right, Steve? It feels like we’ve talked about a lot of prospects here the last few years where it’s like, man, his glove is ready to go, but his bat I just don’t know. It kind of feel like his bat is looking pretty good. I’m I’m excited about that. Pretty good. And that is where we’ll go ahead and wrap it up for today. Thanks as always for making Locked on Red your first listen each and every day. We appreciate you so much. You’re a big part of why the Locked On podcast network is now the number one sports podcasting app uh network in all the land. And now that you’ve given us your first listen, take some time and go get your second listen over on the locked on MLB feed with Sully. Paul Francis Sullivan’s over there covering Major League Baseball from a national perspective. Very entertaining, a really fun listen. You’ll be glad you checked him out. Uh it’s available where we’re available on YouTube and everywhere you get your podcast. Until next time when we’re back in your feeds, we’ll keep gathering up the news, the notes, the information, the rumors, and the reports to keep you locked on reds every single day.

Terry Francona’s urgent approach lifts the Cincinnati Reds to a surprise playoff berth, sparking debate on his impact and deserved recognition. Can Francona’s management style overcome this roster’s glaring weaknesses, and does he deserve more credit for the Reds’ September turnaround? The Reds team MVP debate heats up as Elly De La Cruz, Tony Santillan, and Andrew Abbott vie for top honors, but do any truly stand out?

Steve and Jeff break down the meaning behind the Manager of the Year award, comparing Francona’s second-place finish to Pat Murphy and revealing what it takes to earn postseason accolades. Key topics include Reds’ 40-man roster decisions, Edwin Arroyo and Hector Rodriguez’s prospects, and whether Rule 5 risks threaten Cincinnati’s future prospects. And Alfredo Duno went off in Arizona! Get expert insights and spirited analysis on the Reds’ strategy for 2026 and beyond.

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0:00 – Terry Francona’s Impact
8:09 – Reds Team MVP Debate
12:01 – Manager of the Year Award Voting
21:26 – Reds Likely to Protect Two Prospects

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