It’s been said you can’t win the pennant in April, but you can lose it. Teams should always play to win, rather than play not to lose. That’s what makes April a double-edged sword. The Major League Baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint.
Even if a particular team sprints out of the gate to a sizzling start, it doesn’t always mean they will win the pennant—unless you’re the 1998 New York Yankees. Fun fact: they started 1-4 that season.
So how do the Reds, in this particular case, play this double-edged sword? With a sense of urgency. It’s a sense of urgency that keeps two things in mind: Yes, they’re playing to win every single day. But they’re also coming with a sense of urgency, by playing to win every single day, in knowing they have to position themselves well going into May. April is about teams positioning themselves going into May, which is the month where you really start to see the contenders separate from the pretenders. By Memorial Day, there’s a pretty good sense of who the contenders are as opposed to the pretenders.