The 2025 Cincinnati Reds won more games than they lost, finished 3rd in the National League Central, and still somehow found a way to sneak into the expanded playoff system (for a minute).<\/p>\n
Clearly, Nick Krall and the rest of the front office think they\u2019re on to something, as the club went out and signed slugger Eugenio Su\u00e1rez off another 49 homer season and spent diligently to build a proven, competent bullpen. That\u2019s all after an attempted pursuit of Kyle Schwarber – fresh off a 56 dinger season of his own – as evidence that this franchise is convinced they\u2019ve got the chops to win even more games in 2026.<\/p>\n
Where does that put them in the grand scheme, though? Did they do enough to leapfrog the Chicago Cubs in the division, the club who let Kyle Tucker walk? Have they built themselves up with another year of experience to tackle the mighty Milwaukee Brewers, who led all of baseball in wins last season?<\/p>\n
Just how high will they finish in the division in 2026?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what we asked you earlier this week, and your responses pretty clearly indicate that you\u2019ve got higher expectations for the 2026 Reds than you did for last year\u2019s club, too.<\/p>\n
Over two-thirds of you anticipate these Reds finishing in one of the top two spots in the NL Central this season, meaning they\u2019re going to have to not only take down one of the Cubs or Brewers but also fend off a Pittsburgh Pirates club that is much improved themselves.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t outlandish to expect such things as it currently stands. Elly De La Cruz is healthy again, while Matt McLain finally looks back to his old self with another offseason removed from his shoulder issues. Nate Lowe and JJ Bleday look to be savvy additions brought in on the cheap, and Sal Stewart is ready to roll for a full season. Hunter Greene\u2019s absence is daunting, to be sure, but this team has drafted and acquired the kind of starting pitching depth that the rest of baseball desires – and Greene\u2019s going to be back mid-summer, too.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to take ~90 wins to jump into the top two in the division, in all likelihood, and this is off an 83 win season from these Reds. So, you\u2019re betting on there being enough improvement across the board for Terry Francona to guide this team to a place they\u2019ve not been since all the way back in 2013.<\/p>\n
I cannot tell you how much I hope you are correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 Cincinnati Reds won more games than they lost, finished 3rd in the National League Central, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,535,50,80337,4259,4,536],"class_list":{"0":"post-633933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-cincinnati-reds-discussion","12":"tag-cincinnatireds","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-reds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116262804242877608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}