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Writer's pictureIan Altenau

The Reds’ Bullpen Situation is Getting Dire


Another day, another Reds loss.  I’d say I feel numb, but that’s a lie.  This hurts.  This isn’t what I wanted, and it’s certainly not what I expected.  After a 7 - 3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, the Reds have now lost thirteen of their last seventeen games, and it feels like the season is slipping away already.  They say April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, but in Cincinnati, it’s only brought misery.


The knives are coming out in Cincinnati.  Fans are searching for a scapegoat, and the offense is the obvious culprit.  It’s abysmal.  Atrocious.  Absolutely awful.  But frankly, they’re just part of the problem – the bullpen hasn’t carried its weight either.


Coming into the season, the Reds had plenty of (deserved) hype.  Young hitters looked primed to take steps forward in their careers, Jeimer Candelario was signed to provide a veteran presence in the middle of the order, and a sneaky-dependable bullpen in 2023 was reinforced with experienced hurlers of all varieties.  And sure, maybe none of those free agents was a game-changer, per se, but they were valuable additions that would keep the bullpen at a steady, high-performance level.  Right?


Wrong.  Instead, it’s all gone to crap.  The only reliever having even a good season is Buck Farmer.  Maybe throw Brent Suter and his 3.76 ERA in there too.  For shits and giggles, we’ll even include Sam Moll (3.38 ERA), even though he was only recently brought back to the MLB club after a stint in AAA.  That’s two (and a half) good relievers.  The rest?  Garbanzo beans.


Closer Alexis Díaz was the Reds lone All-Star in 2023.  He won’t have to worry about making that trip alone this year – he won’t be sniffing the Midsummer Classic, not with his horrific 1.33 SO/BB ratio and 7.47 ERA.  Once upon a time, Díaz was on the short-list of top young stoppers in the game.  Now, he’s barely hanging on to his 9th-inning duties, but he’s far from the only Reds reliever who’s game has fallen apart in 2024.


One of the Reds (relatively) high-priced free-agent additions was reliever Emilio Pagán, who was brought over from Minnesota after a career-year.  There was more than a little risk involved in this signing – after all, Pagán is primarily a fly-ball pitcher and was transitioning from a home-run-phobic ballpark in Minneapolis, to a hitter’s paradise in Cincinnati.  Needless to say, that transition has not gone well.  Pagán allowed five home runs in all of 2023.  He’s allowed four already through two months.


Also struggling is Fernando Cruz, a revelation in 2023, who utilized his unhittable splitter to post some truly spectacular strikeout numbers.  His 35.1 strikeout percentage was in the top 1% last year, and he’s only upped that figure in 2024.  Despite his propensity for missing bats, on the off-chance hitters do connect, they tend to connect really hard.  His 91.2 average exit velocity in 2024 is in the bottom 7%.


Lucas Sims, too, has struggled in 2024, though there is some hope that he may be turning a corner.  He’s only allowed one run in his last seven appearances, although that’s a small victory considering he allowed seven runs in his first eleven.  So fine, let’s say Sims is back to the player he was in 2023; a lotta good that does the Reds when the rest of the relievers have gone to hell in a handbasket.


May, in particular, has been a disaster for the Reds bullpen.  Díaz is sporting a truly incredible 19.64 ERA in the month.  Cruz’s is a healthy 10.57.  Pagán is doing a bit better, flaunting a 6.00 ERA in the month, but he’s already allowed more extra-base hits through seven appearances in May than he did in all of March and April.  These were supposed to be three pillars for the Reds bullpen – instead, they’ve become dead-weight.


There is some reason for hope, although you have to squint through some pretty rosey-colored glasses to see it.  Cruz was lights-out in the early parts of the season, and despite his ugly numbers in May, there’s a chance he’s just getting a little unlucky.  Opposing hitters have a .313 batting average on balls in play, an unsustainably high number that will surely correct as the season progresses.  However, that means little when Cruz has suddenly found himself struggling with his control.  His walk rate has ballooned recently to 14.6% (bottom 7%), and if he can’t find a way to get ahead of hitters in the count, his splitter becomes much more punishable.


Control issues are also plaguing Díaz, and his 16% walk rate is comfortably in the bottom 5%, though control has never been his strong suit.  Instead, the bigger issue for Díaz is that he’s not getting hitters to chase those pitches outside of the zone, and he’s not generating the swings and misses on his slider that made him so deadly.  They’re staying patient, forcing Díaz into hitter’s counts, and making consistent contact against balls in the zone.  His average exit velocity is still low, and his BAbip is fairly high, so maybe some regression to the mean will do Díaz some good, but for now, he’s been comfortably the worst closer in baseball.


As for Pagán, despite his propensity for allowing the long-ball, his strikeout-to-walk ratio has been excellent in May, and his splitter has become a nasty out-pitch, particularly against lefties.  He’s striking out batters at a career-high rate, but much like Cruz, when he’s not missing bats, he’s getting absolutely shelled.  His 54.2 hard-hit percentage is at the bottom of the barrel among all pitchers. Every outing for Pagán at Great American Ballpark from here on out will be a case-study on torture management.


Sadly, there’s no quick fix to the Reds bullpen woes either.  The Reds have certainly suffered their fair-share of injuries to start this season, but the bullpen has been mostly spared with only 2023 workhorse Ian Gibaut missing extended time.  A trade is always a possibility, but there’s a non-zero chance that the Reds might be too far out of the playoff race for a deadline deal for a reliever to make an impact.  Manufacturing a trade for a reliever right now could make some sense, but the Reds trade assets aren’t as appealing as they were last year, and unloading a top prospect like Cam Collier or Rhett Lowder for someone who could implode the second he steps foot into Great American Ballpark is probably more than Reds fans could handle at this point.  No, the Reds are probably stuck in the same boat as the rest of us: hoping for a turnaround. Why do I feel numb all of a sudden?

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