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Throughout their long, often glorious and frequently exasperating history, the Reds have held our interest not simply by fulfilling or disappointing expectations but by toying with the notion of expectation in the first place.
In the memorable days of the Big Red Machine, Reds fans didn't even worry about being behind 7-0 going to the bottom of the ninth at Riverfront Stadium. Most clubs expect to lose that game, but the Big Red Machine won it as often as not. However implausible, no expectation outran those great clubs.
Somewhere in the books, there's supposed to be an ancient Chinese proverb to the effect that "He who has few expectations is seldom disappointed." But the Big Red Machine clubs seldom disappointed even their fans' most outrageous expectations.
We've come along now to 2004, nearly 30 years later. It's a much different time and a mostly different place, Great American Ball Park, where the Reds took the field this season to the lowest expectations in at least 50 years.
After stringing their fans along with the promise of a contender for the new ballpark in 2003 and falling terribly flat — creating an expectation and then mocking it — the front office took the ruse even further and conducted a mid-season fire sale last July. Then they asked the fans for patience.
Again, the Reds have mocked expectations this season — though with a twist. As the first half of the 2004 season ended last weekend, they were in the thick of playoff contention, like all but four other clubs in the 16-team National League. As one of nine clubs within 4 1/2 games of each other for wild card entry, the Reds have again tantalized their fans with dreams of postseason glory.
We'd normally expect a contending club to upgrade its pitching staff at times like this, when the call for patience rings flat. Especially in small markets, ball clubs don't realistically build to win but for the chance to win.
That chance now is at hand, which is why Barry Larkin made the point last weekend that chances to win come so few and far between that the club really ought to pull the trigger now and give it a try.
It's always an agonizing question for a baseball organization, whether it should set itself up to win this year or hold out for winning every year. The dangers and rewards each way are evident.
Going for the gold this year (read: in any particular year), a club pays in prospects who might or might not be future gold for another organization. And if the drive to win fails, the gamble is lost, possibly at the cost of traded prospect growing into stardom elsewhere.
But holding out for the long term exposes a club to the danger of losing this year and every year. Tomorrow is so unpredictable.
What should the Reds do? Before addressing that question, we can be sure of the answer to another question: What will the Reds do?
The answer, of course, is ... nothing. That's the expectation, anyway, courtesy of the organization's demoralizing expectation management.
Few chances to win
Just looking at Larkin's 19-year history with the Reds, their playoff opportunities have been relatively sparse, though not as sparse as he indicated. Larkin mentioned 1990, 1994, 1995 and 1999 as their only chances, later removing 1994, which was dashed by a players' strike.
In each of those years, the Reds acted on the chance to win and played past the regular season. Speaking not too broadly, this year's opportunity is quite similar.
But Larkin neglected to mention opportunities more closely parallel to the front office's likely non-action in 2004, namely 2000 and a run of second-place finishes in the late 1980s, most notably 1987. In none of those cases did the Reds make a move, nor did they win.
But they could have if they wanted to play it that way. For reasons identical to those avowed by the front office in 2004, they didn't.
The 1987 Reds were a prospect-driven outfit in the middle of four consecutive second place finishes in the old National League West. The Reds were so loaded with exciting young players that the lineup couldn't fit them all.
Among them was Larkin, clearly Kurt Stillwell's superior as a shortstop prospect. Along with the two shortstops, the Reds boasted four quality outfield prospects — Eric Davis, Paul O'Neil, Kal Daniels and Tracy Jones — along with decorated veteran Dave Parker as their best player.
The Reds could have won the NL West in 1987 if they were willing to deal a prospect or two for a pitcher or two. General Manager Bill Bergesch declined, citing a reticence to lose one of the organization's "crown jewels." Instead, the San Francisco Giants won the division after trading a young catcher, the immortal Mackey Sasser, to the Pittsburgh Pirates for pitching ace Rick Reuschel.
History has shown the long-term outcome for the Reds to be prosperous, if a bit mixed. On the plus side, they ended up keeping the three best jewels and dealing the others. The three they kept — Larkin, Davis and O'Neil — became contributing stars on winning clubs of the early 1990s.
If keeping the jewels together in 1987 was intended to leave more time for assessment, the Reds assessed correctly.
Following the 1987 season, the Reds traded Stillwell to Kansas City for lefthander Danny Jackson, who became a Cy Young candidate in 1988 before blowing out his arm. By 1990, when the Reds won the World Series, Jackson was largely useless.
Jones went to Montreal in a 1989 deal bringing in a bunch of spare parts, one of whom, centerfielder Herm Winningham, proved valuable in 1990. Daniels went to Los Angeles in a 1989 trade that brought second baseman Mariano Duncan and pitcher Tim Leary, who later went to the New York Yankees for first baseman Hal Morris.
For those crown jewels the Reds temporarily kept at the likely cost of the 1987 division title, the Reds ended up with Jackson, Duncan, Winningham and Morris. Only Morris still mattered after 1990.
Except for keeping the right players, it's hard to argue that the Reds set themselves up for the 1990 pennant by keeping all of their crown jewels in 1987.
The more recent example, 2000, is the more exasperating, for the Reds didn't merely neglect to acquire reinforcements. They traded their best pitcher, Denny Neagle, citing their ongoing rebuilding for 2003. And that rebuilding busted.
Seizing opportunity in 1990, 1995 and 1999, the Reds won. Ignoring opportunity in 1987 and 2000, citing the future, the Reds fell. In four of the five cases, the Reds were or would have been better off making a move. In the fifth, 1987, the right move could have won and preserved the 1990 championship, while the wrong move could have wrecked both seasons.
Right moves, wrong moves
The percentages tell us then that the Reds have more to gain and less to lose by making a move. Dogmatic insistence on rebuilding when the club has a chance to win now is perverse.
But beware: The right move, or the wrong move, is everything. At least four points are worth remembering:
1. Don't trade for a name pitcher, unless it's a great name like Randy Johnson. Trade only for hot pitching, whatever the name. You need someone who's getting hitters out right now, not two years ago. Too many clubs have lost the future over name players who weren't producing at the moment.
2. If you just can't spring for an ace, a couple of acquisitions in the spirit of Gabe White wouldn't be a bad idea. The most important out in the game often comes up in the sixth or seventh inning. The Reds need a couple more arms who can get that out, setting up manager Dave Miley advantageously for the later stages of the game. And those pitchers aren't very expensive.
3. Don't blow a chance to win because you think you might not win. One of former General Manager Jim Bowden's reasons for breaking apart that 2000 club at the All-Star break was his lack of the confidence that the club would advance in the playoffs. It doesn't pay to think that way. Anyone who makes the playoffs can win.
4. At the All-Star break, the Reds are only 1 1/2 games out of the wild card berth. We've learned through history that a wild card is as good as a division title once the playoffs begin.
The wild card is made for seasons like this, when it looks like the St. Louis Cardinals, runaway leaders in the NL Central, will finish the regular season with the NL's best record. If that form holds and the Reds also take the wild card spot, they'd play a club no better than them in the first round, leaving a chance for some other team to knock out the Cardinals before the National League Championship Series.
The Reds have a new front office team in place this year, led by General Manager Dan O'Brien, whose appeal to owner Carl Lindner is supposed to lie in his conservative approach and ability to build from within. Under today's unexpected circumstances, we don't know what to expect from O'Brien, nor do we really know what to expect from Lindner under any circumstances.
We've seen Lindner step up by signing Junior Griffey and Barry Larkin, and we've seen him step back by approving the Neagle deal and the July 2003 bloodbath.
Make no mistake, the next three weeks are an acid test for this organization. But what we love about this ball club is that we can count on the players to force the issue, as they already have by playing so heroically and putting themselves into this position.
If this front office is serious, it'll maximize this opportunity. If this front office is smart, though, it'll wait a while, probably until right up to the July 31 trading deadline.
Hanging in until the deadline
The key to the crucial next two weeks is seven games at home against the Cardinals. If the Reds can win five, they'd pick up three games on the Cardinals with six more games against them coming in August, making the local club a threat for the NL Central title. And it certainly wouldn't hurt their wild card chances.
But the Reds also will play two games each against Milwaukee, the Chicago Cubs and Houston before the trading deadline. All of those clubs are in the wild card hunt, just like nearly every club the Reds play for the rest of the season.
Given a race like this, in which three-quarters of the clubs are living in the same world, the clubs that improve themselves will win. If the Reds are within a couple games of the wild card at the trading deadline, we'll know the players are contenders. We'll still have to find out about the front office.
But the fans and players would have to be realistic, too. A bad trade is worse than no trade. Should the Reds still be in strong contention at the deadline and then become a seller, citing the future, well, heaven help that front office.
That means do not trade a performer like Danny Graves. The Reds aren't in the business of being a farm system for the rest of Major League Baseball. At least they shouldn't be.
Help is needed for this pitching staff, which hasn't always been able to stand prosperity. The Reds reached their high water mark for the season at 34-22 on June 6, the day before they went to Oakland for the start of interleague play. At that point, the pitching staff earned kudos by walking only 153 hitters in those 56 games (2.7 per game), the best such performance in the NL.
Then Reds pitchers entirely lost track of the plate, walking 39 batters (5.57 per game) during a seven-game losing streak beginning on June 7. In their 25 games since then, the pitchers are closer to the mark, walking 83 hitters (3.32 per game). But just that little blip has cost the club dearly in a tight playoff race.
Again, another good pitcher should help immeasurably. The magic of adding an ace has a ripple effect throughout the staff. Suddenly, the fellow who was your best pitcher becomes your second best, your second best becomes your third best and so forth. The entire staff improves.
The Reds don't need help in the back of their staff, where Graves already has put up 33 saves with his return to the closer role. Todd Jones is doing a fine job setting him up, Paul Wilson has been a pleasant surprise with nine wins and Aaron Harang, for an NL beginner, is carrying his weight.
Perhaps the likes of Ryan Wagner, Jung Bong and Brandon Claussen will be useful between now and the end. But that's a wish.
Injuries have limited the Reds offensively, but they've managed to create runs from limited hits despite a shaky record of hitting with runners in scoring position. The Reds are 15th in NL team batting (.251) and ninth in OPS (.749). But they're third in walks (348), so they're sixth in runs scored (411).
The Reds couldn't be scoring like this if they were limited to strong hitting performances by the stars. But the leading players have come through. Griffey is batting only .251, but his 20 homers, a .343 batting average with runners in scoring position and 500th career home run are bringing luster back to his career. Larkin is hitting .295 at age 40 and declared he's not ready to retire. Adam Dunn has hit 25 homers and Sean Casey is second in the NL with his .352 batting average.
But role players are making a huge difference on this club, too. D'Angelo Jimenez has been solid on top of the order, Ryan Freel has helped the club fight injuries with a .281 average and the ability to play almost anywhere, and Wily Mo Pena, once a punch line for Bowden's tool fetishism, has rallied to 10 homers.
Injuries are a bit of a problem, but real competitors don't try to spin them into a reason to wave the white flag. Casey and Freel will return from their hurts right after the All-Star break. Griffey's latest hamstring injury is indeed unfortunate, but saying "Here we go again" is the wrong response.
Injuries are a part of the game. The Reds have fought through them so far. And Austin Kearns could be back on Aug. 1.
The Reds failed last year because they were, over the long haul, unable to develop pitching in their farm system. Now we've been conditioned to expect a different kind of failure, an unwillingness to spring for a pitcher when the chance to win presents itself.
The Reds won't convince anyone with arguments that they need to be fixed on the future, since their goal for the future is to put themselves in the position they're in today. And, really, the Reds can do nothing better for the credibility of their rebuilding project than to pull the trigger this month, provided the players can hang in there for a couple of weeks.
If the Reds spring for a pitcher and still don't win, they'd at least be credited with trying. If they don't try it now, then can we truly be confident they'll try it on that magic date in the future when they intend to be serious?
Despite their surprising first half, the front office has created an expectation that the Reds don't care about winning this year. But these are the Reds, who we've known all these years for their surprises.
Maybe they'll surprise us again. ©
