The Reds Aren’t Being Overlooked — They’re Being Misread

Baseball prognosticators and projectionists have little faith in the Reds. Are they right to be skeptical?

The 2026 Cincinnati Reds are almost universally seen by outlets, projectionists, and prognosticators, as a definitively below-average team.

Not only do the Reds, apparently, have no chance of making a playoff appearance, the majority of baseball’s intelligentsia would tell you a winning record is a long-shot.

Here’s a snapshot:

• The Athletic: 22nd in Power Rankings, 4th in NL Central (13.2% chance to make playoffs)

• ESPN: 78 - 84 (Doolittle’s odds: 20% playoff | 0.4% WS)

• Fangraphs: 77 - 85, 4th in NL Central

• Baseball Prospectus: 78 - 84, 4th in NL Central

• CBS Sports: 4 out of 5 panelists picked the Reds to finish 3rd in NL Central, and a lone panelist picked them to finish 4th.

The sports media industrial complex sees the Reds as a fringe .500 team with limited prospects for a playoff run. What they accomplished last year – overcoming long odds to make the postseason, enduring injury-riddled seasons from Hunter Greene and Elly De La Cruz, demonstrating significant growth and maturity in their first season under Terry Francona – means nothing.

But here’s the reality –

The Reds are being disrespected. They’re better than that – and they likely underperformed last year, even while making the playoffs.

The Reds 83 - 79 record last year belied their talent-level. The 2026 version is the same, but upgraded. Playoffs shouldn’t be the target – a series win can and should be.

The Reds have a legitimate case as one of the top teams in the NL Central.

The Brewers traded away their best pitcher, and are counting on Jacob Misiorowski, who looked nearly unhittable in his first seven starts, to not be the pitcher he was in his last seven starts, when he looked very hittable and very wild. The Cubs watched Kyle Tucker, an ascending, exceptionally talented player who’s averaged 5.1 WAR per season since 2021, leave for Los Angeles, and replaced him with Alex Bregman, a former star who hasn’t broken the 5.0-WAR barrier since 2019. The Cardinals are rebuilding and aren’t a threat. And the Pirates?

Of course, Paul Skenes is elite. Outstanding. Frankly, he’s absurd. But the rest of their rotation?

It doesn't stack up. Beyond Skenes, the Pirates’ rotation compare to the Reds’ depth. Mitch Keller is a fine player, but we’re four years removed from the last time his ERA began with a 3. Andrew Abbott has never had an ERA higher than 3.87, and that was his rookie year.

And the Pirates lineup shouldn’t scare anyone either. Marcell Ozuna and Ryan O’Hearn were the Pirates big additions on offense, but Ozuna (who’s been up-and-down his entire career) is coming off a major power outage, while O’Hearn had a nice season with the Orioles and then the Padres, but saw his breakout come at the age of 31 and didn’t come close to replicating his first-half performance in the second half.

The Reds, meanwhile, are teeming with bounce back candidates and young players ready to take the leap.

Elly, for one, fulfills both those criteria. He had a down 2025 season while dealing with a quad injury that hampered him, and he also remains a supernatural talent with easy MVP-upside. He produced 3.6 WAR in a down year, and surpassing the 5.2 he put up in 2024 should not be out of the question.

Matt McLain suffered through one of the worst seasons imaginable and now looks rejuvenated after a ridiculous spring. Noelvi Marte put together a strong second-half and is just scratching the surface of his All-Star potential. And Sal Stewart, a rookie whom the Reds trusted to bat fifth in their playoff series against the eventual-champion Dodgers, has done nothing to suggest that MLB pitching is too much for him. They haven’t invented a level of baseball where Stewart can’t hit.

The Reds bullpen is still a cause for consternation, but then again, most bullpens are. The projections are penalizing the Reds for bullpen volatility, but the rest of the division appears to get a pass. The Reds, at the very least, didn’t stand pat in the offseason. Instead, they improved, adding three very capable arms in Pierce Johnson, Caleb Ferguson and Brock Burke.

The projection models don’t like the Reds – and that’s fine. They’re conservative by design. But that same conservatism doesn’t seem to apply everywhere.

They seem to like guys like Henry Davis to raise his batting average by nearly 40 points. And they expect teams like the Brewers and Cubs to stay at the top despite taking significant losses, and the Pirates to take a leap with a roster littered with volatile players. We’ve been waiting on Oneil Cruz’s breakout for years now, yet projections continue to assume it’s right around the corner.

The projections don’t believe in Lodolo’s health. Or McLain’s resurgence. They don’t even seem to acknowledge that some of Elly’s struggles last year were due to injury.

The models like volatility – if it’s wearing a Pirates uniform. In Pittsburgh, inconsistency is framed as upside. In Cincinnati, it’s treated as risk. The Reds can’t seem to get the benefit of the doubt from anyone, and they actually made the playoffs last year!

Look, I’m not suggesting the Reds are about to beat the Dodgers in the NLCS or anything, but this is a talented baseball team with tremendous upside. They absorbed a down year from their best player (Elly) and missed time from their best pitcher (Greene). They’ve proven they can handle Greene’s absence, and they have a fully-healthy Elly too. McLain is ready to get back to looking like one of the best, young second basemen in the league, and Marte is on the verge of reminding everyone why he was the centerpiece of the Luis Castillo trade in 2022.

The majority of the national media might be out on the Reds, but baseball junkies can feel the momentum – ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Reds won a playoff series this year, too.

The Reds certainly have their flaws, but the rest of the NL Central does as well. This time, the projections are getting it wrong.