The ZiPS projections by Dan Szymborski are now out for the Cincinnati Reds. There are now 18 teams that have had their projections posted over at Fangraphs. Cincinnati, though, is only the second team in the National League Central to be posted. Despite that, ZiPS clearly believes the Reds have to add more talent in order to compete in the division. The other team that was published within the division was the Chicago Cubs and on paper, they project much better. And as noted in their write up by Szymborski – they are only a slight favorite in the division (at the time of publication, which was December 19th).
With each write up there is a graphic that is supplied that gives a good, but not entirely precise projection of what the team’s projection looks like at each position. When looking at a position by position comparison between the Reds projections here and the Cubs projections here, the Reds are only considered better at two positions. The first one is catcher, where the Reds hold a solid advantage of 1.1 WAR. The other position they have the advantage is at shortstop where Elly De La Cruz has a 0.1 WAR advantage over Dansby Swanson. Basically a rounding error.
The Cubs, though, have big advantages in their bullpen, at designated hitter, and an enormous advantage in the outfield. While Szymborski will tell you not to just add up the WAR totals here, he can yell at me if he would like because I’m going to do it while reminding you of the caveat that you shouldn’t do it and it’s not 100% precise in doing so – but the gap here is large enough that I feel confident in it making the point that the Cubs are much better on paper than the Reds. The Cubs graphic breakdown adds up to 48.8 WAR. The Reds are only at 32.6 WAR.
There is going to be some wiggle room there for a few reasons, but there is a significant gap between what the projections have between the Reds and the team(s) at the top of the division. Szymborski notes that “The Reds look a lot like a .500 team in 2025, but they don’t appear to be a doomed, hopeless one, which is something.” The Cubs, despite a large gap in the projected WAR, are “forecast for 86-87 wins”.
Who projects well?
The Reds have some high quality players on their team for 2025. At the top of that list is Elly De La Cruz. In his first full season last year he finished 8th in the National League Most Valuable Player voting, was an All-Star, and led the league in steals with 67 of them. In what’s not likely surprising to anyone, he projects as the Reds best player in 2025. The soon to be 23-year-old is projected to be another power and speed threat with a similar offensive season as he had in 2024.
Matt McLain, who had an outstanding rookie season in 2023 but missed all of 2024 with a shoulder injury and then a rib cage injury while he was attempting to return before the season ended, projects as the club’s second most valuable player. While he didn’t return for the big league season, he was healthy and ready to go in early October for the Arizona Fall League but was limited to just 13 games because he was a late addition to the roster for Glendale. He hit .240/.356/.520 in his 50 at-bats.
ZiPS projects another strong season for him in 2025 despite coming off of the injury. While his 2025 projection doesn’t quite match his 2023 production, it’s still a projection for an above-average hitter who provides value on the bases and in the field.
When it comes to the pitching staff, only Hunter Greene really projects well. Like with Elly De La Cruz, it’s not surprising to see Greene as the pitcher the system likes the most among the Reds group. In 2024 he made his first All-Star team, led the league in pitching WAR (Baseball Reference version), threw 150.1 innings, and he had a career best 2.75 ERA while striking out 169 batters. His projection sees a regression in the ERA department, but matches up pretty well with his 2024 season in all other categories.
Nick Martinez is still being projected as a bit of an in-between guy with only 120 innings pitched. If he pitches more innings than that, and he’s able to maintain his peripherals with the current projection, then he may well be able to put up a valuable season on par with that of Greene.
Who doesn’t project well?
Everyone who plays a corner position projects as a below-average starter. Cincinnati’s front office is kind of stuck on the corner infield spots with now former top prospects Noelvi Marte and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, who less than 12 months ago were viewed as building blocks, but are coming off of poor seasons when they were on the field and both missed significant time due to Marte’s suspension and Encarnacion-Strand’s injury. The Reds are going to want to get another look at each player before deciding to move on/forward if they don’t perform.
And then there’s Jeimer Candelario. His contract means that in Cincinnati he’s going to play. He had some moments in 2024 where he didn’t play poorly, but he had a lot of stretches where he simply couldn’t hit. And then he also missed plenty of time with injury.
ZiPS thinks that both Candelario and Encarnacion-Strand will be better than league average hitters, but their defense and position ding them and they both play positions where being a little better than league average as a hitter is expected. Marte, on the other hand, is a player that ZiPS just isn’t a fan of right now in any real aspect.
The bullpen as a whole has negative WAR. That isn’t good to see at all. With that said, pitching WAR can be fickle and even more so with relievers because of the small sample size. Still, when the bullpen as a whole is basically “could be a Triple-A bullpen” when it comes to quality it leaves one with plenty of concern about how well the back end of games will go.
What now?
There is always some wiggle room in projections. Sometimes players break out – even if just for one season – in ways that are unforeseen. Many projection systems have large error bars when it comes to players very early in their big league careers because there just isn’t much big league track record for them to work with. That latter one is likely where the Reds are hoping this projection is going to be wrong at. As mentioned above, they are relying on Noelvi Marte and Christian Encarnacion-Strand to hit well. At least that’s the hope if they are going to contend in 2025.
But the team is also going to be hoping for rebound seasons from guys like Jake Fraley, who saw his power completely disappear in 2024, Will Benson who struggled to do much of any kind of hitting, and Jeimer Candelario.
There’s a saying that goes “Hope isn’t a strategy” and you’ve seen it as it relates to the Cincinnati Reds a lot over the last handful of years. Unless something changes the roster between now and opening day, it seems that it’s another season where there’s a lot of “hope this goes right” going on and it seems like it’s going to need to happen if the team is going to compete for the division – at least if these projections are remotely accurate.
Be sure to check out the link to the full ZiPS projections above (in the first sentence of this article) and take a look at how everyone is expected to perform. Remember, these are the 50th percentile projections – the ones most likely to happen. But also remember that a lot of guys don’t perform to the 50th percentile. You’re going to have some guys in the 30% range and others in the 80% range.
What you see here and what you think is likely to happen could be quite different. That can make the team better or worse than what ZiPS thinks when compared to what you think. The games still have to be played, of course, and just about anything could happen. Have some fun with the numbers. Or be miserable when looking at the numbers. But you probably should take a look at them and see where you and the system disagree and adjust your expectations from there.
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