ZiPS seems to project the team as currently constructed in many of the ways that the commenters on this site (and pretty much every other living being) do. The starting rotation is good. The rest of the team needs a lot of work.
If you look at the position by position group in the article, you can see the strength of the rotation quite easily. The opposite is true when you look at the group of position players. The average position player considered “starter worthy” in the MLB is around 2.0 WAR. According to the Reds’ projections, that barrier will only be crossed at five of the nine positions. Only Elly De La Cruz and Matt McLain have a WAR of 3.0 or higher (4.0 WAR is roughly considered All-Star level production). The bullpen isn’t bad, but it isn’t good either.
The worst on-field position for Cincinnati comes across in right field. Noelvi Marte is the expected starter there and there is a nod to Will Benson as the other guy who will see some action there. In total, their contribution amounts to 0.1 WAR. And all that and more comes from Will Benson. Marte actually doesn’t think the ZiPS projections are that great. They project him as a very poor right fielder, and they don’t think he’ll hit that much either, giving him a .252/.305/.396 line in 466 plate appearances. That’s significantly worse than 2025. This is likely due to the disaster that the 2024 season factored into the projections (which they should).
The Marte projection is the one that stands out the most. But just looking at the passing ability for everyone on the team is just a game of starting out sad and then getting sadder the further down the list you go. Elly De La Cruz is the only hitter in the entire projection who has an OPS+ projection better than league average. Sal Stewart is right on the 100 mark – or league average. Everyone else is down there.
Returning to pitching, the projections show that the team definitely needs to add to the bullpen. ZiPS likes Graham Ashcraft the most among the returning group and projects him as the only reliever on the team with an ERA under 4.24. Tony Santillan is the only other returning reliever projected to have an ERA under 4.50.
I always lean on the side of “projection systems will always have ERA projections higher than anyone would expect a player to be” and that is true again here. Projecting Hunter Greene for a team-best ERA of 3.55 just doesn’t make sense given everything we’ve seen him do over the last two seasons and everything we know about him. So I would caution you to keep that in mind when looking at the projected ERA for everyone. Still, it’s very clear that the bullpen needs some help based on these projections.
It’s worth noting here, too, that the Reds’ projections come before free agency really got moving. There have been a few signings in the league, but only one of significance. And while Cincinnati probably won’t make a big impact, they probably won’t sit around and do nothing. They will be making some changes to the roster between now and the start of the 2026 season. And some of those changes will likely even improve the team.
That said, right now the 2026 projections for the Cincinnati Reds are the tiniest bit lower than the 2025 projections that came out in January 2025. And that’s basically the conclusion Szymborski notes before getting into what the expected stats are for the players as well.
As they are currently built, ZiPS sees the Reds about where they were in 2025: hovering around .500. To control their own destiny in the playoffs, they need ownership to invest more in the team. I’m not optimistic about that.
The front office didn’t exactly give fans too much to be optimistic about all this time either. Nick Krall, the team’s director of baseball, told local media that the 2026 payroll would be about the same as 2025. That has meant different things to different people, with some reporters suggesting that there would only be $15-20 million left for the club to spend in free agency if they don’t make any trades, while others think that number is closer to $30 million. Neither is a big chunk of change, but one number is certainly further than the other.
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