'The window is now'

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — The word that keeps coming up is “hunger.”

On one hand, this Cincinnati Reds’ core made it to the playoffs in 2025. It was this core’s first time in the playoffs together. The champagne celebration was the highlight of most of these guys’ careers so far.

But the 2025 Reds never played their best baseball. Most of their best players underperformed when you look at their final stat line. A lot of players left the season dissatisfied with their individual seasons.

“Last year, (we saw) this game is hard,” Tyler Stephenson said. “It’s good to have some adversity because it makes you grow as a player. We know when we’re clicking, we’re an elite team. It’s about finding more times for us to play quality baseball and win those games. This game is never going to be easy. If we can all learn from it and move on, we’ll be in a really good spot.”

Even though the 2025 season felt like a positive one in the moment for the Reds, so many individuals had sources of frustration.

Coming off of shoulder surgery, Matt McLain had a bad 2025 season and was at risk of being sent down to Triple-A. Elly De La Cruz had a rough second half of the year as he battled the weight of expectations, a quad issue and didn’t play with the same joy for a lot of the year. Noelvi Marte opened the year in Triple-A and then suffered an oblique injury right when he started hitting his stride in the big leagues. He was great during the summer but then hit .191 during a poor September.

Spencer Steer had to re-learn how to throw due to a lingering shoulder injury, his stats never recovered from one of the worst Aprils that you’ll see and he expressed doubt about if he was a good player anymore during the middle of the season. After starting the year on the IL, Tyler Stephenson was playing catch up for most of the season and had a very disjointed year. Will Benson had to scratch for every at-bat that he got as he spent most of the year in Triple-A or on the bench.

Ke’Bryan Hayes had the second-worst OPS in MLB among qualified hitters. Sal Stewart debuted in the big leagues, but he wasn’t an every day player in September. On the mound, Brady Singer is the only starter who stayed healthy for the entire year. A groin injury impacted Hunter Greene for three months. Andrew Abbott didn’t get to pitch in the playoffs. The bullpen was taxed due to overuse.

So yes, the 2025 season was a step forward for the Reds’ organization. But this is a group full of players who know very well that what they did last year wasn’t good enough.

It’s a group that knows that 83 wins isn’t enough.

There’s a serious, workmanlike vibe in camp.

It’s a group that’s hungry.

“It’s a win now kind of mentality,” Stephenson said. “I’ve been here long enough where it was like, ‘we’re close, we’re close, it’s the future.’ The window is now. We got a taste of the playoffs last year. That should be the expectation for everyone in this clubhouse.”

The talent in Goodyear, Arizona, is very real, and it’s also a much deeper team than it was a year ago. There’s as much settled about this year’s Opening Day roster as you’ll see on Day 1 of any big league camp. The Reds know who they’re counting on and how the pieces fit together, and they shored up weaknesses by going over budget for a 49-home run hitter in Eugenio Suárez and by building one of the deepest middle relief cores in MLB.

An NL Central title is attainable.

“On paper, this team looks like a pretty dangerous team,” Emilio Pagán said. “But names on paper don’t win games. Like (Terry Francona) preaches all the time, we’ll have to take care of the little things and execute at a high level.”

The Reds got better during the offseason, but the Cubs outspent them as they signed Alex Bregman. The Brewers were the best team in baseball in the regular season in 2025. Cincinnati’s new pieces will help, but there will need to be a leap that goes beyond the impact that the additions will generate.

The young core that isn’t that young anymore is being asked to lead the way offensively for the Reds.

“Our young core that started in 2023 and 2022, those guys are our best players,” Pagán said. “They’ll continue to be our best players. That’s even with the additions we’ve made. Elly, McLain, Steer, Stephenson, Friedl, that core of guys, we need them to be good players. They know that. They’re up for the challenge. If those guys play the way that everyone in this building knows they can, that allows us veteran guys to just fill in where they need us to and help us achieve something great for this franchise and this city.”

It’s a good group of players, even though most of them didn’t meet internal expectations in 2025.

Even with what the results were last year, the Reds expect De La Cruz to be in the MVP conversation, McLain to be one of the best second basemen in baseball, Steer to blend an old-school approach and standout on-base ability with 20-to-30 homers, Stephenson to be one of the best offensive catchers in MLB and Friedl to be one of the best on-base guys in MLB. Friedl was the only player in that group who really had the 2025 season that was expected.

The Reds’ pitching staff had the third-best WAR in MLB last season. And that was with Greene missing nearly half of the year, Abbott, Nick Lodolo and Chase Burns all spending time on the IL, Burns dealing with some rookie growing pains, Rhett Lowder missing the entire year, no matchup lefty in the bullpen and a middle relief unit that struggled up until September.

Also a part of the equation in 2026 will be what I’m calling the “next next wave,” the group of rookies that includes Burns, Lowder and Stewart and Hector Rodriguez (at some point).

The thing that I’ve heard the most in camp so far is buzz and excitement about what Stewart’s 2026 season can look like. He has already said that he’s looking to be the NL Rookie of the Year, and the team’s expectations for this 22-year-old are very, very high. We’re going to be talking a lot about Stewart this year.

Nick Krall said recently that since the Reds only have four position players over 30 (Jose Trevino, Suárez, Pagán and Pierce Johnson), it’s fair to realistically expect the core to get better — especially since so many of these individuals have shown in the recent past that they can play at a high level.

If the Reds get the seasons that they’re expecting from their core, they should win 90 games.

The Reds are close. Going over budget for Suárez also sent a message to the clubhouse, Steer said.

“They’re pushing their chips to the middle,” he said. “They believe in this team and what we have here. That’s exciting when you feel like they believe in you as well. I know this locker room has always had that and they’ve always had that. To see them go and get Geno was pretty awesome.”

To get where they’re trying to go, the Reds will really have to solidify their brand of baseball. While they’re actively working in several ways to generate more power this year and while Suárez will provide a completely different look in the middle of the order, this is still a lineup that’s designed to “create chaos.”

“If we can create chaos, we can do a lot of things,” Trevino said. “We just have to understand it’s all a part of the game and a part of the process.”

The issue that Francona publicly discussed the most last season was situational hitting. The Reds need to move runners over and get them in. The most memorable examples of the team’s inability to do that consistently enough were all of the times in the playoffs against the Dodgers where the Reds stranded the bases loaded, or multiple runners on base.

A team can really feel the frustration when you don’t convert on a golden chase. But that’s something that you can’t really quantify, or track your progress with.

Or can you?

“I talked to (hitting coach Chris Valaika),” Stephenson said. “We’re going to try to get a stat to see where we were last year in situational hitting. When we did things as simple as moving runners over and getting them in, we won. We’ll get a percentage and see where we were at last year. We should push ourselves to be better, and that will translate into winning a lot more games.”

A theme that we heard all year in 2025 was that when the Reds didn’t beat themselves, they’d win.

Errors were a problem in their most frustrating losses, which factored into their decision to stabilize their defense by trading for an elite defender in Hayes.

Because of how talented the pitching is, the 2026 Reds will be as good as their defense is. If Stewart clicks at first, De La Cruz figures out the consistency he needs at shortstop, Marte uses his tools to become a playmaker in right and Steer plays a solid left, the Reds will be a contender. There’s a plan in place for each of those players to work to improve his defense this spring.

This spring, Francona said that he’s going to put a big emphasis on base running. He has spoken about training players to do a better job of running with their heads on a swivel and picking up the ball as they’re on the move. Francona was asked what the biggest difference will be in spring training this year now that it’s his second year with the team and he has a better feel for the group.

Francona said, “I know there’s a lot of baserunning stuff I want us to do early in spring, because I care about that so much.”

Last season, the Reds made it into the playoffs on a tiebreaker. Steer said that his biggest takeaway from 2025 was how slim the margins were. Every game matters. Every pitch matters. During the playoffs, the Reds weren’t able to give the Dodgers their best shot because of how much Cincinnati’s pitching staff had been spent just to get to the playoffs.

The battles that these players went through in 2025 are fresh on their mind.

“We know what we can do — there’s the expectation of what we can do,” Jose Trevino said. “Now, it’s about capitalizing on it. We made it to the playoffs, but we got beat. We know how it feels. It’s exciting to see the confidence and eagerness to get better.”