Photo: Doug Gray
New projections were released over at Fangraphs and the 2026 Cincinnati Reds have some work to do if they look to return to the playoffs. The BAT projections like the Cincinnati Reds rotation quite a bit and overall the pitching is a solid group. But just like nearly everyone reading the pages here at Redleg Nation, The BAT looks at the offense and turns green.
The average every day player in Major League Baseball is about a 2.0 WAR player for a full season. Your typical All-Star is in that 4.0 WAR range. While your MVP/Cy Young contender is 6+ WAR. The BAT projections look at the Reds position players and only has one guy above 1.8 WAR – Elly De La Cruz. They project him to put up 3.8 WAR and be an All-Star caliber player. The next most valuable every day player in their projections? Matt McLain at 1.8 WAR.
Aside from De La Cruz, only Sal Stewart is projected to be an above-average hitter, though four others are at least within shouting distance of league average. There are some things that are worth noting when looking at the overall value (WAR) for some of the players. WAR is a counting stat in the sense that the more you play the more you can accumulate (or lose). New outfielder JJ Bleday is only projected to play in 70 games for Cincinnati in these projections, so his WAR of 0.5 needs to be understood with that context.
The biggest thing for me when I looked at the numbers, though, was with regards to Ke’Bryan Hayes. The projection for his hitting is atrocious. Not known for his bat it’s fair to say that no one likely thinks he’s a reliable hitter. But when you move your eyes over to the defensive value column is where you might reach for your glasses. While he does project to be an above-average defender, his 2.2 defensive value is lower than that of Jose Trevino (who as a catcher does get a lot of additional value, but also plays in 73 fewer games in these projections), Elly De La Cruz, Tyler Stephenson, and Matt McLain.
To put into perspective what a 2.2 defensive value would represent for Ke’Bryan Hayes, let’s not that in 2020 he played in 24 games had had a plus 3.2 value. The only other time he wasn’t in double digits in his career was in 2024 when he was at +6.5. Last year he was at a career best +19.2.
The projections do have Cincinnati scoring 19 more runs than they did in the 2025 season. Technically that would be an improvement. But it’s a minimal improvement at best to an offense that ranked 26th in OPS+ last year.