About that Cincinnati Reds batting order…

Luis Castillo will be required to blow through a trio of outs against the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday, but we’ll eventually see the Cincinnati Reds’ offense of 2021 take up the bits and pieces of his grim campaign for 2020. You know, the one who as a team with a collective 91 wRC + only hit .212?

You already forgot that, didn’t you? Good for you.

We have long studied some of the peripheral factors that contributed to this performance. Abyssal luck with the balls in the game was the main culprit despite finishing 10th in total hard hits, and the team’s 11.3% total gait rate was actually the second best in the game, showing that this group may still be offensive life is left after all this.

From today’s perspective, the hope that things will just get better is still the Reds’ overarching strategy, as the Front Office has not made any external additions to amplify the offense since late 2020. In addition, they have Curt Casali – the second best performer of the team – thrown off wRC + (min 90 PA) – and add two unproven rookies to the line-up in Tyler Stephenson and Jonathan India.

Another complication at the moment is the absence of Shogo Akiyama, who was the team’s first front runner due to his skills in the second half of 2020 at the start of the 2021 season. He’s stood on the shelf with a thigh problem that kept him out of the game for at least a week, and then faced the unfortunate scenario of rehab without another AAA baseball, only to get back to the big leagues, effectively his spring have lost. Joey Votto is in a similar situation as his COVID diagnosis paused him for two weeks of Cactus League play and he barely worked his way back before yesterday’s spring final.

These two topics are the main reasons manager David Bell made his decision at the moment, but there are a few other details that will annoy him before filling out this statement card on Thursday. Here are the concerns that arise if the coffee is about to enter my system:

• Who will meet the leadership? Nick Senzel’s athleticism compared to his peers on the squad may make him the most classic lead-off man, but Jesse Winker’s basic skill is the best at the club right now. Is he taking Winker’s up and coming overall game off the middle of the lineup to stack his base leaders on top?
• Where does Joey Votto meet? He was a perennial prop at number 3 or 2 on the lineup, but as it neared 38 years he expected the production level to likely be foolhardy … or was it? Will Joey’s swing switch produce plus power again in mid-2020 and allow him to turn back the clock? Will his recovery from COVID mean he’ll be sitting more than usual at the start of the year to play more daytime games or against LHP?
• How does the three-batter minimum for pitchers come into play? The breakup of traditional LOOGY means that any brought in left-handed must face at least a trio of men, which may be an incentive for a knife in the line-up to ensure a right-handed bat holds on to one. The separation of Winker and Votto and Mike Moustakas in the line-up would be the result here and would in some form or way separate them from Senzel, Nick Castellanos and Eugenio Suarez.
• Can Bell boot all of these DH dreams? After a very short year with the designated hitter in the game, that is over again, and the classic prize hitters and double switches of the National League have again flowed into his formation theory. In other words, his line-up for innings 1-5 will rarely look like that for innings 6-9, and figuring out how to move and shake will be back in the game.
• How does the IP expectation play out here at the beginning? All pitchers will be tasked with moving up from a 60-game plan to a 162-game plan, so simply expecting 180-200 IP from the starters will be absolutely not a thing. Does that mean Bell is having a hard time getting his SPs in order? Will they get 8th place with the expectation that they will only get a single PA before a prize hitter walks in?
• Aside from the opening day, how train-oriented will Bell be? Will Aristides Aquino Winker encounter from the line-up against LHP? Will Tyler Stephenson and Tucker Barnhart be behind the bowl on a single train? Will Votto sit against LHP and, I don’t know, Kyle Farmer allow regular PA against them?
• How protective will Bell be? Will he hide Jonathan India at the end of the order even if he’s still hot to start the season? Will Barnhart beat Stephenson on his lineup days?

There is certainly a lot of choice to digest each day, albeit with a number of options that should theoretically produce much better results over the course of a full 2021 season than the 2020 abbreviated version. Having put all of these considerations into for the past few weeks Working through my head, here is the line-up that I think would start the season with the options given, at least against RHP:

1. Nick Senzel – CF.
2. Jesse Winker – LF
3. Nick Castellanos – RF
4. Eugenio Suarez – SS
5. Mike Moustakas – 3B
6. Joey Votto – 1B
7. Jonathan India – 2B
8. Tucker Barnhart – C.
9. Luis Castillo – Sp

Opening day baseball is only 48 hours away. Let’s see your ideal lineups (and theories) in the comments section below.