2026 Team Previews: Cincinnati Reds
A detailed fantasy baseball oriented team preview of the 2026 Cincinnati Reds
Full Series Links and Explanation Page Here
Podcast
Intro
That weird-looking potato/hot dog thing in the graphic is apparently Skyline Chili. I couldn’t think of any other good uncopyrighted logo to use for the Reds, so that’s what you get. I don’t know what Skyline Chili is, but it doesn’t look appealing. But it probably is good. A city wouldn’t really let itself become known for bad food, right?
In the podcast version, I rambled about a girl I dated in college whose dad was a big Reds fan. So you can get your intro fix straight from my own vocal cords if that interests you. For now, we’re going right into the fantasy-relevant Reds for 2026.
Hitters
Elly De La Cruz
Age: 24
Pos: SS
EDLC was on his way to a huge year before an injury slowed him down mid-season. He played through a quad issue and struggled in the latter part of the season. Here’s the 30-day rolling roto value plot:
Anything in double-digits is elite fantasy production. Before the All-Star break:
→ .284/.359/.495, 24% K%, 10% BB%, 18 HR, 25 SB
So he was on a 35-45 kind of pace with a .284 batting average. It was elite stuff. But then, in the second half:
→ .236/.303/.363, 28% K%, 9% BB%, 4 HR, 12 SB
The strikeout gains disappeared in that second half, as did the power.
We can and should forgive him for a good amount of those late-season struggles. It’s gotta be immensely hard to hit Major League pitching without two healthy legs. At the same time, I would have been betting on some natural regression to his career averages in that second half, even with health.
Elly’s big league history now:
Even with that second-half crash, he landed more than five points below his career average in strikeout rate. That’s been something we’ve been looking for from Elly for a couple of years now. If he’s truly a mid-20s strikeout guy now, there’s a whole new level for him to unlock.
His primary attribute for fantasy purposes has been the steals. You can see his attempt rate dropped from 51% to 26%. And that was not because of the injury; he was at 28% before the leg stuff started. A 50% attempt rate just isn’t something you do for your whole career, unless that’s the only thing you do as a player. I always expected his steal pace to slow significantly. But a 26% attempt rate with 37 steals is still pretty awesome.
The guy is no steals specialist. He has legit power, and playing in Great American Ballpark gives that a boost. Prior to the injury, he was at a 108.2 EV90.
It held above 107 for the full season with a 117.4 max EV, a 10.2% Brl%, and a .329 xwOBA. The thing holding him back from elite fantasy production has never had anything to do with skills. He has just struck out too much and hit too many balls on the ground to unlock true 30-homer potential.
But he’s come a long way since his first season. In addition to improving strikeout rates, he’s also lowered the ground ball to around 50% the last two seasons.
That’s still not great, but it’s a lot better than 55%. His air pull rate was bad at 9.7% last year, and that’s been a “problem” for him his whole career. I put the word in quotes because I don’t think he’s necessarily concerned about that. Not every player should strive for a high air pull rate. A lot of the time, it’s best to just take what the pitch gives you. Going opposite way and hitting balls at lower launch angles is bad for homers, yes, but it’s good for other things.
For fantasy, you like seeing Elly take some walks and hit some singles. That’s where the steals come from. His raw power turns into 20+ bombs with ease, and any further increase in fly ball rate will push him toward 30.
I don’t think we ever see Elly hit 50 bombs or anything like that, but he has a 30-40-.270 season fully within the range of outcomes. With a clean slate of health in 2026, that kind of season could happen.
Elly is a clear first-rounder. The guys that obviously should go in front of him:
Shohei Ohtani
Aaron Judge
Bobby Witt Jr.
After that, I’m not sure if anybody else is obvious. He’s mixed in with these names:
Juan Soto
Jose Ramirez
Corbin Carroll
Ronald Acuna Jr.
Julio Rodriguez
Hitter-wise, I think that’s the pretty obvious top nine. And I don’t think it’s crazy at all to take Elly at #4. I’m not sure where I’ll end up, and it doesn’t matter that much. He doesn’t quite have the upside of an Acuna Jr., but there’s a good case to be made that he’s a safer pick than those other five guys in that second group.
Projection
617 PA, 89 R, 28 HR, 87 RBI, 34 SB, .261/.336/.481
Ranking
Noelvi Marte
Age: 24
Pos: 3B/OF
Noelvi was a top prospect for the Reds coming up with Elly, but the suspension, injuries, and a lack of production delayed his MLB breakout. But you could say that finally happened in the second half of last season. And his numbers ended up looking pretty nice:
→ 90 GP, .263/.300/.448, 14 HR, 10 SB
That’s about a 25-homer, 17-steal pace with a decent batting average. He brought the K% from a troubling 31% in 2024 to a much better 23.6% in 2025, and added 60 points of batting average as an outgrowth of that.
Let’s get some more numbers on the page:
→ 80.5% Zone-Contact%
→ 51.8% Swing%
→ 9.0% Brl%
→ .242 xBA
→ .310 xwOBA
→ 116.7 max EV
→ 105.0 EV90
→ 46% GB%
→ 12.1% Air Pull%
→ .310 BABIP
We have some issues here. The guy’s discipline sucks, and he wasn’t consistently accessing his upper-level exit velos (the max is very high , but the 90th was nothing special).
It’s a short sample of MLB data, but the fScores would not make you want to draft the guy:
It’s a profile that screams volatility. You’ll have slumps with the guy, but his elite physical tools will turn into some emphatic spike weeks/months as well.
One issue we have is that he doesn’t have a home defensively. I’m sure they want him in the lineup to claim the spoils of those physical tools and to let him develop a bit. But he’s forced into right field defensively, where he could end up being a pretty big liability. That’s not someone they’ll be hyped about putting in the lineup in the midst of an offensive cold spell.
The Ke’Bryan Hayes acquisition takes away any thought of moving Marte back to third if the outfield thing isn’t working out. So he’s going to have to prove that he can play the corner outfield at least decently to get into the 140+ games played range.
So you have a high-risk, high-reward profile with Noelvi. There’s the risk that lands in the ~120 games range, and there’s the risk that his hitting stats don’t end up looking that great because of the volatility that comes with his lower contact rates and heavy swing rates. But the power and speed make it tough to fully fade the guy this year, especially since he still has that 3B eligibility from last year. That position gets thin in a hurry, but I’d probably rather have it filled early than have to roll the dice on a Marte type.
Projection
473 PA, 62 R, 20 HR, 61 RBI, 14 SB, .254/.299/.445
You can see the roto upside in this projection. The 600 PA pace is 25-18-.254. That’s solid. But I don’t see 600 PAs coming, and I’ve already laid out the concerning risk that comes with the pick.
Ranking
Matt McLain
Age: 26
Pos: 2B
McLain was also a part of this 2022-2023 top prospects class for the Reds. I remember getting all jazzed up about Elly, Marte, McLain, and Encarnacion-Strand. So far, only Elly has truly panned out. It’s been tough sledding for McLain since that rookie year:
He missed the whole 2024 season to injury, and came back in 2025 to struggle mightily with the .643 OPS.
He still managed a 15-18 season, which is nice, but the .220/.300 stuff hurt. We were really hoping to see a mid-20s K% rather than a repeat of the 29%. And worse, it came with a poor batted ball profile.
So the fScores look pretty awful:
Only one above-average tool (speed), and he wasn’t all that aggressive on the bases with a 14% attempt rate.
His EV90 was bad at 103.3.
He hit just .217/.289/.341 against righties with a .291 xwOBA. The zone contact rate was poor at 80.2%, and he rarely pulled the ball in the air (10%). There are a lot of issues with McLain, and he’s 26 years old now.
We’re at the point where we can’t project a full season’s worth of playing time. He still has minor league options and plays a replaceable position at second base. If he were an elite defender at shortstop, where it matters more, that would help him stay in the lineup, but it’s not all that difficult to find someone else to play second base if they want him to go back to AAA to work on some offense.
It’s a risky pick, and it’s tough to be optimistic about the kid. The one thing you can say is that he has shown 20-20 ability. The raw power is nothing special, but the home park helps. So with some contact and discipline improvements, he could turn in a 20-20-.250 season. That’d be a smash for his ADP, but I don’t think that’s very likely to happen, and the downside is that he ends up out of the lineup entirely.
Projection
439 PA, 53 R, 16 HR, 55 RBI, 10 SB, .241/.317/.416
Ranking
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