Platoon Failure and Power Drought: Opening Day Exposed the Reds’ Lingering Offensive Flaws

The Reds inability to hit left-handed pitching and get timely hits led to a non-existent offense on Opening Day.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Cincinnati Reds looked baffled by a lefty.

Oh, you have heard that?  What about this one – the Reds couldn’t get a timely hit.

You’ve heard that too?  Well, that shouldn’t be surprising, because it’s more of the same.

The 2026 Reds didn’t demonstrate much improvement over the 2025 model on Opening Day.  Their 3 - 0 shutout loss to the Boston Red Sox was a microcosm of every Reds fan’s fear about this latest iteration – that the offense, when it’s needed most, will still disappoint in big moments.

A team full of right handed hitters getting absolutely embarrassed by a lefty is never a good sign, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday.  It’s nothing new, and the Reds lineup remains a massive concern that could very well be their undoing.

The Reds had just one left-handed batter in their lineup (leadoff hitter TJ Friedl) to face Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet, but it made no difference.  Crochet, of course, is phenomenal, but he’s not exactly Sandy Koufax.  Against the Reds, though, he may as well have been.  The Reds only managed one hit off Crochet until the sixth inning, and it was courtesy of Reds rookie Sal Stewart, who roped a leadoff double in the second inning.  The Red Sox two-time All-Star would throw six innings total of shutout baseball, allowing just three hits while striking out eight.

Traditionally, right-handed MLB hitters tend to perform better against pitchers of the opposite hand (i.e. lefties).  It’s the same reason you see switch-hitters batting from the right-side when they face a southpaw, and vice versa when they face a righty.  The platoon advantage has been utilized and exploited for decades.

Apparently, though, the Reds aren’t getting the memo.  The Reds’ righty-heavy lineup was helpless vs the lefty Crochet, and this is a concerning trend.  We’ve only played one game in 2026, but the 2025 Reds had a lot of the same problems.

On average, right-handed hitters have an OPS about 18 points higher against opposite-handed pitching than against right-handed pitching.  In the case of the Reds, that number was -5.  That’s right: the righty batters on the Reds were worse against lefties than against righties.  That’s not easy to do.

Only a small group of teams had right-handed batters who performed worse (or no better) against lefties – and just three made the playoffs.  Those were the Philadelphia Phillies, the San Diego Padres, and of course, the Cincinnati Reds.  That's not exactly bad company, but despite the relative struggles of their right-handed batters against right-handed pitching, it’s not like the Phillies and Padres were ineffective.  The execution gap between the Reds and the other two was glaring:

• Phillies: RHB vs LHP .724 | Team vs LHP .747

• Padres: RHB vs LHP .691 | Team vs LHP .690

• Reds: RHB vs LHP .661 | Team vs LHP .653

Yuck.  Not only are the Reds righty batters letting them down, they aren’t getting anything from their left-handed hitters either.

If this wasn’t bad enough, this inability to exploit the platoon advantage is compounded by another familiar flaw.  The Reds are also failing with runners in scoring position, another ongoing trend from 2025.

It’s not that the Reds can’t hit with runners on 2nd or 3rd – it’s that their ability to hit for extra bases seems to completely disappear.  Last year, the Reds were 9th in the MLB in BA w/ RISP (.259) but were 20th in OPS and OPS+.  Their SLG% was particularly bad (.386, 24th in MLB) and their home run total was meager (35, tied for 25th in MLB).

This all came to a head in the bottom of the sixth inning.  After watching Andrew Abbott battle through six scoreless innings, the top of the Reds lineup was about to face Crochet for the third time.  A TJ Friedl groundout wasn’t the best start, but Matt McLain followed up with a one-out walk.  Elly De La Cruz then snuck a single up the middle, and Sal Stewart, after getting drilled in the hand by a Roman Anthony line drive in the 5th inning, ripped another single one at-bat later.

Unfortunately, Stewart actually hit the ball a little too hard, as McLain was forced to hold up at 3rd base.  Still – the bases were loaded, and there was just one out.  Eugenio Suarez – the fan-favorite slugger, the Reds biggest offseason acquisition, a man who hit 49 home runs last year – was at the plate.  And he struck out swinging.  And then Spencer Steer struck out swinging.  And the threat was over.

A familiar sequence – one we saw plenty of last year.  The Reds were shutout three times in their first seven games in 2025, and they appear to be heading in a similar direction in 2026.

If they can’t solve their issues against left-handed pitching and get some timely hitting with runners in scoring position, 2026 could get ugly in a hurry.  The Reds pitching is still their strength, but they need the lineup to do some heavy lifting while Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo work their way back to full health.  So far, that looks like a faint possibility – though Stewart’s ability to consistently barrel the baseball does offer a glimmer of hope.

Speaking of Stewart, he should probably be excluded from this critique.  The Reds rookie went 3 for 4 on Opening Day, smacking two doubles and providing a much-needed spark.  He continues to hit the ball hard, and he led all Reds hitters yesterday with a top exit velocity of 109.0 MPH – off of Crochet, no less.

It’s still too early to say that the Reds’ postseason dreams are in jeopardy, but their Opening Day loss was familiar for all the wrong reasons.  There’s time to get things figured out – but for the sake of a fanbase that’s familiar with this movie, let’s hope that happens quickly.