Cincinnati Reds: Power surge on the west coast halts two-game skid

The Cincinnati Reds offense got over its jet lag and finally put together a powerful performance in the Emerald City. The Reds smacked three home runs during last night’s victory.

Where has this offense been the past two nights? The Cincinnati Reds plated 11 runs in last night’s series finale against the Seattle Mariners. In fact, the Reds outscored the M’s 17-14 in the series, but still lost two of the three games. This has been the story of the season for Cincinnati. Can the Reds offense wake up over the last two weeks of the season?

After amassing 13 hits in the past two games, the Reds offense erupted last night for 11 hits. Only twice this month have the Reds recorded double digits in hits, the last occurrence being in the series finale against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Reds anemic offense has been the biggest issue standing the way of a winning season and one that Dick Williams and Nick Krall must fix during the offseason. However, last night gave a glimpse of what the current Reds roster is capable of.

We saw Freddy Galvis, Curt Casali and Eugenio Suárez all go yard last night. Galvis’ grand slam in the seventh inning gave the Reds a 7-5 lead, while Casali and Suárez both played add-on in the eighth with two-run missiles to to the left field seats.

Galvis now has 23 home runs on the season and is all but assured a spot on the Cincinnati Reds roster in 2020. The middle infielder has a team option that the front office is likely to pick up and I think Galvis is likely to take over for José Iglesias at shortstop next season.

Casali’s home run was his eighth on the season, and were it not for a knee injury that kept the Reds catcher out of action earlier this season, he’d likely be sitting on double-digit jacks right now. In fact, Casali is just one home run shy of everyday catcher Tucker Barnhart‘s nine home runs and has almost 100 few at-bats.

Now, the man of the month has been Eugenio Suárez, who sent his 45th long ball of the season over the fence in left field. Suárez trails Pete Alonso for the major league lead in homers and is closing in on George Foster‘s team record of 52 home runs in 1977. Geno has 15 more games to catch Alonso and eclipse Foster.

While it’s unfair to expect this kind of output night in and night out from the Reds offense, next season will have a similar feel if the offense gets stuck in neutral. With Suárez, Aristides Aquino, and maybe even Galvis anchoring the Reds lineup in 2020, there’s three players on the Reds roster capable of hitting at least 25 home runs.

We’ve seen Joey Votto regain a little bit of that 2017 power, but at 36-years old, it’s hard to see Votto hitting more than 15 homers in a season. If the idea next season is to platoon Jesse Winker and Phillip Ervin in left field, those two need to combine for at least 35 home runs and 75 RBIs. This season, the duo has 23 homers and 57 RBIs. Granted, Winker has seen a lot of time in the leadoff spot.

This Cincinnati Reds offense has been up and down all season. It’d be nice to see the offense gain some steam as we head into the final few weeks of the 2019 season. We all thought the pitching would be the biggest hurdle this season, but it’s turned out to be the offense. Hopefully this winter, the front office can #GetTheHitting.