Cincinnati Reds: Three up and three down from the final week of camp

The Cincinnati Reds begin play on Friday evening against the Detroit Tigers.

Summer camp is over. The Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers closed out their final exhibition game on Wednesday and are all set for Opening Day on Friday. Though the coronavirus pandemic has severely shortened the 2020 Major League Baseball season, Reds Country should still be excited about the trajectory of this year’s team.

Reds fans, this has the potential to be a very odd, yet special season. We’re only going to see a 60-game season, as the pandemic shut down spring training and a long, drawn out negotiation between the player’s union and the owners made us wait longer than we wanted for players to get back on the field. However, here we are, just a couple days away from the start of the season.

Make no mistake, the Cincinnati Reds are one of the few teams that are tailor-made for this abbreviated 2020 season. With the additions of Nick Castellanos and Mike Moustakas, the Reds have two power-bats that were not here in 2019. Shogo Akiyama gives Cincinnati its best leadoff hitter since, perhaps, Shin-Soo Choo in 2013.

The Cincinnati rotation is top-notch. The only National League team that can even rival the Reds frontline starters are the Washington Nationals. However, I might take Sonny Gray, Luis Castillo and Trevor Bauer over Patrick Corbin, Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer. It’s going to be a sprint to the finish, but what did we learn from the final week of summer camp?