Christian Encarnacion Strand's Orioles breakout comes at a brutal time for the Reds

As the Cincinnati Reds' playoff hopes have almost completely slipped away, it's worth taking a look at what went wrong. The list is long. The bullpen is a disaster, ranking 25th in ERA with a 4.64 mark, making the unit's hot start feel like a distant memory. The starting rotation hasn't been much better, and injuries have certainly played a role.

But one of the most frustrating developments has been the offense's ineptitude. This was an issue last season as the team was just average, ranking 14th with 716 runs in 2025. The primary offensive goal was to add potency to the lineup, so it's been a huge blow to see that they've been worse, not better, ranking 26th with 427 runs this year.

One of the players who was quickly phased out by the offseason additions is the once-promising Christian Encarnacion-Strand, whom Cincinnati gave away to the Baltimore Orioles for cash considerations. Almost immediately, Encarnacion-Strand started heating up with the Orioles' Triple-A club.

Encarnacion-Strand was called up by Baltimore on July 18, and in that time he's clubbed three dingers while hitting .375/.400/.792. Wouldn't that look nice in the middle of the Reds' lineup right about now?

Christian Encarnacion-Strand's supposed breakout with the Orioles shouldn't have Reds fans dismayed

It's easy to look at the once-promising slugger excelling in his new digs and feel as if this is yet another Nick Krall blunder. Encarnacion-Strand seems to have displaced Coby Mayo at the hot corner for the Orioles, which sounds like an accomplishment until you realize that Mayo is basically Baltimore's version of Encarnacion-Strand — powerful, but ultimately unproductive.

The 26-year-old has a simple explanation for his resurgence. In his eyes, finally getting healthy has allowed his talent to shine through.

“Now that I’m healthy, I feel like it’s just allowed me to be the athlete I can be,” Encarnacion-Strand told Matt Weyrich of the Baltimore Sun.

That's a valid take, but we'll have to see if it holds up. As hot as he's been, it's only been six games and 26 plate appearances. If you dig through his time with the Reds, you can certainly find six-game stretches where he looked like a slugging superstar. In fact, he did it for 63 games in 2023 as a rookie, when he hit .270/.328/.477 with 13 homers.

While that might seem to buoy Encarnacion-Strand's point about health, a closer look shows he's not really doing anything differently than he did before. He's still not walking much, posting a 3.8% BB-rate, which is actually a tick below his 4.2% career average.

He's hitting the ball hard, but he's also swinging at everything. Encarnacion-Strand has a whopping 60.4% chase rate, which is a massive red flag flying high in the sky. He chased 46.4% of the time last year and at a 40.5% rate in 2024. It's hard to consistently produce when you're swinging at junk 40% of the time, let alone 60% of the time.

Eventually, Encarnacion-Strand will regress to the mean, and even if he retains some value through his power production, it's questionable whether he would even help the Reds. While Cincinnati has had trouble scoring runs, it hasn't been because the team lacks pop.

The Reds rank sixth in MLB in homers with 135, and the club's isolated slugging percentage of .168 is also the sixth-best mark in the league.

Cincy hitters can punish mistakes, which is what Encarnacion-Strand has always done well. Where they struggle is consistently stringing hits together. The Reds' .229 team batting average is tied with the Seattle Mariners for the worst performance in baseball.

Let's go back to Encarnacion-Strand's case rate. Expanding the zone means making contact out of the zone at times. In his case, a lot of the time, he owns a 69% o-contact rate (up from 59.5% last year), which is astronomically high. Typically speaking, it's hard to turn that type of contact into hits consistently over time.

So while Encarnacion-Strand's power looks nice, that's the one thing the Reds do well on offense. Everything else looks like a small-sample mirage, so Reds fans can expect a downturn soon as Orioles fans learn what we all already know. Encarnacion-Strand will crush some mistakes, but everything else will let you down.

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