It only took one week to expose the Reds' trade deadline disaster

The Cincinnati Reds effectively stood pat at last week's MLB trade deadline. Sure, they traded Nathaniel Lowe to the Cleveland Guardians for a 19-year-old pitching prospect and added some international bonus pool money after parting ways with Caleb Ferguson, but the Reds did nothing to enhance this year's team and very little to improve the farm system.

Now, one week later, it's plain to see that the front office's strategy — if you can call it that — was severely flawed. The Reds swept the Athletics right out of Great American Ball Park last week, and then turned around and were swept right out of our nation's capital after losing three straight games to the Washington Nationals.

At 56-61, Cincinnati is five games below .500, six games back of the final NL Wild Card spot, and have a 0.5% chance to make the playoffs according to FanGraphs. Last Monday, the Reds were 53-58 (five games below .500), six games back of the final NL Wild Card spot, and had a 1.5% chance to make the playoffs.

In other words, nothing has changed. If anything, with the Reds' postseason odds dropping a full percentage point, proves that the team has actually gotten worse.

Reds' trade deadline failure was only magnified by this week's struggles

It's not as if the Reds' didn't have tradable assets at last week's deadline. There's little doubt that opposing teams came calling for the likes of Tyler Stephenson, Brady Singer, and Brock Burke before last Monday's deadline passed.

Reds' president of baseball operations Nick Krall hinted that the team had numerous conversations with other organizations, but claimed that they never felt as though the deals in question brought back enough value.

There's a world in which that type of mentality is plausible; teams shouldn't just give away players for nothing. But that's effectively what's going to happen in a few weeks when Stephenson, Singer, Burke, Pierce Johnson, and Eugenio Suárez all become free agents.

Krall should've taken the best of the bad offers and presumed that at least one of prospects the Reds would've received in return might've become a serviceable starter down the road.

To make matters worse, Hunter Greene landed on the injured list the day after the trade deadline. He reported soreness in his surgically repaired elbow, and further testing revealed he'll now need to undergo season-ending surgery this week and could miss all of next season as well.

By standing pat at the deadline, the Reds basically rolled the dice on the slim chance to return to the playoffs despite overwhelming odds against them and the most difficult schedule among any team over the final six weeks of the season.

They'll also be without one of their best starting pitchers (Greene) and will soon shut down their ace (Chase Burns) because of an innings restriction. The Reds also traded away one of their best weapons against right-handed pitching (Lowe) — which only shows how foolish their grand design for the deadline truly was.

There's only way to categorize the Reds' trade deadline strategy: disastrous.

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