Reds need to build around Spencer Steer's penchant for pivotal plays

Any World Series run contains at least one play that propels the eventual champion into glory. These take on monikers such as “The Shot Heard Round the World” or “The Bartman Incident.” In every regular season, though, there are smaller, less-heralded plays that keep a fanbase’s hopes alive. In 2024, Spencer Steer was the pulse that revived the Cincinnati Reds time and again.

Since 2020, Baseball-Reference has tracked the impact of single plays on a team’s World Series chances by a metric called Championship Win Probability Added, or cWPA. Although the Reds came nowhere near the postseason, their players provided dramatic, seismic plays, and Steer led the way with a 0.7% cWPA.

Spencer Steer maintained a low profile while contributing some of the most pivotal plays in the Reds’ season

Steer’s biggest moment came against the Colorado Rockies in early June. Trailing by a run with two outs in the ninth, Steer launched a go-ahead home run and sparked a six-run rally that sealed a sweep of Colorado. The swing increased the Reds’ chances of a World Series victory by more than a quarter of a percent. For context, aside from the decisive doubleheader between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets in September, most plays move the needle less than a percent.

Knowing that Steer has a propensity to step up big in pivotal moments does little to assuage the pain of another missed postseason, especially since Will Benson’s poor play entirely negated any value added by Steer. In fact, only six Reds batters positively contributed from a cWPA standpoint. And herein lies the problem.

The newly minted champion Los Angeles Dodgers received positive cWPA contributions from 10 different players in 2024. Shohei Ohtani, of course, led the way with 5.4%, but when his bat went quiet in the World Series, his teammates took up the mantle, as they had done throughout the season. Teoscar Hernández, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith combined for 5.2% cWPA in 2024.

The Yankees, on the other hand, had just five players with positive cWPA and just two with a cWPA more than 0.2%. Without Aaron Judge (4.3%) cWPA, New York had little shot at turning the tide of the World Series.

All this is to say, Steer can be a piece to build around, but he can’t do it alone. The Reds need to find big players for big moments. Terry Francona’s new staff needs to find and foster those big players.

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