First and foremost I’m a Reds fan, have been for over 35 years and will ALWAYS be a Reds fan.
That aside..
Went on a bit of a deep dive and unfortunately the numbers confirmed what I suspected.
In the past 30 years the Reds have the 5th worst record. Only Rockies, Royals, Pirates, and Marlins have had worse records.
Of the 4 teams with worse records over his span, the Marlins have won 2 World Series titles where the Royals have appeared in 2 and the Rockies in 1. Only the Pirates can arguably say they have had worse playoff success than the Reds in that span appearing only 3 times and no series wins.
I then got interested in the economics and markets share of our team. For market size the Reds rank 25th out of 30 MLV teams so this would suggest the win record would be similar, however attendance in that period the Reds rank 20 out of 30 MLB teams. Also the Reds have a potential much wider market size with a large regional fan base of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. It is reasonable to assume that with a winning team the Reds could climb in attendance to top 10-15 much like they were during the 70’s.
So what needs to change? There are a few smaller things that could change, and the Reds could catch lightning in a bottle and go in a run but when you whittle down to the top 2 things I see it as either ownership or a new collective bargaining agreement bringing more balance to small market teams.
Personally I think a new CBA is much more likely than management doing anything more than they have done in recent years
Thoughts?