Maybe, just maybe, the Reds have the real Matt McLain back

That’d be just as good as a trade!

There are plenty of times I will attempt to apologize or pick selective endpoints to support my own argument with Cincinnati Reds players. That’s the ‘fun’ part of breaking down stats, after all.

There’s no sugarcoating just how poor Matt McLain’s overall numbers are through 78 games of the 2025 season, though. There just isn’t.

Entering play on Sunday, he was the owner of just a 74 OPS+ and had struck out 77 times in 67 games - his 28.6% strikeout rate ranking 8th highest out of 160 qualifying MLB hitters through that time.

He missed all of 2024 after missing half of 2023. He’d battled multiple oblique issues as well as a major shoulder issue, and sitting idle - or anywhere other than the highest level at which the sport is played - is bound to create a metric heft of rust. McLain, we hope, has simply been finding his way through said rust and doing his damnedest to shake it off accordingly.

Maybe, just maybe, he has.

McLain homered again on Sunday as the Cincinnati Reds won 4-1 over the St. Louis Cardinals to salvage a game out of a series they were a breath away from winning, and it marked a pretty damn stellar full week for the Reds resident 2B. He came into Sunday having gone 9 for 20 with a pair of doubles on the week, his homer only adding to his weekly tally - one that’s good enough to take home this edition of the Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Star of the Week award.

Without Sunday’s stats yet included, he’d hit .350/.422/.550 with a pair of doubles and pair of dingers datig back over his previous 12 games entering today’s game, so he’s clearly finding his way after struggling mightily through most of the first half of the season.

Reds manager Terry Francona, long a believer in McLain’s upside, has certainly been paying attention to said run. He moved McLain back up to the #2 spot in the batting order on Sunday prior to his homer, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him hitting there in between TJ Friedl and Elly De La Cruz for a good bit of time going forward, either.

Congrats to Matt, and for the sake of the Reds I truly hope this is just the first of many weekly takedowns he’ll earn going forward.