Cincinnati Reds' impossible playoff dream ends one day short of October with loss to Cards

ST. LOUIS — It took 12 pitches for Cincinnati Reds rookie Connor Phillips to walk the first three batters he faced in Saturday’s must-win start against the St. Louis Cardinals and get pulled from the game.

Four batters and three doubles later, the Cardinals had a five-run lead on the way to the 15-6 rout that finally, after 161 games of impossible dreams, ended the Reds' magic carpet ride toward the playoffs.

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They were eliminated exactly one day short of October.

“It hurts. It does really hurt,” said an emotional Jonathan India, a key clubhouse and field leader.

“Just a special team, a special season,” he added. “We were so bought in. We knew we had it. We just had to win two more. That’s it. We had it. We had the team to do it.”

In fact, with the Houston Astros' victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks Saturday, the Reds would have gone into the final day of the season with a chance to win the National League's final playoff spot if their middle-inning comeback had been completed.

"We got down big, but we fought back," said India, whose Reds got as close as 11-6 and loaded the bases with two out in the eighth. "That's the motto of our team. We never give up."

The Reds finish the season Sunday with Opening Day starter Hunter Greene on the mound, seeking their 83rd win, one year after losing 100 games for only the second time in franchise history.

“Looking back on this year, after 100 losses last year, in spring training no one thought we had a chance to be remotely close to a .500 team,” said Spencer Steer, one of 23 rookies to contribute this year to the one of the longest shots in baseball reaching the penultimate day of the season with playoff hopes still alive.

“No matter how you look at this season, for me personally, I can look at what this team’s accomplished this year — the amount of fight, the amount of obstacles we’ve had to overcome to get to this spot — I can look back at whatever happens and feel an immense amount of pride. And that’s because of who’s in this clubhouse and what we’ve endured together.”

Endured?

Consider just a few of the obstacles the Reds overcame to follow that 100-loss season with a winning season and get so close to the playoffs:

• They started 7-15.

• Their top two starters — Greene and Nick Lodolo — combined for seven months on the injured list and just 21 starts, six wins and a 5.09 ERA (entering Greene’s final start).

• Their rotation ERA, consequently, is a third-worst-in-MLB 5.42.

• The front office failed to add a starting pitcher at the Aug. 1 trade deadline, with the team in first place in the division at the time; and the team immediately lost six straight games on the way to a 10-17 August (their worst month).

• India, the lineup and clubhouse linchpin, missed six weeks with a foot injury, including all of that rough August as the Reds struggled to score runs.

• The biggest known COVID-19 outbreak in the majors sent five pitchers to the COVID list in the span of 24 hours to open September (and then outfielder Stuart Fairchild a week later).

• Their 23 rookies included a major-league-high 16 who made debuts this year.

• One of those rookies, Matt McLain, proved to be the team’s best player just in time to miss the final month of the season with an oblique strain.

“It was never easy,” manager David Bell said. “No one asked for it to be easy. Really, our players and staff are responsible for doing a lot and demonstrated a standard of what it means to work really hard and truly be a team and play hard every day. That’s what it took. It’s not anything complicated.

“They've been amazing from Day 1," he added. "It's the best team, best team, that I've ever been a part of. ... I will be forever grateful to every single guy on this team. Hopefully, we'll stay together for a long, long time.”

The enormous behind-the-scenes presence of franchise icon Joey Votto during an inspiring 10-month rehab from shoulder surgery had an impact even before he made his season debut on June 19 — during the Reds’ 12-game winning streak that tied a post-1900 franchise record — and contributed a three-RBI performance that included a home run.

The Ted Lasso-like “belief” that Bell, his staff and many of his players espoused seemed as effective at times as it might have sounded naive to the jaded listener.

The overworked bullpen made up of a cast of castoffs was the collective unsung hero for a team that had little else in the way of reliable pitching all season.

Whatever kept this duct-taped, patchwork team together as it evolved into the contender it became, one thing’s for sure: They won’t sneak up on anybody next year.

The expectations next year are as certain and palpable already as the sting and finality of Saturday night’s elimination.

“This year as a whole — resiliency is a good word for it,” said center fielder and lineup catalyst TJ Friedl. “Battling through a lot of adversity and injuries with a lot of our pitchers, a lot of our big important players.

“This is my first time playing meaningful September baseball,” Friedl added. “It’s a great experience for all of us moving forward, because this is going to be our goal every single year, to make the playoffs and to get in the playoff hunt.”

That didn't make Saturday hurt any less.

“When you get this far, it becomes more painful when you don’t get all the way to where you’re trying to get to,” Bell said. “Being in the position I’m in, I’m just really proud of every single person in that clubhouse to put us in the position to be playing games that matter all the way down to the very last.”

So they miss their impossible-looking bid for a playoff berth on the second-to-last day of the season, but not for lack of talent — especially the way the roster looked in the second half.

And not for lack of continuity built into the process, with Bell securing a three-year contract extension in July.

And certainly not for lack of effort, Steer said.

“There’s no way I’ll be leaving this clubhouse after this weekend with my head down,” Steer said.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati's Big Red Magic Carpet ride finally comes to end with loss