NEW YORK – Tommy Pham saw people saying he had no idea what he was talking about. He read tweets mocking him for his opinion.
He shared his belief, publicly and privately for more than the past month, that the Cincinnati Reds were one or two players away from contending for a playoff spot.
Yes, the same Reds club that started the season with a 3-22 record and has sat in last place in the division for most of the year.
Pham knew people would laugh at what he believed, but he says the team’s play over the last week underscores his point. After sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays last weekend, the Reds took two of three games against the New York Yankees. The Yankees entered the series with a 19-2 record in their last 21 home games before the Reds beat them twice.
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“I said what I said about this team,” Pham said. “Everybody laughed at me on Twitter. Everybody laughed. I said we have pitching and we have good players. We got screwed earlier in the season due to injuries and schedule. Everyone laughed at me saying I don’t know baseball.
“And look, everything is looking like what I’m saying was true. We could’ve easily swept these guys. You look at it now, if you take away our April record, what would we be? Dead serious.”
The Reds have a 31-33 record since their franchise-worst start to a season. Their lineup finally looks more like the one they envisioned at the end of spring training after Tyler Stephenson and Tyler Naquin returned.
Playing to a .500 record isn’t their goal, but they had a week in April when they didn’t even own a lead in a game. Now they’re coming off a series where they handed the best team in baseball its second series loss at Yankee Stadium this year.
“Their record may show something different, but they’ve got a lot of good ballplayers over there that battled in their at-bats, put the ball in play,” Yankees star Aaron Judge said. “Some good, quality arms with high velocity. It’s a tough one to swallow. You never want to lose a series, but sometimes you have to tip your cap.”
The Reds are still far from full strength in the bullpen, the team’s weakness. They have a season-high 17 players on the injured list.
But they have a healthy rotation, with Tyler Mahle scheduled to return next weekend, and their regular starters are in the lineup.
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“We were down six position players and we didn’t have (Luis) Castillo and (Mike) Minor,” Pham said of the club’s three-win April. “This team is close. I said it already. This is a good team. Bad things happened to us early in the year and we put ourselves in a big hole.”
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The Reds will likely have a much different roster in a couple of weeks with the trade deadline looming. Castillo is the best pitcher available and Mahle is probably in the next tier. There are several players who will be free agents at the end of the season, including Pham, Naquin, Brandon Drury and Donovan Solano, making them all trade candidates.
They haven’t let that uncertainty affect them. They beat three All-Star starting pitchers, Shane McClanahan, Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes. Four of their last five wins came in one-run games.
“I’m really, at this time, focusing on every day,” Reds Manager David Bell said. “That’s one thing we talk about a lot as a team because when you get down early in a season, it’s easy to think about the past and it’s very easy to think about how far we have to go to get back to where we want. We talk a lot about approaching every day like it’s a playoff game where that’s all that matters is tonight’s game.”
It’s not like the Reds are playing flawless baseball. Reliever Jeff Hoffman coughed up a three-run lead in the eighth inning Thursday, but the offense came through with three runs in the 10th inning. Solano had a two-out, two-strike RBI single that turned out to be the difference in the one-run win.
The Reds bounced back to retake the lead after an awful defensive third inning Wednesday before losing on a walk-off wild pitch.
They’re a team that won’t stop fighting. Shortstop Kyle Farmer described it as “we’re just having fun.”
“You mention our record (since April), that’s not good enough,” Bell said. “That’s not our goal. But at the same time, we have survived it because the players handled things so well. Through that, I just think every area of the game, we played better than we did the first month. Really, every area.”
One July hot streak shouldn’t alter a team’s plans at the trade deadline. The Reds can’t erase April.
But maybe, as Pham maintains, they’re a lot closer to becoming a playoff contender than their record shows.
“For us to come back and take two against the Yankees in the Bronx to win the series is pretty special,” Farmer said. “Nobody can take that away from us and that’s pretty cool.”
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