Streaky baseball hitting is a tale as old as time. It’s a trait that came to define the likes of Jay Bruce, who’d turn into the most ridiculous player on the planet for a week only to crawl back into his shell for several more thereafter.
The Cincinnati Reds knew that about Eugenio Suárez before they gave him $15 million to return to play for them this past winter. They watched him sock 49 homers with a .930 OPS for them in the go-go flyball year of 2019 only to see him sink go a .199/.293/.440 line across the next two seasons (202 games), dealingn him away to Seattle after the 2021 season thinking he may well be cooked altogether.
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Three years passed of Geno mired in the hell on right handed hitters that is the stadium in Seattle, but when he finally settled into the home air of Chase Field with the Arizona Diamondbacks he went right back to the Geno of old. Across the first 106 games of last season he blasted 36 homers, and that came on the back of him hitting 18 homers over the final 57 games of 2024 with the Snakes. That’s 54 homers in 163 games, with a .977 OPS in that 2024 sample backed up by an .897 OPS in that larger 2025 one.
At this time just last season he was not only carrying an entire offense, he’d become one of the hottest names on the trade market as teams desperately searched for right-handed power. Seattle, who knew him quite well, jumped on the chance to reunite, and their home park hell once again sapped Geno back into a mere mortal.
When he fell into Cincinnati’s lap, the hope was that he’d immediately morph back into Arizona Geno, or Early Reds Geno. Thing is, he went all the way with Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic and never really had much of a spring training with the Reds in Goodyear. He was asked to DH first and ask questions later for the first time in his career, with Ke’Bryan Hayes getting most of the work at 3B while Geno had to sit in the dugout for an hour at a time more often than not. Then, he picked up an oblique injury that cost him a month, something that he simply had zero real experience dealing with – from 2016 through 2025, he logged at least 143 games in each non-COVID shortened season.
The Reds, with or without him, have been mostly a disaster all year. His production (.680 OPS, 12 homers in 279 PA) is pedestrian by most every standard. Still, he’s going to be a name teams look to acquire in the next two weeks purely for his penchant for getting hot for extended stretches, and right now I’m willing to be the Reds are going to give him as many chances as possible to showcase that before signing off on a deal to send him away once again.
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The hope, of course, is that he gets hot in a Reds uniform and sparks a little bidding war. There’s at least a little bit of spotlight that suggests he’s actually doing that, even though how poor the Reds have played (and the lengthy All Star break) have made it a little bit harder to follow. Over his last 19 games, for instance, he’s hit .235/.342/.515 (.856 OPS) with 5 homers in 79 PA, and he even strung together a streak of three straight games played with a homer (that bridged the ASB itself).
That’s not world-beating stuff by any means, but it’s a sign of life from a bat that we know is prone to waking up suddenly in a big, big way. Another two weeks of that kind of production to help show the oblique strain (and rust caused by rehab) are that much further in the rear-view mirror, and the Reds might actually have a bat with some serious intrigue they could move before the August 3rd trade deadline.
It’s going to suck to have to wave goodbye to Geno for a second time in the last five years. It would take a whole lot of the sting out of it if he could hit his way into a bidding war for his services. Because karma and the Reds have had a tepid relationship for the last three decades, of course that means that the next place Geno will be asked to get hot is – you guessed it – tonight in Seattle’s T-Mobile Park as the Reds begin a vital three-game series on the road against the Mariners.
This time, maybe, Geno will finally figure that park out.
