Reason for optimism: The bullpen, a major factor in the 94-loss 2016 season, can't possibly be as bad as it was last year.
Reason for pessimism: The 2016 rotation was nearly as terrible, and upgrading starting pitching is a much harder task.
I suppose the 2016 season was something of a success for the Cincinnati Reds, at least from management's perspective.
Despite the presence of Joey Votto, whose talent threatens to upend any team's goal of tanking, the Reds had the worst record in the National League. This while showing a four-game improvement over 2015 despite the jettisoning of Todd Frazier and Aroldis Chapman prior to the season and Jay Bruce during it. With the exception of Votto, who to this point has refused to waive his no-trade clause, the roster turnover is now complete with Brandon Phillips traded to the Braves earlier this year. That leaves Votto (in his age-33 season) and shortstop Zack Cozart (31) as the only every-day players over 30 expected to make the Opening Day roster.
Watching old players perform poorly is depressing for fans, but just because the Reds lineup has gotten younger doesn't mean excitement will follow.
Still, there was one notable bright spot to emerge from the youth movement started last year. Adam Duvall, acquired from the San Francisco Giants in exchange for a late-season Mike Leake rental in 2015, ended up being one of the most valuable players in baseball last season in terms of production per dollar earned. Thirty-three home runs at a cost of half a million dollars will earn you that distinction.
The limiting factor on offensive improvement, though, will almost certainly be the team's inability to get on base. Third to last in the National League with a team OBP of .316, the Reds' ineptitude is actually masked by Votto's National League-leading mark of .434. Votto aside, the Reds barely reach base three times out of 10, better than only the Padres in 2016. Essentially, the Reds sport a competitive major league offense four innings per game. There's no reason to see that significantly changing in 2017.
The low-hanging fruit of improvement isn't on the runs scored side of the ledger, anyway.
Upgrading bullpen performance is traditionally the easiest, and cheapest, way to achieve material year-over-year improvement for bottom-tier performers. And no team scraped the bottom-of-the-bullpen performance barrel quite like the Reds last year. At last year's All-Star break, Cincinnati's bullpen had an ERA of 5.73. That allowed, for possibly the first time in history, a team's starters with an ERA of 5.29 to look down at the bullpen from the dugout and credibly say, "Man, you guys suck." By the end of the season there was improvement, but Reds relievers still allowed more runs in 2016 (356) than Cubs starters did (353).
As alluded to in the bullpen comments, the rotation was also among the worst in baseball, but unlike the bullpen there is almost no turnover in the rotation and therefore little hope for improvement. In fact, by trading away Dan Straily to the Miami Marlins, the Reds jettisoned their second-most effective starter. They'll be counting on Scott Feldman, a 34-year old free agent signed on the cheap, to replace Straily's 3.79 runs allowed over 183 innings, a rate of run suppression that Feldman has never achieved in his 12-year career, with the exception of 2005, when he threw nine innings in relief.
Despite the presence of a younger roster, Cincinnati still has the ingredients in place to set the franchise record for losses, currently held by the 1982 squad at 101 games. That's especially true if the sublime Votto concludes that his only chance to ever play postseason baseball again is an important enough career goal to waive his no-trade clause. That would also truly help the Reds return to winning ways in the 2020s, because, as I wrote last year, Votto is just good enough to keep the Reds from being bad enough.
When it comes to translating that outlook into an investment, I think I see an opening. Cincinnati had a 69.5 win total last year, and even though the Reds finished under, they weren't nearly as good as their 68 wins suggested. Despite that, Vegas has actually raised the bar to 70.5 wins this year. While you can count on positive bullpen regression, I'm not sure where else there's going to be improvement. Combined with a non-zero probability that Votto ends up elsewhere by the end of July, the Reds are my choice for the team most likely to lose 100 games this season and are therefore an "under" play.
2017 projection: 67-95 (fifth, NL Central)
Bet recommendation: Under