The Cincinnati Reds lost their eleventy-billionth game of the 2018 season today, despite it only being April 22nd. The game was sitting at 3-2 to start the 7th inning, with the Cardinals leading and the top of the lineup coming up for St. Louis. The Reds decided to go to Kevin Quackenbush in this scenario. That’s the same Kevin Quackenbush, who since the start of 2017 had an ERA of 7.34 with 20 walks, 28 strikeouts, and seven home runs allowed.

This plays out just like you would expect it to. The Reds reliever gave up six runs in the next two innings and the Reds lost their 13th game in their last 14 contest. The outing left me thinking about something, and led me down a rabbit hole of the performances of players given to the big league club this year that weren’t in the organization last season that were brought in from the outside.

The results of that look were not pretty. The Cincinnati Reds, in rebuilding mode, decided to go out and sign some older free agents to minor league contracts heading into the spring, and then gave several of them jobs on the big league roster out of the spring. Then they also, shortly after the season began, signed Yovani Gallardo to a Major League contract, too.

The Reds went with two position players, Phil Gosselin and Cliff Pennington. They chose those options near the end of spring training over Alex Blandino and Brandon Dixon. The results? Well, it cost you two 40-man roster spots, and they’ve combined to hit .128 this season in 54 at-bats.

Then Cincinnati went north with Kevin Quackenbush in the bullpen, and shortly thereafter brought in Yovani Gallardo. Dylan Floro is also a minor league free agent that they brought in and he’s also now in the Major Leagues and on the 40-man roster. They’ve combined for 17.1 innings and an ERA of 9.87.

The ages of those five players? 27, 29, 29, 32 and 34-years-old. Now, this isn’t the team that the Reds had hoped to take with them out of Goodyear. Injuries to Brandon Finnegan, Michael Lorenzen, Kevin Shackelford, and David Hernandez changed things up a little bit. The team needed spots to be filled in the bullpen because of this. But, the Reds couldn’t have hand picked worse performances than they’ve gotten if they tried.

Not much of this is unexpected. Kevin Quackenbush had an ERA of 7.86 in San Diego last year with nearly as many walks as strikeouts. Yovani Gallardo has gotten his brains beat in in each of the previous two seasons, also with nearly as many walks as strikeouts. Cliff Pennington has hit .224/.291/.306 over the last three seasons. Phil Gosselin had 50 total plate appearances in the Majors last year and hit .146. In Triple-A he posted a .625 OPS last year.

Those four guys were almost guaranteed to be bad. Every piece of evidence said they would be. Yet, the Reds gave them jobs anyways. Not only is it a question of why they were handed jobs and the thought process behind them being given jobs, but why this franchise seems so scared to play young guys who are unknown, over the known bad. There’s of course risk in playing unknown options because they could be bad. But how is that a worse option than just going with the known bad? It’s led to the Reds losing players on their 40-man roster. It’s led to them flat out wasting money and cutting one of these guys after a grand total of three outings.

Who is it in the front office that decided that these guys were good options over just going with what you already had on your 40-man roster for short-term options until you got back guys from the disabled list? Would Jackson Stephens, Ariel Hernandez, Zack Weiss, Jimmy Herget, Robert Stephenson, Jesus Reyes, Keury Mella – some combination of those guys, all on the 40-man roster to start the year, really have been worse options than the ones you went with in the bullpen? And that’s even before you consider the benefit of hindsight. Would going with Alex Blandino and Brandon Dixon on your bench really have been worse options?

The Cincinnati Reds are constantly burned by being cheap, and entirely risk averse. If you don’t believe that it’s a good idea to go with young guys on your bench, fine. But then you need to spend actual money on your bench. Sign players that aren’t coming off of seasons where they had a .625 OPS in Triple-A. Sign players that aren’t coming off of a 3-year run in the Majors with a sub .600 OPS.

If you want to strengthen your bullpen, spend more than $4.6M on it. Either go with your young guys, or spend the money. Do not sign a guy with an ERA over 5.50 over the last two seasons to a Major League contract. Do not sign a guy who had an ERA over 7.00 last season and then give them a job based on a handful of spring training innings.

The Reds don’t seem like they want to go all-in on a rebuild. But they also don’t want to spend any money at all to fill out the roster with guys that are remotely close to average bench players or relievers. This season has gone as bad as possible in terms of the won-loss record. No one could have predicted just how bad it has turned out. Not even the most pessimistic of fans. But when you have a 5th of your 25-man roster made up of players you brought in on Minor League contracts at the start of the spring, and they were all guys who were absolutely terrible last season in the Major Leagues, it’s not hard to understand why the team isn’t having success.