A year ago, I wrote about the Reds offseason trade chips because Dick Williams said the front office might pursue pitching help for 2018. As we now know, the Reds didn’t add any starters in the offseason, hoping instead for a return to health and form for Anthony Desclafani, Homer Bailey, and Brandon Finnegan. That shipped crashed into the harbor early in 2018, and the lifeboat named Harvey did little to save the wreckage.
After a year of struggles for the entire rotation, with the exception of some dominant stretches by Luis Castillo, the Reds find themselves in the same place as before: desperate for rotation stability.