Chase Burns Was the One Thing That Went Right in Cincinnati. Then Came the IL.

The final week of the Reds' 2026 season produced the least surprising headline of the year and the most deflating one, roughly 48 hours apart.

First, the unsurprising: Cincinnati is running it back. President of baseball operations Nick Krall and general manager Brad Meador are expected to return, and manager Terry Francona — who said he was relieved to hear it, noting "you want to be with people that you're aligned with" — will be back too. There will be no front office overhaul after a 75-87 season, a .463 winning percentage, and a last-place finish in the NL Central, 28 games behind a 103-win Milwaukee club.

Then the deflating part. Chase Burns, the rookie All-Star who was arguably the only unambiguously good development on the roster, was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right groin strain, retroactive to September 19. The move cleared a 40-man spot that went to right-hander Carson Spiers, and it cost TJ Friedl his place in the organization.

The numbers Burns leaves behind

In 29 starts, Burns went 15-3 with a 2.86 ERA over 154.1 innings, striking out 185 against 56 walks for a 1.17 WHIP. His expected ERA sat at 3.25, and his 4.7 WAR made him, by FanGraphs' accounting, one of the most valuable pitchers in the league — on a roster that finished 27th in ERA at 4.73. His slider held opponents to a .154 average with a 51.9% whiff rate. The fastball averaged 97.6 mph and generated a 15.9% strikeout rate on its own.

He was, in other words, the entire argument that this thing can be fixed.

What the week actually revealed

The shutdown itself is minor — a groin strain in late September is a footnote. But it lands in a week where the organizational to-do list got longer, not shorter. Pitching coach Derek Johnson, on personal leave since June, will not return in 2027. Assistant hitting coach Will Remillard was dismissed. A search for Johnson's replacement is already underway, and the Reds have already watched one logical candidate get settled elsewhere.

That search matters more than any press conference soundbite, because the rotation is the problem. Hunter Greene made five starts, posted a 6.83 ERA, and underwent Tommy John surgery that will likely cost him all of 2027. Twenty-six pitchers cycled through the staff. The bullpen blew 13 saves and converted 18. Cincinnati walked 4.18 per nine innings while Milwaukee walked 2.79 — that 1.4-run gap in free passes is a decent chunk of the 28-game gap in the standings.

The case against total gloom

Two things survived. Elly De La Cruz hit 30 homers and stole 30 bases, becoming the fourth Red ever to do it alongside Eric Davis, Barry Larkin, and Brandon Phillips, finishing at .283/.365/.515 with 5.6 WAR and a 95th-percentile xwOBA. Sal Stewart played all 162 games and drove in 112. Those two combined for roughly 1% of the payroll.

That's the tension the front office now owns. The April team went 17-9; the June team went 9-17. Nothing about the last-place roster screams contention in 2027, but the cost-controlled core is real, and the decision to keep the architects in place means the burden of proof sits with them. Burns getting healthy is step one. Finding the coach who can build a rotation around him is step two.