The 2012 season easily marks the high water point of Cincinnati Reds success over the last 20 years. The team won 97 regular season games, finally won a pair of playoff games, and were an ill-timed Johnny Cueto injury away from potentially making a deep playoff run.
The results of that year are fun to look at now, and will be fun to look back on for the rest of this franchise’s history. Today, though, it’s a look at how that team got to 97 wins that may be of more pertinence, since it was a model of how a franchise of any market size could cost-effectively climb to the top of a division.