Hall of Fame Reds shortstop shreds current state of club

Baseball Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin is going in on his beloved former team.

Larkin, who now works as an analyst for Bally Sports Ohio, had some harsh remarks about the Cincinnati Reds this week. The retired former NL MVP was on the broadcast for a game between the Reds and St. Louis Cardinals and went off on the Reds’ underwhelming performance this season relative to their talent level.

“There’s expectation, and there should be expectation in this city with this amount of talent that we have,” Larkin said, per the Cincinnati Enquirer. “We have a superstar talented pitcher [Hunter Greene]. We have superstar talented players, right? And there has to be something in someone that just cannot accept mediocrity."

Larkin wasn't done, either.

“You have dominant players, and they have to figure out,” Larkin added. “And I think these guys, they need to be pushed. I know that. I’m sitting here just thinking about myself and Eric Davis, and what he did for me in my career. What he did is he challenged me. He didn’t let me just go out there and just be O.K … He told me that it is unacceptable for you to be a .500 ballplayer.”

Larkin’s comments came in the context of the Reds coming up on a .500 record for the first time since early May. (The club is 60-61 entering play on Thursday.) But Cincinnati is still 4.5 games back in wild-card race and 8.5 games back in the division. They look poised to miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year and have not won 90 games in a season for over a decade.

To an extent, the Reds’ mediocrity this year is understandable. They have battled a number of injuries with Matt McLain being sidelined all season to this point and other key roster pieces like TJ Friedl and Jake Fraley missing significant time. On top of that, Cincinnati’s roster is still very young. Its headliners are the likes of Greene, Elly De La Cruz, and Spencer Steer, all of whom are age 26 and younger.

That said, there are some legitimate concerns about the way that the Reds have been run in recent years, including from a payroll standpoint. Larkin, who played his entire MLB career for the Reds from 1986-2004, is among those who would like to see some changes.