Reds' Eugenio Suarez signing has turned out to be a problem with painful decline

Reds' Eugenio Suarez signing has turned out to be a problem with painful decline originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Eugenio Suarez's stats so far this season suggest that he's just on the verge of doing what the Cincinnati Reds signed him to do.

He's got a .692 OPS with three home runs, which feels like if it trends up just a bit, that's the power the Reds would've been hoping for.

But the underlying numbers suggest that things aren't going to get better for Suarez.

Of every qualified hitter in baseball, no one has had a steeper decline in hard-hit rate from last season to this one.

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Suarez had a 47.6% hard-hit percentage in 2025. So far this season through April 21, it's 21.8%.

That's a 5.2 percentage point decline worse than the second-worst decline so far this season (Seattle's Cal Raleigh).

Every season since 2018, Suarez has had at least a 39.8% hard-hit rate. So being down at 21.8% is a brutal fall-off for Suarez.

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On the one hand, it's possible to be optimistic and assume Suarez will get closer to his normal self as far as hitting the ball hard, because he's been doing it for so long.

On the other hand, a pessimist would point out that Suarez struggled down the stretch of last season and that he's getting up there in years.

There's real reason to believe that this won't get better for Suarez. And if that's the case, it's a painful offseason move by Cincinnati to turn to Suarez to add pop to their lineup, only to walk right into this decline.