GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Cincinnati Reds second baseman and No. 2 hitter Matt McLain has a few numbers that he’s chasing this season.
“It’s little goals like swinging at a certain percentage of strikes in the heart of the zone early in counts,” McLain said. “I don’t want to strike out. Hitting runners with scoring position is super important.”
McLain, who’s going to hit second for the Reds this year, has become a lot more process-oriented. His frustrating 2025 season gave him a lot to work on. When the 26-year-old reflected on that season, he recognized that he shouldn’t be so negative. Of course, he had to learn from his failures. But he could get worn down by trying to fix his flaws with marathon sessions in the batting cage. You can’t fix every issue simply by working harder and harder.
“Personally, I’m trying to learn more about the game and become a smarter baseball player along with working hard,” McLain said. “It’s about, ‘What do I need to do to beat this guy today?’”
He’s a young player growing into a veteran in real time. Entering the 2026 season, McLain views where he’s at as an exciting stage of his career.
“I know what I need to do,” McLain said.
That focus showed up in spring training. He leads all MLB hitters in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging this spring. He also more than passes the eye test with an improved approach at the plate, a confidence in his swing and a willingness to take the ball the other way.
The most important trait is this one, which Terry Francona identified.
“I don’t see any panic in him,” Francona said.
A big part of McLain’s 2026 is going to be pressure and expectations. McLain can be as impactful as any player off the team. He also had the worst 2025 season of anyone on the roster. As Francona figured out where McLain was going to hit in the lineup this season, he had to balance putting McLain in a position to be successful, making sure that McLain wasn’t putting too much pressure on himself and putting the best overall lineup on the field for the Reds.
Instead of playing it safe with McLain, Francona pulled a managerial lever and announced that McLain is going to hit second this season.
“I made the decision about four weeks ago,” Francona joked.
Last year, McLain made 66 starts in the No. 2 spot in the order but spent the last six weeks of the 2025 season hitting ninth in the lineup.
The top-half of the lineup on Opening Day next Thursday against the Red Sox will go TJ Friedl-McLain-Elly De La Cruz-Eugenio Suárez.
McLain slots in as an athletic right-handed power threat who can both set the table and drive runners in. If he has the season that Francona is expecting, then McLain will be the ideal No. 2 hitter.
Francona was hoping that it would work out this way with McLain being ready to hit second on Opening Day this year.
“Obviously, I think it’s our best lineup because I stuck with it so much last year,” Francona said. “When you’re on the field and there’s nothing you can’t do (like McLain), that’s got to be a good feeling.”
There’s good reason to believe that the shoulder injury that McLain was coming off of last season was the biggest reason why he ended the season with the fourth-worst OPS in MLB in 2025. No one wanted to say it at the time, but it typically takes an extra year for a hitter coming off of shoulder surgery to get his power back.
Francona was impressed by the way McLain handled last season. McLain was never throwing helmets in the dugout, or hustling less out of frustration. On the contrary, he was the Reds’ most alert base runner and best defender. He found a way to help the Reds win games even when he wasn’t hitting. And then when McLain’s slumps were at their worst and he started thinking he could be benched or optioned to Triple-A, he tapped into some of his competitive spirit and had some decent spurts of success.
Some of McLain’s struggles in 2025 were physical. Some were mental.
There’s also a mechanical bucket that McLain had to address. His first steps this spring were taking low-and-away sliders the other way. Those were pitches that he regularly whiffed at in 2025. That set up a foundation for his approach at the plate. By selecting better pitches to take aggressive swings at, McLain started to do some real damage offensively.
Spring training numbers always go with a grain of salt, but McLain is showing tangible and meaningful progress.
“The adjustments he has made have been real,” hitting coach Chris Valaika said. “The BABIP is showing he’s not getting lucky. He’s doing really well with that stuff. We’ll see when the bullets start flying and we get into the season. Carrying that success coming off of last year and the work he did this winter and having the success in spring, he’ll continue to build on that in the season.”
Valaika said there have been a few keys for McLain: He’s controlling the strike zone better, he’s in a better position to cover the entire plate, he’s more aggressive early in the count and he’s better against the slider.
“He has really taken to heart a lot of the stuff that showed up during last season,” Valaika said. “He’s seeing the fruit of his work in these games. There has been a lot of buy-in for him.”
McLain’s success this spring matters to him.
“I’m drawing confidence from this spring,” McLain said. “Little things I worked on all offseason like driving the ball the other way. Some of the approach stuff I wanted to nail, I wouldn’t really know how it went until I got into at-bats. First and foremost, I’m hitting the fastball. The breaking balls, I’m taking the good ones (from pitchers) and swinging at the bad ones (from pitchers). It’s as simple as that. If you build from there, you’ll like what happens.”
Another big adjustment is something he won’t be truly able to put into action until the season. He feels like he has a much better idea of what he needs to do to sync his pregame work before a specific game with the starting pitcher he’s about to face.
“It’s about having plans and clubs in your bag that you can pull out for certain guys,” McLain said.
It’s working harder, not smarter.
“He has found the absolutes and the thing that make his swing go,” Valaika said.
Back in 2024, McLain injured his oblique on the very first day of spring training because he took too many swings. In 2026, he knows exactly what he should be doing with his preparation and with his routine. It’s another example of his maturation and his evolution.
“It’s about having a method and a plan to everything, and having that line up with the guy you’re facing that day,” McLain said. “In the past, I’ve had success and I didn’t reflect and learn from my success. My success was my success. I’d learn from my failures and not my success. Learning from both of them is really important. I’m trying to learn more about the game and become a smarter baseball player along with working hard.”
While he has a better idea of how to prepare, he also has a better plan of attack to reflect on the results he gets along the way.
“I want to be the best I can be,” McLain said. “I know what that is. I don’t like to put numbers to it. You don’t want to be chasing numbers. You definitely don’t want to be chasing the wrong numbers. It comes more down to did I get a good pitch to hit? Did I barrel it up? From there, whatever happens, happens.”
He’s ready for the ups and the downs that are coming.
“It comes down to preparation in every aspect of the game,” McLain said. “If I feel like I’m prepared, I’m good to go.”
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