by Chris Ball
Loveland, Ohio – Loveland Magazine is very excited to announce that we are expanding our sports social media experience to encompass Facebook, X, and even Instagram.
After you are done browsing our hard-hitting sports articles at Loveland Magazine, head on over to The Loveland Magazine Sports Desk. There, across all three platforms, we will be bringing you some more concise and up-to-the-minute updates on all of the sports teams you follow every day. Whether you’re watching a Reds or Bengals game in real-time and want to weigh in, or if you drop by the day after the game to check in on what happened and give your thoughts, you now have three more ways to get into the game and get the discussion going! We also look forward to bringing you local Loveland sports stories about all your hometown teams, including Loveland football and more.
We appreciate your ongoing support and comments, so look forward to seeing you across the social media universe!
To follow The Loveland Magazine Sports Desk on Facebook, click here.
To get into the game on X, give us a follow by clicking here.
Instagram is also a great way to post pictures of local Loveland sports, and we hope to have more content there very soon, but for now feel free to check in on our progress and give us a follow at this link.
However you get in contact with us, we are happy to have you and look forward to a lot of fun together this summer and onward.
Hey readers… have an opinion about sports? How about a topic you’d like to see written about in Loveland Magazine or a thought about one of our articles?
Just need to vent and get out your frustration about the Reds, Bengals, or any other sports issues?
Feel free to share with an email to lovelandmagazinesports@gmail.com!
Christopher Ball is a longtime Loveland resident and an attorney. He graduated from Loveland High School in 2003 and was a member of the football team before going on to become a coach’s assistant at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He has been following and rooting for the Reds and Bengals since the early 1990s and has been through the many ups and downs that fandom has wrought over the years.
Even with the tough losses there have been bright spots. Elly De La Cruz was 2-5 against Boston on Sunday and is now hitting .320 with a 196 wRC+ over his last 30 plate appearances. Jeimer Candelario had another RBI against the Red Sox and and he’s also playing well, in his last 46 plate appearances he is hitting .333 with a 202 wRC+ over that span.
Reds fans should undoubtedly have patience with this young team. It is peppered with young players who have the potential to lead Cincinnati to the playoffs or beyond, given the right amount of time and experience. It will take time to get them the right amount of innings and at bats to mold them into a consistent contender. And so the failures in June of 2024 are not necessarily the portents of doom that many would make them out to be. This team, for all their struggles, remain just 2.5 games out of contention for the wild card spot with more than half the season left to play.
All this and more on The Queen City Sports Podcast, take a listen and don’t forget to leave your comments and feedback!
Other Reds batters are staying hot in June. This includes a surprising run by Will Benson, hitting .333 with a .967 OPS in his last 15 games. Jake Fraley in his last 15 is batting .293 while TJ Friedl has 3 home runs and 11 RBIs.
The main storyline this week remained former first round pick Dax Hill and his reps with the first team defense while battling for a job at cornerback against DJ Turner. By all reports Hill, a former safety, looked very good at his new position. There remains a lot of optimism that he can be a quality starter at the position, even if his time at safety may be at an end. Hill was a versatile athlete at the University of Michigan and played both safety and cornerback there, and so that flexibility should serve him well as he tries to see the field as much as possible next year for the Bengals.
The name that seems to have the most buzz over recent weeks is James Borrego the former Charlotte Hornets head coach. 
The turnaround isn’t due to just one player, but several Reds have been key in bringing this team closer to contention after their struggles early on. Jeimer Candelario is hitting .273 over his last 10 games with 3 home runs. Tyler Stevenson had a .343 average over his last 10. But perhaps the most impressive is TJ Friedl who is still working his way back from injury but showing immediate impact. In his last 10 games back he’s hitting .265 with 11 RBIs and 8 runs scored.
During their 7 game winning streak the Reds batted .310 with 72 hits and 11 home runs. Though it may not be sustainable over the long term it did demonstrate what this offense can accomplish and how dangerous their hitters can be if healthy. Given that the Reds hit just .214 with 22 home runs in the entire month of May, it’s impossible not to be excited about what Cincinnati can do going forward after seeing their hitters dominate games.
by Chris Ball