From the time he made his big league debut in 1964 until his retirement in 1986, there was never a single season when Tony Perez was the best player on his team. Throughout a career with four franchises, including 16 seasons in Cincinnati, he was always overshadowed.
It’s really kind of remarkable. Perez played with no fewer than 13 players who won a Most Valuable Player award: Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, George Foster, Andre Dawson, Carl Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Dennis Eckersley, Mike Schmidt, Dave Parker, and Barry Larkin. In his best season (1970), Perez hit .317/.401/.589 with 40 home runs and 129 runs batted in and finished third in MVP balloting. He was, of course, overshadowed that particular season by Reds catcher Bench, who won the first of his two MVP trophies.
The flip side of the coin is this: If you polled Perez’s teammates over the years, I’d bet you’d discover that he was considered by his peers to be the most important player on most of those teams. It was certainly true about his time with the Reds in the 1970s, when the stars of the Big Red Machine consistently cited his leadership and clutch hitting as being the key to their success. Perez was considered the heart and soul of one of the greatest collections of talent in baseball history.
Which brings me to the topic of the day, Cincinnati’s young star Spencer Steer. After establishing himself as a big leaguer last year, he’s kicked things into second gear in his sophomore campaign. In the series opener against Philadelphia last week, Steer crushed a game-winning grand slam in the tenth inning. Over the weekend, he launched a three-run homer into the left-field stands in the bottom of the eighth, giving the Reds a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
One season ago, Steer was named Cincinnati’s team MVP. So far this season, he’s only gotten better. He’s hitting .378/.465/.757 with three home runs and 14 RBI. He’s second in the National League in OPS (1.222) behind only Mookie Betts, tied for the league lead in RBI, and ranks in the top-five in home runs, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. He was just named the NL Player of the Week. By pretty much every measure, Steer has been Cincinnati’s most productive player since the beginning of the 2023 season.
But if you polled Reds fans, would anyone name Steer as the Reds’ most talented player? I mean, he’s shared a dugout with Elly De La Cruz, Hunter Greene, Alexis Diaz, Andrew Abbott, and Matt McLain, not to mention former Rookie of the Year Jonathan India and slugger Christian Encarnacion-Strand. Others have gotten the accolades. Pretty much every other Reds player is flashier. No one has played better.
I’ll admit that I’m stretching things by trying to compare Steer to Tony Perez. Perez is a Hall of Famer, after all! I’m an unapologetic fan of Spencer Steer, but I’m not ready to predict that he’ll someday be inducted into Cooperstown. The players do have some superficial similarities, however: Both are productive, despite having teammates who garner most of the headlines, and both are respected by their teammates.
On Sunday’s broadcast, Bally Sports Ohio reporter Jim Day noted that Steer will be getting married next winter. “Knowing how much teammates love Spencer Steer,” Day said, “this may be the most attended wedding in Reds history as far as teammates go. He’s that well-loved in the clubhouse.”
John Sadak, Cincinnati’s excellent play-by-play announcer, chimed in to agree. “He’s just such a likeable human being,” he noted. “If you speak to [the players], they immediately defer and say it’s been easy for them to step in because of how professional young players like Steer are with the Reds. … They just kind of get it, come in early, do all the work.”
There’s another reason why I consider Steer to be the most important player on the club, but it’ll require me to compare him to one of Perez’s Big Red Machine teammates. The legend of Pete Rose—at least, the legend that can be printed here in the digital pages of this magazine—includes a couple of chapters about Rose’s willingness to switch positions depending on the needs of the club. Steer has shown a similar eagerness to play wherever the Reds need him. Though he’s mostly an everyday left fielder at this point, he’s played five different positions in his Reds career, both infield and outfield. At one point, it seemed likely that he’d be the team’s backup shortstop as well. The kid will do whatever it takes.
“Every year, you still have something to prove,” Steer said recently. “That’s what I’m trying to do: Prove to myself that that wasn’t a one-year thing.”
Spencer Steer doesn’t have anything left to prove to me. He’s clearly the heart and soul of the 2024 Cincinnati Reds, and, while he may not be the best player on the team, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s the most important.
Chad Dotson helms Reds coverage at Cincinnati Magazine and hosts a long-running Reds podcast, The Riverfront. His newsletter about Cincinnati sports can be found at chaddotson.com. He’s @dotsonc on Twitter.
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