RSS Reds Team Notes

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds sign RHP Keegan Thompson, announce further austerity measures

Though right-hander Keegan Thompson spent the entirety of the 2025 season at the AAA level within the Chicago Cubs organization, the Cincinnati Reds signed him to a major league deal earlier on Tuesday.

The #Reds today signed RHP Keegan Thompson to a one-year Major League contract through the 2026 season.

Welcome to Reds Country, Keegan pic.twitter.com/n1B1KsXYkT

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 4, 2025

Thompson, 30, does have ample big league experience, however. A former 33rd round pick of the Detroit Tigers and later a 3rd rounder by the Cubs out of Auburn University, he’s appeared in 104 MLB games since the start of the 2021 season – all with Chicago – and pitched to a tidy enough 3.64 ERA across 227.1 IP. He’s made 23 starts in that time despite all of those coming in 2021-2022, and his most recent big league season (2024) saw him post career best marks in ERA (2.67), FIP (3.86) and WHIP (1.22).

He relies heavily on a fastball/cutter combo more often than not, his fastball sitting around 94 mph while his cutter is just under 90, though he will work in a slider and curveball alongside the once-in-a-thousand sinker/change. Word is he’ll get roughly $1.3 million from the Reds in this 1-year contract that appears to be a split deal, as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed on Bluesky.

Keegan Thompson contract terms with the Reds…It is $1.3 million prorated in the big leagues and $350k prorated in the minor leagues. Also another $100k in performance bonuses.

— Mark Sheldon (@msheldon.bsky.social) 2025-11-04T19:04:01.898Z

Of course, doling out this kind of coin to a guy their direct division rivals held in the minors and then released is eyebrow-raising in its own right. Clearly the Reds see something in him they think they can fix, and I applaud them for jumping on this so quickly if that’s the case. Still, it sure does look like they are trying to address the major holes in their bullpen by diving directly into the bargain bin, and that’s hard to ignore.

It’s impossible to ignore in the context of the rest of today’s Reds news, too.

Per C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic (and corroborated elsewhere), Nick Krall suggested today that the Reds 2026 payroll is going to “be around the same as our payroll from 2025.”

Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall says the team’s budget “will be around the same as our payroll from 2025.”

— C Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent.bsky.social) 2025-11-04T19:04:44.531Z

The Reds just made the playoffs for the first time since the sinking of the Lusitania. MLB league minimum salaries are rising some ~2.6% again as part of a multi-year plan set in place a handful of years ago to gradually increase salaries league-wide. The cost of a Qualifying Offer is up another million. Yet still, here we are, with the Reds seemingly a) unwilling to fit that into their tight-ass budget or b) simply telling the world false information.

In today’s day and age it’s nearly impossible to rule out the latter, though everything this ownership group has ever done suggests it’s pretty clearly going to be the former.

If that’s truly the case, the Reds will roll out a payroll on Opening Day of roughly $111 million, though they did finish 2025 with roughly $116 million on the books after deadline additions. As I noted when I looked deeper into their existing payroll obligations and likely arbitration raises a month ago, they already had something akin to $95 million on the books before the Thompson signing. Swapping him in at $1.3 million instead of someone else making league-minimum raises that to just under $96 million, so you can pretty clearly see what they’ve got left to spend within that kind of budget.

That’s with their left fielder about to be a free agent. That’s without a closer, and potentially without a pair of key setup men from last year, too. That’s without Zack Littell, Nick Martinez, or Miguel Andujar, too.

It’s enough to make you wonder just how willing Krall will be to do move someone off the current roster who’s now making more money than they are comfortable paying him. Perhaps that’s Brady Singer or Tyler Stephenson or Gavin Lux, each of whom will be a free agent at the end of next season anyway. Surely he could find some SP depth for less than the $11 million Singer may command (is that Thompson already?), Jose Trevino is already signed, and Gavin Lux just posted a -0.2 bWAR season and still has no position.

All told, it seems to have barely taken a couple weeks after the Reds somewhat promising 2023 campaign ended for the official Wet Blanket of the Cincinnati Reds™ to once again throw a huge chunk of the optimism built up over the last calendar year right out the window.

The guys are just gonna have to play better next year, I guess!

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...-sign-keegan-thompson-announce-budget-payroll

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds notes – Terry Francona named finalist for NL Manager of the Year

There are two things that are pretty paramount for making a sports team something you’ll go out of your way to watch, and the first is obvious:

You’ve got to win games.

Winning is enjoyable. It’s satisfying. It’s engaging to see the team whose logo you wear on your hat score more points before the final whistle. If you’re going to spend all that time, money, effort, and adrenaline to root for something, well, it’s nice to be rewarded with a good outcome.

The second? That’s being fun, funny, and/or entertaining.

The early-aughts Cincinnati Reds were decidedly not good. No bueno. From 2001 through 2009 they never once finished higher than 3rd in the NL Central, finished dead last on five occasions, and only once won so many as 80 games in a season (just 80, still a losing record). But man, did they ever sock the hell out of some homers. Adam Dunn hit balls 535 feet, Junior Griffey pulled them into the RF seats of the stadium he built (when healthy), and even Austin Kearns and Felipe Lopez managed to get in on that action, too. The Reds were bad – really bad – but they were at least an enjoyable bunch of idiots getting sent to the showers after 12-10 losses.

The David Bell Era of Reds baseball featured almost exclusively none of either. Their surprise 2023 was so out of left field that not even the front office believed in it at the deadline, and that season burnt out like a snap-pop. The rest of his years were lifeless, dingerless campaigns where we all were just forced to play the waiting game, rebuilding seasons featuring a manager with daily interviews that were less engaged as a nun. That entire era featured zero winning and was as entertaining as finding sand in your swim trunks two hours after you’d left the beach.

I still don’t know how good the 2025 Cincinnati Reds were. They snuck into the playoffs with 83 wins, and there’s a part of me that wonders if this is just how good this group can ever be if they stay as healthy as they did this year. That’s me actively wondering that in a year where Hunter Greene, Rhett Lowder, Austin Hays, Noelvi Marte, and Tyler Stephenson all got hurt we still saw about as much of them collectively as we ever will. They were better than they’d been in a while, though, and the stagnant malaise of the Bell Era officially had been turned over to the gregarious Terry Francona.

Francona, as the title way above that meandering series of side notes suggested, was named a finalist for the NL Manager of the Year Award late Monday night. He was joined in the finalists group by Pat Murphy of the Milwaukee Brewers and Rob Thomson of the Philadelphia Phillies, and while I don’t think Tito has a shot in heck at actually winning this award (this time around), I do think it’s worth pointing out that the Reds significantly improved in both paramount aspects of why you go out of your way to watch a team play sports.

In the second aspect – being fun, funny, and/or entertaining – it was Tito himself providing the gas. While many of his managerial tendencies scream old school and dated, it’s impossible not to want to hear him talk about the game of baseball. He’s a riot, we get to hear him and read about his thoughts, and that’s precisely what the players in the dugout get way more often than we ever do. Francona lights up a clubhouse in ways few others ever have, and that’s vital in a sport where you play every single day for six-plus months while travelling constantly.

For that latter part I applaud him more than I do for the 83 wins, though as I opined already, I’m not truly sure any manager out there could coax a whole lot more out of this roster than that. The rest of the winning needs to come from the owners and front office (groan), and the fact that Francona is a finalist at all reflects that I’m far from the only person who thinks that. The BBWAA voters put him in that trio of finalists not for having won 83 games, but for having won 83 games with this roster from this franchise.

In other Reds news, bench coach Brad Mills retired. He’s 68 and seen a ton, and despite being Tito’s right-hand man for decades he found it time to hang up his spikes for good.

Congrats on an amazing career, Brad! Wishing you all the best in retirement! pic.twitter.com/lH4rRAEQ2Z

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 3, 2025

MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon had notes on the ripple effect this has on the rest of the coaching staff, though the announcement of Mills’ retirement paired with the entire rest of the coaching staff being revealed at the very same time means all of this has been in the works for quite awhile. A bombshell this was not, in other words. Willie Harris will take over as the 3B coach with a promotion from having managed in the minors for the Reds in 2025, while Mike Napoli will be the assistant bench coach to Freddie Benavides – who was co-bench coach with Mills just last year. Bill Haselman will take over as actaching coach for JR House, who left for the Diamondbacks, while House’s former role at 3B will now go to Harris. Napoli, who you remember as a prominent catcher of the aughts and teens, is not the catching coach. Got it?

The Reds traded Ryan Vilade to the Tampa Bay Rays for some sweet, sweet cash just yesterday. Most importantly, though, they traded a guy who was on the 40-man roster for something that does not require a 40-man roster spot, so they’ve got an additional one open as they look to welcome back Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson, and Julian Aguiar from the 60-day IL this week.

You remember Ryan Vilade the Cincinnati Red, right? Right?

Finally – in NL Central news relevant to the Reds interests – Shota Imanaga became a surprise free agent this morning, ending his partnership with the Chicago Cubs after just two seasons.

Turns out that his contract had a clause where the Cubs had to decide whether to pick up a 3-year club option after this year that would have guaranteed Imanaga a 3-year, $57.75 total contract through 2028, and declined to do so. That, in turn, triggered a clause where Imanaga could make a call on a $15 million player option for 2026, and he declined to do so, too.

Imanaga was pretty brilliant in 2024, pitching to a 2.91 ERA across 173.1 IP for the Cubs, earning an All Star appearance as a 30 year old rookie and being valued at 3.0 bWAR/3.1 fWAR. Those numbers became a 3.73 ERA in just 144.2 IP in 2025, however, and his FIP jumped from 3.72 up to 4.86. In other words, he still managed to out-pitch his peripherals but not nearly to the same extent, and apparently that was enough to scare off the Cubs.

Either that or a looming 2027 strike/lockout did, and they’re doing as much as they can to keep as much guaranteed money off the books before the entire economic structure of baseball implodes.

Anyway, it’s Reds-relevant not only because their division rival lost a rock-solid starting pitcher, but also because that adds another pitcher to the ‘available’ market this winter when the Reds best asset right now is their own pitching depth. In other words, the idea of using Nick Lodolo or Andrew Abbott as a trade chip to get help elsewhere just got muddied by there now being another left-handed starter out there that teams can jump at signing, and that’s not exactly a boon to Cincinnati’s leverage.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/red-rep...reds-notes-terry-francona-manager-of-the-year

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds decline 2026 options on Austin Hays, Brent Suter, Scott Barlow

The Cincinnati Reds would have been on the hook for some $21.5 million for the 2026 season should they (and the player with a mutual option) have chosen to keep around each of outfielder Austin Hays, lefty reliever Brent Suter, and workhorse righty Scott Barlow.

That simply was never going to happen.

Cincinnati’s front office took the predictable route of declining the club options they held on both Suter and Barlow on Wednesday, and similarly declined their half of the mutual option they had on Hays. The team announced the moves on Twitter.

The #Reds today announced the following transactions: pic.twitter.com/ZYBqXKSLPs

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 5, 2025

Mutual options are almost never picked up – both team and player would have to opt-in for those to happen – but Hays would have been on a $12 million for next season had both parties agreed to pick it up. Instead, he received a $1 million buyout.

The Reds held a $3 million club option for Suter yet instead chose to buy out the hometown guy for just $250,000. It will be interesting to see if he and the Reds negotiate a return at a lower rate for next year given his affinity for the club and his iffy 2025 results (4.52 ERA/4.57 FIP)as he has at least proven he can get ready on a moment’s notice and cover multiple innings when right.

Barlow, meanwhile, had a $6.5 million option that was never going to get picked up. Despite his workhorse efforts in 2025 (75 appearances), he pitched to just a 4.21 ERA and 4.70 FIP this season (and owns a 4.28 ERA across three teams and 191.1 IP dating back to the start of the 2023 season). He was bought out for $1 million, too.

The moves leave the team further devoid of what was the 2025 roster that snuck into the playoffs with 83 wins. Gone, too, are Nick Martinez, Zack Littell, Emilio Pagan, and Miguel Andujar to free agency, while the team chose to effectively cut Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut, too. That’s on top of having waved goodbye to Jake Fraley late last season (and Jeimer Candelario much earlier), marking quite a bit of turnover for a club coming off its best season in over a decade.

That’s now on the Reds front office to fix, even if they’re going to be operating on a budget that’s basically stagnant from last winter.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...cinnati-reds-options-austin-hays-suter-barlow

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds lose Reiver Sanmartin to Giants via waivers on busy day of roster moves

As the Cincinnati Reds continue to trim the margins of their roster ahead of both administrative needs and the chance to acquire other players for 2026, Reiver Sanmartin will officially have a new club going forward.

Sanmartin, a 29 year old lefty, was claimed by the San Francisco Giants on Thursday afternoon. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area relayed the news on Twitter.

The Giants claimed lefty Reiver Sanmartin from the Reds and outfielder Justin Dean from the Dodgers. Mason Black was DFA’d to open a roster spot.

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) November 6, 2025

Sanmartin originally came to the Reds in the same deal that sent Sonny Gray to Cincinnati from the New York Yankees, a deal that saw Shed Long, Jr. head the other direction priorto the 2019 season. He eventually made his big league debut during the 2021 season with 11.2 innings of impressive work in a pair of starts (as a starter, obviously), but struggled thereafter and eventually moved to the bullpen.

He missed more than a year recovering from Tommy John surgery, but finally worked his way back to the big league level in 2025 after some two years, tossing 1.2 IP in a lone appearance with the Reds in early September.

Sanmartin joins the likes of Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut in having been placed on waivers to get them off the roster this fall, though the previous two went unclaimed and rejected their minor league assignments to become free agents. Sanmartin is still cheap, though – he’s not yet arb-eligible – meaning teams were much more likely to take a flier on him on the waiver process.

Losing Sanmartin was just part of a larger day of transactions for the Reds, who welcomed each of Carson Spiers, Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson, Tyler Callihan, and Julian Aguiar back off the 60-day IL, each of whom needed valuable 40-man roster spots going forward. The Reds noted those moves on Twitter this afternoon, as well as informing the masses that they’d promoted RHP Jose Franco to the 40-man, outrighted RHP Sam Benschoter off the 40-man to AAA Louisville, and claimed RHP Roddery Muñoz off waivers from the St. Louis Cardinals.

The #Reds today announced the following transactions: pic.twitter.com/3A0cYEUcYs

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 6, 2025

Muñoz, 25, originally signed with the Atlanta Braves back in 2018, and he’s bounced around through the waiver process through Washington, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis before now finding himself on the Reds roster. He is out of options and owns a 6.73 ERA in 93.1 IP at the big league level in his career, and while he walks people more often than anyone would care to admit, he does have some strikeout stuff to his name, too. My best guess here is that the Reds will again try to pass him through waivers and keep him in their system as depth seeing as he’s out of options, and if they lose him, they lose him.

Jose Franco, meanwhile, is a guy they were likely going to promote to the 40-man to protect for the Rule 5 Draft next month anyway. At 24, he plowed through AA and AAA hitters to the tune of a.311 ERA in 110.0 IP, in which time he fanned 118 against 54 walks. Given his success at the AAA level last year, he’s very much in the mix for his first taste of big league action in 2026.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...ants-reiver-sanmartin-cincinnati-reds-waivers

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds links – Tejay Antone leaves, Brandon Phillips to the Reds HoF?

Tejay Antone rocketed on to the scene with the Cincinnati Reds back in the shortened 2020 season, his repertoire pairing perfectly with the ‘Spincinnati’ revolution. Across 36 appearances in 2020-2021, he fired 69.0 IP and allowed just 19 ER (2.48 ERA), putting up a ridiculous 87/29 K/BB and 0.96 WHIP while being a multi-inning weapon out of a potent Cincinnati bullpen.

That run of elite production was shortlived, of course. He torn the UCL in his right (throwing) arm for the second time in his career late in 2021 and missed the entirety of the 2022 season while rehabbing. The Reds were incredibly careful with bringing him back, and he didn’t even make it back to full-season minor league ball until August of 2023 with AAA Louisville. He then found his way back to the bigs for 5.2 IP in September of 2023 before finally entering the 2024 season in prime form once again.

At least, that was the hope. In just his fourth appearance of the 2024 season, though, he tore his UCL for a third time, and watching him exit that April 7th game against the New York Mets was one of the toughest things I’ve ever watched on a baseball diamond. He knew immediately what had happened and the rigor it would take to try to overcome it again, and the idea that his baseball career was over that moment had to have entered his mind.

To his credit, he hasn’t dwelled on that potentially being his final MLB pitch if it did ever enter his mind. He’s been rehabbing with aplomb ever since, hoping to be just the third big leaguer to ever return to the majors after a third Tommy John surgery. He eventually made his way back to a minor league mound again in August of this year with High-A Dayton, spending two weeks there before moving up to AA Chattanooga and, eventually, AAA Louisville to wrap the year. According to Doug Gray of Redleg Nation, Antone was sitting around 95 mph with his heater, though the results weren’t anywhere as good as he’d hoped – a .978 OPS allowed in 80 PA and 17 ER in just 15.0 total IP.

It’s administrative season for all MLB clubs in the wake of the end of the World Series, and news broke that Antone had elected free agency alongside some 19 other Cincinnati farmhands. That’s pretty commonplace this time of year – the Antone news is on Page 7 of the 11/6 transaction list because so many other clubs face this same issue – but it’s particularly nostalgic to see Antone potentially head for other pastures. The likes of Buck Farmer, Alex Young, Edwin Rios, and Eric Yang were among the other notable names to hit free agency from the Cincinnati farm in these moves.

There’s always the chance the Reds and Antone find their way to a reunion, but that’s something that’s going to have to happen amid a sea of new options for Captain Hook for the first time. So, if this is the last we see of Tejay with the Reds, it’s a particularly inconspicuous route given how high he was flying for them just a few years ago.

We here at Red Reporter wish him the absolute best wherever he lands, and I sure do hope he gets one more run back with the Reds organization somehow.

In other news, the Reds announced eight new nominees for election into their club Hall of Fame, and it’s a list that will make the elders of Red Reporter feel old as all hell. Brandon Phillips headlines the bunch and I see almost no way he’s not one of the two guys who gets elected this year, but the likes of Aaron Harang, Scott Rolen, Homer Bailey, Zack Cozart, Coco Cordero, Mike Leake, and Edinson V0lquez all join him in the mix as a who’s who of the early days of this particular weblog.

MIKE LEAKE!

Scott Rolen’s Reds!

Aron Harnann!

Old Hoss!

Edinson “Rookie of the Year” Volquez!

Speaking of which, I’ve often wondered of late if Rhett Lowder really is a Mike Leake type. If only they’d let him hit for us to truly find out.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/red-rep...ks-tejay-antone-brandon-phillips-hall-of-fame

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Andrew Abbott may regress, but probably not by much

Cincinnati Reds lefty Andrew Abbott averaged 92.8 mph with his fastball during his All Star campaign in 2025, a mark that ranked him in just the 26th percentile according to MLB’s Statcast. He also generated grounders just 32.9% of the time, a mark that ranked in just the 9th percentile.

I point out his weaknesses here because that’s a combo that, on the surface, wouldn’t seem to play well most anywhere, let alone when your home stadium is the tiny Great American Ball Park. Soft-tossing pitches that, more often than not, get hit in the air? Is that really what you’re doing on purpose?!

The results we saw with our own eyes, of course. Abbott fired 166.1 innings of brilliant 2.87 ERA, 1.15 WHIP ball in 2025, his 159 ERA+ work good enough to be valued at 5.6 bWAR by Baseball Reference. It was further escalation from his breakout 2024 season that featured 138.0 IP of 3.72 ERA ball, as Andrew increased his strikeouts (up to 8.1 per 9 IP from 7.4) while dropping his walks (3.4 per 9 IP in 2024 down to just 2.3 in 2025).

Abbott’s 5.6 bWAR ranked him 6th in all of Major League Baseball and 3rd in the National League – behind only Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sanchez and Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes. That’s it. That’s the entirety of who was better overall in the NL during the course of the 2025 season.

The 2025 season is done and in the books, though, and it’s time to start looking more at how Abbott got to those results than the results themselves as that’s likely a better way to look forward to what he’ll be able to pull off in 2026 and beyond. And in Abbott’s case, that’s where things begin to get a bit murky.

While Baseball Reference has loved Abbott’s work since the start of 2024 (8.9 total bWAR), FanGraphs has been much more tepid in their adoration (4.9 fWAR, including 3.9 in 2025). That’s still a solid valuation, obviously, but that’s a difference of roughly 2 wins per season – a huge amount given the thin margin in which the Cincinnati Reds snuck into the postseason in 2025. There are a couple pretty big and obvious reasons for the difference, too.

Abbott’s peripherals simply aren’t that great. Fielder Independent Pitching (FIP), a metric that measures a pitcher solely on the events they can control (and not those where the defenders behind them can make or break them) ranked him as just tied for 34th among the 127 pitchers who threw at least 100 IP in 2025. Among the 114 pitchers who threw at least 200 total IP dating back to the start of 2024, his 4.29 mark ranks 76th. In other words, based purely on the outcomes only he influences – strikeouts, walks, batters hit, and homers – he’s been mostly mediocre among durable starters, and then you get to factor in that the defense the Reds have put behind him for most of that time has been largely sub-par, too.

So, how exactly has Abbott managed to get to this point? What about any of it really looks real, let alone sustainable?

It feels a little too on-the-nose, admittedly, given the mustache, the left-arm, and the lack of elite velocity, but there’s a genuine craftiness to this particular lefty. As in, he’s figured out how to master his craft, and that’s the art of making hitters think they’re swinging at something good when it’s really something much worse.

In 2025, for instance, the 87.8 mph average exit velocity off his pitches ranked him in the 84th percentile, the 33.7% hard-hit rate on his offerings ranking up in the 93rd percentile. His 30.2% chase rate ranked in the 74th percentile, and that ties a bow a bit on who Andrew Abbott has become – a pitcher who isn’t really trying to strike you out, per se, but knows you’ll either miss his pitches or simply make weak contact on bad swings when trying to swat them.

That’s why looking purely at his BABIP allowed may be a bit misleading. League-average Batting Average on Balls in Play sat at .291 in 2025, and it’s hovered between .290 and .297 dating back to the 2020 season. Abbott, though, limited his opposition to just a .276 mark in 2025 after an even lower .260 mark in 2024, numbers that initially would suggest that there’s some inevitable regression coming for him. However, BABIP on fly balls is significantly lower than on liners and grounders – particularly when a big portion of those fly balls are softly hit – and that’s where Abbott has seemingly found a hot zone for his work. A pitcher like him – who coaxes softly hit fly balls more often than almost anyone – should have a BABIP that sits comfortably lower than league average.

He’s hardly the first pitcher who has molded themselves into this kind of anti-prototype. After all, in many ways it’s easier for a batter to park a 100 mph heater into the seats than a 91 mph one since the velocity itself provides a lot of the energy headed the other way. Wade Miley kept the ball on the ground a lot more than Abbott, but his brilliant 2021 season with the Reds saw him rank in the 95th percentile in average exit velocity, 77th percentile in chase rate, and 83rd percentile in hard-hit percentage. Statcast data doesn’t go back before 2015, but that’s an eerily similar profile that one Johnny Cueto put together in his best days as a Red.

After all, a can of corn is one of 27 outs you have to get just as much as a swinging strike three on a 102 mph heater is. If anything, Abbott’s 84 mph change on the bottom corner of the zone is precisely the kind of pitch that will twist hitters into the dirt when viewed the day after those same hitters watched Hunter Greene throw dozens of speedballs past them (and made them looked like fools, boy).

Pitching, as it has always been, will continue to be cat and mouse with elite professional hitters. Now that there’s another full season of data on Abbott, you’d expect hitters to try their best to restrain themselves from chasing his offerings on the fringes of the strike zone. Abbott, of course, will then get to react by making sure those offerings actually catch the zone as strikes and not miss it an inch outside as balls, but this game of inches could mean his offerings are that much easier to hit harder. It’s honing that craft in a way that continues to keep hitters off-kilter that will be what determines his value going forward, how well he can pattern his pitches, nail his spots, and mix in his heater, cutter, slider, and curve to augment that beautiful change.

FanGraphs ‘hates’ him, and his BABIP allowed is somewhat comically low, but there’s actually not a ton about what we’ve seen from Abbott that screams immediate regression to me given the way in which he approaches hitters. He may never end up being quite as good as he was in 2025, but even a decent bit of come-down from that level leaves the Reds with an insanely good, valuable pitcher in the heart of their rotation – he just does it in a way far, far different than Greene, Skenes, or Chase Burns.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/stat-colored-glasses/49069/andrew-abbott-cincinnati-reds-rumors

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds lose assistant pitching coach Simon Mathews to Nationals

Since taking over as the pitching coach/guru/director for the Cincinnati Reds, the club has consistently established itself as a pitching-first organization that’s earned quite the bit of respect around the league.

They’ve drafted well in that time, too. Adding the likes of Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Andrew Abbott, Rhett Lowder, Chase Burns, Tony Santillan, Graham Ashcraft, and Lyon Richardson, among others, has helped build a staff from within, and identifying pitchers like Connor Phillips, Chase Petty, and Brandon Williamson as targets from other organizations has helped build up some pretty enviable depth.

What Johnson’s tenure has also produced is a lot of promotions for the coaches that coach alongside him. Caleb Cotham took over as pitching coach for the Philadelphia Phillies several years back and has helped build that staff into perhaps the one consistently better (with more resources) than that of Cincinnati. Alon Leichman got plucked away by the Miami Marlins after serving as Cincinnati’s assistant pitching coach, Eric Jagers now serves as director of pitching development for the New York Mets after a tenure assisting Johnson.

You can now add Simon Mathews to the list of guys who broke in helping Johnson with the Reds who’ve gotten promoted elsewhere. The Washington Nationals took to Bluesky this afternoon to announce that Mathews, 30, will be their next pitching coach.

HUGE FIRST BSKY POST

— Washington Nationals (@nationals.com) 2025-11-11T21:36:39.753Z

Mathews, in case you weren’t already aware, pitched in college for both the Temple Owls and Georgetown Hoyas. He went undrafted following his big league career’s end in 2017, but pitched for a trio of years across the minors in the Los Angeles Angels system, eventually reaching the AAA level for a trio of games during the 2019 season.

After the lost 2020 minor league season, he went to work for Driveline before eventually working his way up through the Reds organization for four seasons prior to his work at the big league level last year. Obviously, the former Georgetown Hoya now gets to call the DC area home again with this move.

All the best to him in every game except those against the Reds going forward.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-...ashington-nationals-pitching-coach-cincinnati

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Offseason buy-low option for the Cincinnati Reds – Astros 1B Christian Walker

The run-around given to the media members covering the Cincinnati Reds from the front office early this offseason has pretty much dictate that the 2026 payroll is going to be just about the same as it was in 2025. That payroll changed a lot during the course of the year – they added Miguel Andujar, Zack Littell, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Garrett Hampson at various points, and eventually dumped what they could of Taylor Rogers – but the best estimates mean they’ll be in the $112 to $120 million range for next season.

Given what they already have on the books and the litany of players they have who’ll be earning big raises through arbitration, that leaves the Reds with something akin to $20 million or so to put to work before Opening Day. That’s despite Nick Martinez, Emilio Pagan, Scott Barlow, Brent Suter, Andujar, Littlell, and Hampson all being gone already, and the first half of this sentence means you can readily tell they need to spend money on a new bullpen.

Still, there are potentially ways they could get creative in their additions, especially on the offensive side of things. Heck, they could even move players off the current roster, save a little money in the process, and turn that back into an acquisition of one of the guys listed below!

There are several buy-low options the Reds might be able to sneak into their budget out there at the moment, and today we’ll dive into a significant one of note.

Christian Walker – 1B/DH, Houston Astros​

You remember the Christian Walker Era of Cincinnati Reds history already, right? The Reds claimed him off waivers from the Atlanta Braves in early March of 2017 only to lose him back on waivers to the Arizona Diamondbacks three weeks later. So, he never actually appeared in a regular season game at any level for the Reds, but he did go on to become a star for the Snakes – from 2022 through 2024 he swatted 95 homers, hit .250/.332/.481 with a .347 wOBA, 123 OPS+, and 121 wRC+, was valued at 10.9 fWAR, and took home a trio of Gold Gloves for his work at 1B.

That led to him signing a 3-year, $60 million deal with Houston last winter, and things went south for him there.

After keeping his K-rate at a wonderful ~19.4% between 2022-2023, it spiked in 2024 (24.1%) and even more in 2025 (27.7%), and his walk rate plummeted down to 6.3% – 4% lower than where it was in 2022. He still smashed 27 homers, but his overall rate stats stunk relative to his peak – .238/.297/.429, 103 wRC+. And now he’s got two more years at $20 million per left of his deal…so why exactly am I listing him here?

He sputtered out of the gate terribly for Houston, owning just a .660 OPS through the first 90 games of the season. However, from July 1st through the end of the season he got hot the way he had been for the previous three full years, hitting .264/.318/.489 (.807 OPS) with 17 homers in 73 games. He’s 34, yeah, but there was at least a big sample of 2025 where he looked like the guy he’d been previously.

Still, there’s rumblings down in Houston that the Astros want out from under his deal, and have since the trade deadline. He reportedly was considered in the big deal that sent Carlos Correa back to Houston from Minnesota, and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale revealed from this week’s GM Meetings that Walker is firmly available again this winter. The Astros have a logjam in their infield, and he’s got a lot of money owed his way the next two years, two components that make him the pretty obvious odd man out.

The money is obviously the first big question here, as a) Walker certainly wouldn’t get 2 years and $40 million as a free agent right now and b) he wouldn’t get half of that from the Reds as a free agent, either. So, Cincinnati would have to get creative in asking Houston to either send money along or eat money elsewhere, even though the Reds don’t have a lot of dead money that’s moveable (thanks for nothing, Jeimer Candelario).

Houston may well lose Framber Valdez to free agency as he’s one of the top starters on the market, and starting pitching is a definite need of theirs. That’s where a guy like Brady Singer, who’s going to earn somewhere around $11 million in his final year of arbitration in 2026, could become a key piece of a Walker deal, even though the Astros would still need to either kick in more cash or add a significant prospect piece (as Singer’s got way more value right now than Walker).

The fit is the second big question, however. Walker’s a 1B/DH, and though his defensive metrics slipped unexpectedly last season he’s got a trio of Gold Gloves to his name for good reason. Spencer Steer and/or Sal Stewart seem to have the inside track at 1B right now, though there’s a world in which you could see Steer as the team’s primary LF while Sal and Walker rotated between 1B/DH most every day.

Might that make the everyday Reds lineup too heavy with right-handed bats? In that scenario, only Elly De La Cruz and TJ Friedl would be hitting from the left side, with only Will Benson and Gavin Lux around as alternate options. The case could very well be made that adding a bat to the Reds lineup that has 30+ homer potential probably needs to be someone who mashes RHP more than LHP, though here’s where I point out that Walker actually did hit RHP better than LHP in each of the last two seasons and has hit them almost identically for his career (.780 OPS vs. RHP, .782 OPS vs. LHP).

He’s getting up there in age, which is always a concern. He’s making big money (for a club like the Reds), and he’s not a perfect fit for the roster they have right now. Still, there’s a price at which he becomes a pretty damn attractive power piece for a team starved for that particular trait, and a price at which he becomes a much more attractive offensive option than paying, say, Gavin Lux to be your mostly positionless bat-first option against RHP.

It’ll be a buyer’s market for anyone shopping for Walker given Houston’s willingness to move him and the perceived struggles Walker had through part of last year, and he’s got enough left in the tank that I hope the Reds at least explore it. I hope like hell they don’t overpay for it the way they did in the still-perplexing deal to land Lux a year ago, but there is certainly enough here to at least put together a pitch.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...i-reds-rumors-christian-walker-houston-astros

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds claim catcher Ben Rortvedt off waivers from Dodgers

Ben Rortvedt is a former 2nd round draft pick out of Verona High School in Verona, Wisconsin. Back in 2016, the Minnesota Twins – franchise known for drafting ‘local’ players in much the same way as the Cincinnati Reds – plucked him, and he eventually made his big league debut with the Twins during the 2021 season.

He was dealt in 2022 to the New York Yankees alongside Josh Donaldson in the blockbuster that sent Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela the other way, and the Yankees flipped him to the Tampa Bay Rays in a complicated three-team deal that involved Jon Berti (among many others). He ended up in Los Angeles with the Dodgers this trade deadline as catching depth behind Will Smith when he was sent there from Tampa alongside former Reds prospect Adam Serwinowski (who had just been dealt to Tampa as part of the Zack Littel acquisition).

That’s a lot of moving around, probably because he’s the owner of an 11.67 FIP and 2.50 WHIP in his career as a pitcher.

Jokes aside, he’s pretty valuable catching depth for a Reds organization that was in need of it, and that’s precisely why Cincinnati claimed him from Los Angeles off the waiver wire on Wednesday. The Reds announced the move on Twitter because they refuse to get off that platform.

The #Reds today claimed C Ben Rortvedt off waivers from the Dodgers.

Welcome to Reds Country, Ben pic.twitter.com/HrpSeZxWbz

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 12, 2025

Behind the dish, Rortvedt has consistently graded as a good defender with a great arm and pretty solid overall pitch framing, the kind of profile that would pair excellently with even a moderate amount of offense. The offense, though, has never developed, and that’s why he’s pretty well bounced around as a glove-first backup backstop – something that every team needs but never really wants to have to turn to.

Rortvedt will command a 40-man roster spot for the time being, and at age 28 is arb-eligible for the first time. The fine folks at MLB Trade Rumors estimated he’d command a $1.3 million salary for the 2026 season, though I do think there’s a decent chance the Reds try to pass him through waivers and have him around as their AAA catcher without a 40-man roster spot at some point later this offseason.

It’s also worth pointing out that Rortvedt and current Reds go-to DH Gavin Lux were both high school products out of the state of Wisconsin in a 2016 prep draft class that was pretty historic by state standards. So the Reds have that going for them, assuming both (or either) actually are still on the roster come Opening Day 2026.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinnati-reds-rumors/49085/reds-claim-ben-rortvedt-los-angeles-dodgers

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds Trade Idea – CJ Abrams of the Washington Nationals

The Cincinnati Reds have Elly De La Cruz entrenched at shortstop, so much so that they moved fellow shortstop (and former 1st round pick) Matt McLain off the position altogether. Elly’s special defensively, even though he’s had far too many lapses in his first two and a half seasons, but his athleticism, age, and arm strength suggest the Reds are going to give him plenty more time to grow into the key defensive spot on the infield.

Yet here I am, tossing out Washington Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams as a potential trade target for the Reds. What exactly am I on about?

Abrams, who just turned 25, is a former 1st round pick of the San Diego Padres who was flipped to the Nationals as part of the major package that sent superstar Juan Soto the other direction. The piece, by many estimations, as he ranked as a Top 10 overall prospect before the 2022 season by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline (Baseball Prospectus had him at #11). Since taking over as a full-time player for the Nats in 2023, he’s posted a combined 105 OPS+ while averaging 19 homers and 36 steals per season – and again, he just turned 25 in October.

He’s even seen a few things continue to improve along the way. His wOBA has risen from .306 to .322 to .324, and his wRC+ (91 to 106 to 107) has risen gradually, too. Inching up, too, has been his OPS+ (94 to 108 to 111), with each of these trios representing the 2023, 2024, and 2025 seasons.

That’s a good player, and Baseball Reference knows it – he’s been valued at 3.5 bWAR, 3.4 bWAR, and 3.4 bWAR in those respective seasons, with FanGraphs a slightly more tepid at 2.3 fWAR, 1.9 fWAR, and 3.1 fWAR in those same years. A 20/30 player perennially while never once playing at over age 24 just yet, and he’s got team control for each of the next three seasons…why in the world would any team put that on the trade block?

As the good folks at MLB Trade Rumors opined on Thursday, all is not well within the Nats organization, and hasn’t been for a bit now. They canned manager Dave Martinez during the season and finally fired longtime GM Mike Rizzo, as the Stephen Strasburg contract/injury fiasco and inability to pick up the winning after Soto’s departure has left this franchise in flux. Washington lost 96 games during the 2025 season, former #2 overall pick Dylan Crews has not yet taken off, and their farm system ranked just 23rd overall in MLB Pipeline’s midseason rankings.

In other words, a deeper, darker rebuild may well be in order for the Nats, and that means considering deals for guys who likely won’t still be under team control when they finally get back to respectability once again. That means Mackenzie Gore has seen his name in trade rumors already this offseason, and Abrams is getting that treatment as one of their other marquee names with dwindling team control.

Why the Reds, though? Why would they make a move for Abrams right now?

The lede-burying I’ve done here is to get you this far before diving into just how poor Abrams’ defense has been at shortstop. Statcast graded him as the second-worst defender at short in the game during the 2025 season (-9 per Fielding Run Value), and over the 2023-2025 period he’s far and away the worst at his position (-31, with JP Crawford second worst at just -15). He’s got speed, as evidenced by his stolen base production, but his range and arm simply have not translated into being a viable option at short at all.

So, he’s a guy you’d ideally acquire and move off the position, and that’s something the Cincinnati Reds have made a habit of doing to just about every player they’ve ever brought in during the Nick Krall era.

Abrams has a grand total of 3 games played in the outfield in his career, all coming during his rookie 2022 season with San Diego when Ha-Seong Kim was busy putting up a 5.0 bWAR season as their stalwart shortstop. He similarly played 13 games at 2B that year for the same reason, but has spent every other game since then at either shortstop or DH. So, a team like the Reds (with a resident shortstop already there) would a) have to give up a significant package to acquire Abrams while b) immediately moving him to a position he’s not really ever played.

Again, though, this is what they did with Noelvi Marte on the fly! They pretty much did it with Sal Stewart, too!

Moving Abrams down the defensive spectrum should, in theory, alleviate the biggest drain on his value, but simply getting him out of the Nationals home ball park could well unlock him a bit, too. During the 2025 season he hit just 4 homers with a .602 OPS in his home games, but swatted 15 on the road with a .288/.345/.548 line (.893 OPS). His 2024 told a similar story – just a .667 OPS with 9 homers at home, but an .816 OPS with 11 dingers on the road.

Conveniently enough, Nationals Park ranked as the 17th best park for homers for left-handed hitters during the 2025 season (per Statcast’s Park Factors) after ranking 15th the season prior. Great American Ball Park, however, ranked as the top ball park for lefties in terms of dingers in 2024 while ranking second in 2025, and we all know it was built with cozy dimensions for lefties so that Ken Griffey, Jr. could chase the all-time dinger record.

If – and it’s an admittedly big if – the Reds feel they could find ways to get him time at 2B, maybe even 3B, in a corner OF spot, or potentially even in CF, adding a lefty bat like Abrams’ and putting him in their home ball park may well be the kind of addition that could augment itself far beyond what the back of his baseball card has said prior to this. He’s projected to earn some $5.3 million in arbitration in 2026 with team control through 2028, so he’s hardly a pre-arb guy who wouldn’t impact the bottom line, but even with the expected raises he’d receive on that he’d be a player entering his prime who’d be making just about as much per year as the Reds have thrown (combined) at Tommy Pham, Wil Myers, and Austin Hays to be bats who can hit 20 homers in the middle of their lineup in recent seasons.

Plus, of course, the obvious upside.

Acquiring Abrams wouldn’t come easily, however. We’re talking multiple top prospects – a Lowder, a Collier, an Arroyo in some combination – but the concept is one that the Reds surely should be considering given the apparent availability and the lack of other affordable options in free agency (or on other rebuilding clubs) that look like as much of a fit.

What say you?

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...s-trade-target-cj-abrams-washington-nationals

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds links – Oscar Marin as bullpen coach, Alfredo Duno mashes

Let’s head immediately to the Land of the Endless Strip Mall where Cincinnati Reds top prospect Alfredo Duno has been plying his trade for the Peoria Javelinas in Arizona Fall League play.

For much of the AFL season, Duno had been somewhat quiet. Rhett Lowder’s much anticipated return to health (and to a competitive mound) stole plenty of initial headlines, as did the way that Cam Collier – himself rounding back into form after thumb surgery – was knocking the snot out of the ball. Duno, still just 19, hadn’t really had a breakout moment just yet despite having been one of the two or three best hitters in all of minor league baseball during the 2025 regular season (while also being a catcher).

That changed dramatically this week. As Jesse Borek of MLB.com noted, Duno smashed a trio of homers last night in the AFL playoffs that travelled a combined 1,290 feet. And the fine folks from Baseball America have the videos.

This one soared some 453 feet, and it wasn’t even the longest one he hit last night.

Have a night, Alfredo Duno

His second homer of the night goes 453 feet

(@MLBazFallLeague)
pic.twitter.com/GGC9OHp5cX

— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) November 14, 2025

Speaking of which Baseball America just revealed their updated list of the Top 10 prospects in the Reds system ($), though there’s some good insight into who and what they like about the system before the paywall, too.

Doug Gray at Reds Minor Leagues has also been counting down his list of the top prospects in the Reds system, and today he got to spots #1 through #5. Head over and check out his detailed breakdown of the entire Top 25, from former 4th round draftee Mason Neville (#25) all the way to the top (Duno, duh doy).

Duno and the Peoria Javelinas will play in the AFL championship game today (Friday) at 3:30 PM ET against the Surprise Saguaros, and that’s streamable on MLB.com.

At the big league level, the Reds named Oscar Marin their new bullpen coach as part of a larger shakeup in their coaching staff. Marin, a 17 year vet of coaching ball, comes to the Reds after having spent the last six years with the Pittsburgh Pirates as their pitching coach. He’ll be the bullpen coach replacing Matt Tracy, who moved up the later to be the team’s assistant pitching coach after former assistant pitching coach Simon Mathews was hired by the Washington Nationals to be their pitching coach.

Apparently seven teams have inquired about Arizona Diamondbacks star Ketel Marte, and I’m willing to guess the Cincinnati Reds are not one of them.

The Toronto Blue Jays, fresh off a World Series where they definitely didn’t lose to the Los Angeles Dodgers and actually won, are reportedly targeting ‘high-leverage’ relievers. That’s fun for the Reds since, well, that’s what the Reds are in need of, too, and Toronto is a) better and b) has more money than the Reds at the moment.

That’s about it for today!

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/red-rep...-links-oscar-marin-coach-alfredo-duno-arizona

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds bring back Tejay Antone on minor league deal

Tejay Antone’s recovery and return from his third Tommy John surgery will apparently remain within the ranks of the Cincinnati Reds organization.

On Friday, MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon announced that Antone and the Reds had reached an agreement on a minor league deal, though it’s not yet officially ‘official.’ That would mark his return to the club after he elected free agency back on November 6th alongside nineteen other former members of the Reds minors ranks.

The Reds and RHP Tejay Antone have agreed to terms to bring him back on a Minor League deal. Contract isn’t signed yet so it’s not “official.”

— Mark Sheldon (@msheldon.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T20:55:36.750Z

The Reds drafted Tejay in the 5th round way back in 2014, and this organization is all he’s known since. He’ll turn 32 in December, but the innards of his elbow are in many ways much, much younger than that.

Antone first dealt with Tommy John surgery way back in 2017, and he’s had the procedure twice more in the last four years. That puts him in rarified air in terms of making a return to the big leagues, as only two others – Jason Isringhausen and Jonny Venters – have ever made it all the way back to the top level in the world after suffering through that particular surgery a trio of times.

Antone made it back to the AAA level at the tail end of the 2025 regular season after having been sidelined altogether since April of 2024, and while the end result numbers were awful – 17 ER acros 15.0 IP split between AAA Louisville, AA Chattanooga, and A+ Dayton – he was back up to throwing 95 mph and, most importantly, his arm was working as originally designed. That has prompted a lot of optimism that a normal offseason of rest and ramp-up instead of having to rehab furiously may well set him up for a much, much better series of outcomes in 2026.

That would be an incredible boon to the Reds, who have turned over a huge portion of their bullpen from the 2025 season. Scott Barlow, Emilio Pagan, Nick Martinez, and Brent Suter all reached free agency, and the spendthrift Reds don’t have immediate piles of coin to address those spots by signing big-ticket free agents. So, they’re going to likely rely on pieces within their organization to take significant steps forward, and Antone becoming healthy again would be a massive, massive step in that vein.

I’m happy for Tejay, frankly, and hope this miracle return continues to progress to a point where having him on the mound in GABP again is more than just pure nostalgia. The baseball gods owe him, if nothing else.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinnati-reds-rumors/49105/tejay-antone-signs-cincinnati-reds

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Shin-Soo Choo, Edwin Encarnacion headline newcomers on 2026 Hall of Fame ballot

The names on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for 2026 were released on Monday afternoon, and there are several with previous ties to the Cincinnati Reds. Chief among them are outfielder Shin-Soo Choo and 3B/DH Edwin Encarnacion and, presumably, the parrot on his shoulder.

Ryan Thibodaux relayed the latest ballot on Bluesky, with the two names above joining the likes of Ryan Braun, Gio Gonzalez, Alex Gordon, Cole Hamels, former Reds outfielder Matt Kemp, Howie Kendrick, former Reds draft pick Nick Markakis, Daniel Murphy, Hunter Pence, and Rick Porcello as the there’s no way those guys have actually been retired for five years already corner of the ballot.

The 2026 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot as announced moments ago by @baseballhall.org (baseballhall.org/news/2026-bb…). Results will be announced Jan. 20th. Game on!

— Ryan Thibodaux (@notmrtibbs.com) 2025-11-17T17:08:31.959Z

It will also alarm you to see that Manny Ramirez is already on his final year of ballot eligiblity, a travesty for the guy who was pretty clearly the best combination of a) right-handed hitter and b) hilarious that this sport has perhaps ever seen. He’s also got the obvious connection with current Reds manager Terry Francona from their time together with the Boston Red Sox, with the same being true of Dustin Pedroia.

Choo, of course, was a linchpin on the 2013 Cincinnati Reds club that famously nosedived from ‘could be something special’ to ‘out of the playoffs after one game’ at the tail end of the Dusty Baker Era in town. He was an absolute on-base machine both as a Red and in every other uniform he wore, and while he won’t get inducted into the HoF he remains one of the more fondly remembered Reds of his generation.

E5, on the other hand, likely holds a more complicated spot in Cincinnati lore. His bat played early on in his Reds tenure, but the team’s insistence that he stick at the hot corner through his tenure despite his obvious flaws defensively tanked his value. He was dealt to Toronto as a key piece of the deal that brought Scott Rolen to town, and Scott Rolen’s Reds became the best run of form of the last three decades. Edwin, to his credit, took off when moved out of Cincinnati and off the hot corner, eventually retiring after having bashed 424 career dingers.

It’s a ballot devoid of an obvious First-Ballot Hall of Famer™ given the litany of names associated with peformance-enhancing substances and other scandals, and we’re fresh off a trio having been elected in 2025 (Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, and Billy Wagner). That said, Carlos Beltrán received votes on 70.3% of the ballot last time around and likely stands to see enough of an uptick for induction, while Andruw Jones (66.2%) looks like he may well get over the hump, too. As for the group of first-timers, well, I don’t belive there’s a HoFer among them, though how well-received Cole Hamels is will go a long way to determining how HoF cases are viewed for modern-era starting pitchers in the age where bullpen use began to proliferate.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/history...eadline-newcomers-on-2026-hall-of-fame-ballot

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

MLB Roundup – Mariners bring back Josh Naylor, where will Pete Alonso go?

The Seattle Mariners traded minor league rightie Ashton Izzi and lefty reliever Brandyn Garcia to the Arizona Diamondbacks one week before last July’s trade deadline, and what they got in return was a masterclass in teambuilding. Its physical form was Josh Naylor, formerly of the Cleveland Guardians, who immediately morphed into a five-tool star from his previous iteration as lumbering first-base slugger.

Naylor, 28, had previously mashed 31 homers in a season (2024), but had never once swiped more than 10 bags. In just 54 games with the M’s, though, he hit .299/.341/.490 with 9 dingers and 19 steals, his bat and legs helping lead Seattle to a 1st place finish in the American League’s West division and on to an ALCS where they came within a glimpse of defeating the Toronto Blue Jays and making it to the first World Series in franchise history.

That rare combo of power/speed from a corner infielder paired with his relative youth for a free agent made for a pretty perfect platform year for Naylor, who also couldn’t have the Qualifying Offer slapped on his back since he was traded mid-year. Heck, if he’d been just a little bit worse with the bat and way slower on the bags, he may have even been a guy the Cincinnati Reds would’ve looked at for their own lineup!

Sadly, though, Naylor’s excellent finish to 2025 pretty well priced him out of any Reds pursuit, and it’s now becoming clear that he likely was never destined to sign anywhere else than back with Seattle. That’s because reports suggest that he and the M’s settled on the framework of a five-year contract on Sunday, one that will fork over somewhere between $90 and $100 million.

Jeff Passan of ESPN.com was on the news.

BREAKING: First baseman Josh Naylor and the Seattle Mariners are finalizing a five-year contract, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. The first major free agent to sign this winter goes back to Seattle, where he was beloved after joining the Mariners in a deadline trade.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 17, 2025

For as much as I truly do like Seattle, it’s getting a bit old seeing them spend that kind of money on players I really wish were Cincinnati Reds.

Elsewhere, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com profiled another free agent 1B in Pete Alonso while also detailing the franchises where he’d be a great fit. Not mentioned: the Cincinnati Reds, where Pete Alonso would be a great fit but whose ownership group values dollars over victories.

Mark’s colleague Mike Petriello profiled a trio of top free agent outfielders, though, and two of them were deemed good fits for the Reds this winter based on how they hit and the ball parks that suit them best. Turns out aiming for left-handed power hitters who get a boost from a tiny home park is something of a good idea!

Speaking of guys like that, Jesse Winker is a free agent again coming off an injury-shortened 2025 tenure with the New York Mets. That screams cheap enough for even the Reds to consider if you ask me.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-...sh-naylor-seattle-mariners-pete-alonso-rumors

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds add trio of top prospects to 40-man roster ahead of Rule 5 Draft

The deadline for Major League Baseball clubs to add players to their 40-man rosters to prevent them being exposed during December’s Rule 5 Draft was on Tuesday at 4 PM ET. The Cincinnati Reds did not let it pass without protecting a trio of their best and brightest prospects, officially adding shortstop Edwin Arroyo, shortstop Leo Balcazar, and outfielder Hector Rodriguez.

MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed the news on Bluesky, noting that right-hander Carson Spiers was designated for assignment to free up a 40-man roster spot that was subsequently used as part of the transactions.

The Reds selected the contracts of three players and added them to their 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft. They are: SS Edwin Arroyo, OF Hector Rodriguez and IF Leo Balcazar.RHP Carson Spiers was designated for assignment.

— Mark Sheldon (@msheldon.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T21:03:04.260Z

Arroyo was one of the centerpieces of the deal that sent Luis Castillo to the Seattle Mariners, with Noelvi Marte – now Cincinnati’s resident RF – also in that deal. He overcame a lost 2024 to shoulder surgery to return to his typical brand of elite defense and high contact with AA Chattanooga in 2025, and despite his lack of power that glovework makes him pretty much a ready-made big league shortstop.

Balcazar, meanwhile, is now fully recovered from an ACL tear from a few years ago and hit his way up to Chattanooga in 2025, too. He also is fresh off a solid overall performance in the Arizona Fall League that certainly did nothing to dent his prospect status (.277 AVG, .340 OBP).

Rodriguez blasted his way through Southern League pitching while with Chattanooga (.298/.357/.481 in 345 PA) before getting his first call up to AAA in 2025, and he held his own there through season’s end while being just 21 years of age (.260/.304/.405 in 230 PA). The lefty swinger is firmly in the mix for PA in the Cincinnati outfield at some point in 2026, and is a key part of the team’s overall outfield outlook.

One guy who apparently is not part of the team’s overall outlook is Carson Spiers, who lost his roster spot in these promotions. He was thoroughly banged up during the 2025 season, of course, but the departures of so many bullpen options in free agency meant many thought he’d at least hang around and be in the mix for one of those positions in 2026 once recovered from elbow surgery. There’s always the chance he clears waivers and sticks around on a minors deal, however, and that’s likely what the Reds were hoping here.

The Rule 5 Draft is set for December 10th during the Winter Meetings. With Cincinnati’s 40-man roster now full, they’ll have to make some additional moves between now and then to even have a chance to make a selection, though the same would/could be said if they sign a free agent to a big league deal in that timeframe, too.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...in-arroyo-cincinnati-reds-rule-5-draft-roster

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cross Taylor Ward off Cincinnati’s offseason shopping list

Since Jesse Winker was dealt to the Seattle Mariners after the 2021 MLB season, the Cincinnati Reds have leaned hard into refusing to address their corner outfield situation long-term. Instead, they’ve relied on a steady stream of over-30 guys brought in for one year (if that), the likes of Tommy Pham, Wil Myers, and most recently Austin Hays serving as hopeful stop-gaps while the players behind them kept developing.

Jake Fraley hit a wall. Will Benson seemingly has, too, while Rece Hinds hasn’t ever truly taken hold. Austin Slater couldn’t patch anything out there, nor could Harrison Bader or Hunter Renfroe.

The hope as of August of 2025 is that Noelvi Marte, a 3B by trade, will continue to take hold of the RF job going forward. The early returns out there were mostly positive, and his bat looks like it’ll hopefully be good enough to play out there. That’s a solid-enough option in one corner beside TJ Friedl, but the Reds leave the 2025 season with no Hays and a pretty clear need for additional help in left, even if the infield dominos fall in a way that pushes Spencer Steer into LF duty more often than last year.

Taylor Ward had been a popular name brought up for said role for 2026. He just bashed 36 homers for the Los Angeles Angels as part of a 116 OPS+ season, doing so after having socked 25 in 2024 with a 110 OPS+. He’s entering his final year of team control for an Angels team going nowhere (once again), precisely the kind of rental bat who would typically be available on the trade block for a team like the Reds who, in theory, is planning to contend in 2026.

That option is firmly off the table as of Tuesday night, however, as the Baltimore Orioles swooped in to acquire Ward in a deal that sent once-promising and oft-injured starter Grayson Rodriguez the other way. It’s a fascinating trade in many ways, Rodriguez possessing four years of team control but fresh off four years of awful injury history, a story about an Orioles promising pitching prospect that’s becoming as old as time.

In many ways Rodriguez’s career path has mimicked that of his now teammate Robert Stephenson, who was once the prize of the Reds farm before injuries derailed his career as a starter. Los Angeles, obviously, is hoping for more from Rodriguez and was much more willing to take a flier on him rather than on an unproven (yet more pristine) prospect, and that throws a wrench in trying to evaluate just how much this deal sets the market for the kind of bats that may be available in trade this winter akin to Ward.

There isn’t really a Rodriguez-esque arm in the Cincinnati system with which to make a comp here. He’s one part Brandon Williamson, one part Graham Ashcraft, and one part Chase Burns – he’s missed an entire big league year after some impressive work, he’s still just 26 with elite stuff, and he was once the top pitching prospect in all of baseball. If that’s what the Angels were looking for – a dice roll on ready-made big league pitching help that could very well blow up in their face on day one – I’m not sure the Reds really had a piece that fit that bill. Maybe, just maybe, this is a unicorn deal that only came together because each side had precisely the one piece the other desired, but the fact remains that if the Reds are going to try to address their corner outfield situation (and team-wide lack of power), it’s not going to be Taylor Ward riding in to fix it.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/hotstov...ltimore-orioles-grayson-rodriguez-los-angeles

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

ZiPS projections see 2026 Cincinnati Reds as just about average

Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs (hi, Dan!) and his basement supercomputer have been hard at work getting the ZiPS projections for the 2026 season ready, and today marked the drop of those for the Cincinnati Reds.

The 2026 ZiPS projections for the Cincinnati Reds are now up at @fangraphs.com.blogs.fangraphs.com/2026-zips-pr…

— Dan Szymborski (@dszymborski.fangraphs.com) 2025-11-19T18:20:30.601Z

Keep in mind that the model used here includes players who were on the Reds for the 2025 season and have since reached free agency, so the tables will include the likes of Nick Martinez, Zack Littell, Emilio Pagan, Miguel Andujar, Brent Suter, Scott Barlow, etc.

They’ll also include some pretty rosy projections for one Sal Stewart, even if ZiPS – like everyone except the Reds front office – thinks he’s best suited to maximize his value as a 3B. Fortunately, ZiPS sees the incredible glove of Ke’Bryan Hayes as good enough to offset his wet noodle of a bat for the time being even if getting 2 wins out of a corner infield position that way couldn’t be any more boring.

ZiPS also has lowe expectations for the fallout of that trade – the move of Noelvi Marte off the hot corner and over to RF. At 0.1 zWAR, RF is now clearly the worst projected position on the roster here.

Perhaps the biggest grievance I have with the projections are for Nick Lodolo, who was mostly excellent during a 2025 season that was his healthiest as a pro. ZiPS sees him as only a 1.6 zWAR pitcher – over a run below that of Andrew Abbott – while I believe the 2026 was just the tip of the iceberg for what Lodolo has in store for the coming season (and seasons, really).

On the whole, it looks to Dan and ZiPS like the Reds – as currently constructed – are just about a .500 team with pretty clear flaws offensively and in the bullpen. Fortunately, those are two areas that pretty obviously need upgrades, so it’s impossible that the Reds front office would simply leave those needs underaddressed, right?

Right?!

What say you about these, Red Reporters?

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/peer-into-the-future/49146/zips-projections-cincinnati-reds

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Elly De La Cruz played through a torn quad, and here’s the context

Elly De La Cruz cruised into the 2025 All Star Game with an .854 OPS to his name, having hit a cool .284/.359/.495 in his second full season as a Major Leaguer. He’d hit 18 homers and swiped 25 bags through 97 games, putting him on a full-season 30/40 pace – all while being the rangy anchor of their middle infield and a burgeoning superstar of the sport.

For his Hall of Fame career, Scott Rolen hit .281/.364/.490 – an .855 OPS. Adam Dunn sported a career .854 OPS, Rafael Devers sits at .855 next to Hall of Famer Al Kaline, and Hall of Famer George Brett is right there with an .856. These are elite numbers, and through the first ~60% of the 2025 season Elly hadn’t just reached them, he’d done so at such an early age and with such ease that you felt confident he was still only scratching the surface of his talents.

Something, though, fell completely apart for Cincinnati’s star shortly after the All Star break. In 52 games from August 1st through the end of the regular season, he hit just 3 more dingers while slashing a paltry .221/.280/.341 (.621 OPS) in 225 PA. To his credit (or detriment, perhaps), he still played absolutely every single day, eventually leading all baseball with 162 games played during the 162 game regular season.

As we discovered last night on the Reds Hot Stove League broadcast from President of Baseball Operations Nick Krall, Elly was playing through a torn quad suffered at some point in late July. He’s on the mend just fine now, for the record, and there doesn’t appear to be worry of lingering problems heading in to 2026, but it’s pretty baffling in hindsight that the club simply let their star player gut through such an injury instead of, y’know, shutting him down for two weeks and letting the damn thing heal.

I’m old enough to remember Jonathan India being sidelined for what, at the time, was considered a ridiculous amount of time while letting his hamstring recover. I, too, remember Donovan Solano missing roughly half of his Reds career while on the shelf with a similar soft-tissue injury.

It’s one thing if they’d let Elly play through this and he was still producing, but offensively he fell from the aforementioned level reached by Hall of Famers to levels I’ll detail a bit below.

Doug Flynn, ‘The Glue’ of the Big Red Machine, hit 7 dingers across 11 years in the big leagues, in which time he racked up an impressive -6.9 bWAR over the course of his career. Just 7 dingers, though, in some 4085 career PA, 411 of which came with the Reds across 1975-1977. His slugging percentage during that stint with the Reds, you ask? It was .341.

Sparky Anderson, who’d tell anyone who’d listen that he got into managing because he couldn’t hit, hit .218 with a .282 OBP in his lone season in the bigs in 1959.

Paul ‘Soft J’ Janish, oft-used shortstop for the Reds from 2008 through 2011, hit .221 in his Reds career.

The inimitable Corky Miller and his incredible mustache plied his trade across the game’s highest level for parts of 11 years. In 616 career PA, he posted an on-base percentage of .277.

Juan Castro, ‘Manos de Oro,’ stuck around the big league game for 17 years, eventually plying his trade with five different franchises purely for his defensive prowess and key positions on the infield. Never a slugger by any stretch of the imagination, his production gradually fell off a cliff in his late 30’s, but his mid-career run with the Reds across five seasons saw him hit .237/.276/.353 (.628 OPS) in 1469 PA.

You may recall Paul Bako’s illustrious stint behind the plate for the Reds back in the 2008 season. He hit .217/.299/.328 (.626 OPS) in 338 PA for them.

It wasn’t just his offense that was struggling, either. He committed 11 errors across those final 52 games, and he swiped only 8 bases (while being caught twice). Elly, as we’d come to know him, simply wasn’t right at all, and it’s really hard in hindsight to fathom that nobody within the Reds dugout or front office had the wherewithal to suggest he get himself right and healed for a little bit.

Hell, Matt McLain was right there capable of a) not hitting but b) healthily playing shortstop. Sal Stewart had bashed his way to AAA and could’ve stepped in somewhere on an infield that could have also featured Spencer Steer and Gavin Lux in various capacities at 2B/1B.

In a separate vein, I admire the hell out of Elly’s willingness to put this pain out of mind and show up ready to grind every single day. It’s a stubbornness that I hope permeates much of the rest of his game, the rest of his life, a persistence that leads him to better at bats, better seasons, better victories. Still, there’s a reason why the head of the dugout is called the ‘manager’ and not the coach, a ‘manager’ who has a ‘general manager’ sitting above him. It’s their job to manage players who might otherwise do things in ways detrimental to both themselves and the team even in the name of good, something that sure seemed to be going on here even as the Reds backed their way into the playoffs with just 83 wins.

UPDATE​

Shortly after I ran this on Thursday morning, MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed comments from Nick Krall attempting to clarify the significance of Elly’s quad injury, noting that it was more a ‘strain’ and ‘partial tear.’

I’ll let you all marinate on that clarification.

Nick Krall clarified comments he made last night on the radio about Elly De La Cruz. www.mlb.com/reds/news/el…

— Mark Sheldon (@msheldon.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T16:10:39.166Z

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-news/49157/elly-de-la-cruz-torn-quad-injury-cincinnati-reds

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Starting today, comments and Feed posts on Red Reporter will have activity notifications

When you post on SB Nation, we don’t want you to miss all the conversations and responses that follow.

So starting today, whenever a user replies to your comment or to your post on the Feed, you’ll see a notification at the top right corner of the page.

And of course, this means that when you engage with other community members, they’ll get an alert too.

Our goal is to create more and better conversations on Red Reporter and elsewhere across the SB Nation network. Anytime someone engages with your comments or Feed posts on another SB Nation community, you’ll see it in your notifications.

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You can log in or sign up here. Logged in users get fewer ads along with the ability to join the conversation.Jump into the comment section below or post on The Feed to see notifications in action.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/general...red-reporter-will-have-activity-notifications

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

We’ll learn a lot about the 2026 Reds with today’s Gavin Lux decision

The deadline to tender contracts to all players in their pre-arbitration and arbitration years is this Friday evening, and it gives a perennial glimpse into how teams operate their budgets at the margins.

Almost by definition, pre-arb and arb players aren’t truly ‘expensive’ just yet. They are either gaining enough service time to finally get decent raises, or they’ve already reached that point with enough past production to warrant what they’re currently being paid. Each year, though, the top free agents consistently earn 25 to 50% more per year than even the most expensive arb-eligible guys, so it’s hard to truly commit to the bit of calling any arb-eligible player truly overpriced.

Still, when players in their arb years don’t continue to improve with their escalating price tags, that’s when the non-tender deadline comes into play. A 4.80 ERA and bulk innings is a fine thing to have floating around the back of the roster when it’s coming at league minimum, for instance, but once that starts to cost 2, 4, 6 million bucks, that’s the kind of player who’ll get lopped off a roster and into free agency.

The same can somewhat be said of a hitter who doesn’t have a defensive position yet still posted just a 97 OPS+ last year. A guy who only slugs .374 despite playing in perhaps the most homer-prone stadium in the game but doesn’t defend any position well seems like precisely the kind of thing you can find for league-minimum somewhere in your minor league system, and that’s a valuable active roster spot you could otherwise use for someone who at least excels in one area of the game, at minimum.

When that player is projected to make some $5 million in 2026, well, said decision really begins to look pretty obvious. That’s exactly the scenario in which the Cincinnati Reds and Gavin Lux are this Friday, as the veteran left-handed-hitter-sans-position is projected to earn precisely that amount in 2026, his final year of team control. And how the Reds choose to handle this decision just 10 months after trading a top draft pick and current Top 100 overall prospect Mike Sirota for Lux’s services will tell us a ton about how they plan to approach the 2026 season as a whole.

On the surface, nothing suggests a club on such a shoestring budget as the Reds should spent $5 million on a guy who can’t hit well enough nor defend well enough to stake an everyday claim. They’ve got a need for, well, a guy who can hit and defend well enough to stake an everyday claim at an outfield position as well as a need for an entire bullpen, and they don’t (according to them) have enough money laying around to address those needs casually. We effectively already saw a similar decision made with Santiago Espinal when he was waived weeks ago instead of sticking around for nearly $3 million for 2026.

On the other hand, though, this front office has consistently hyped the precise kind of skills that Lux does possess as attributes they target directly, even if those didn’t pan out in the kind of stats most of us point to like SLG, OPS, and WAR. Few things about Lux’s -0.2 bWAR, 0.3 fWAR season really jumps off the page at first glance, but he did hit .269 with a .350 OBP, did walk 11.1% of the time against just a 22.7% K-rate, did at least be listed at enough positions to qualify for the definition of ‘versatile,’ and did hit .282/.361/.400 against RHP.

The Reds have become a team that loves finding players that can do 2/3rds or 3/4ths of most things instead of finding players who can do 1/1 of something concrete. It’s how they operate, love it or not, and Lux fits that mold in many ways. So, how the Reds choose to handle his tender decision today will go a long way towards showing us what they have in mind for this offseason.

Was all he did last year actually good enough? Was it in-line with their expectations?

Will they be reluctant to cut ties now and sell him off into free agency when the cost they spent to acquire him looks worse and worse with every Mike Sirota swing?

Will they really commit to roughly $5 million for the exact same level of expectation on Lux instead of reinvesting that into another player for that roster spot that actually has tangible upside?

To their credit, the Reds have not buried their heads and ignored bad decisions the way that some teams (read: the Colorado Rockies) have in recent years. They aptly declared the likes of Shogo Akiyama, Mike Moustakas, and more recently Jeimer Candelario as sunk costs and moved the hell on, even if the financial hit of those moves stayed with them for years down the road. Moving on from Lux today wouldn’t require that kind of monetary hit, obviously, but it would be an egg-face acknowledgement that Sirota might remind them of for years down the road, and perhaps that brings in a bit more reluctance on their part today.

Maybe Lux can squeak his way to .285/.360/.400 next year, they’ll say to themselves. Maybe a full offseason of learning LF will make him passable there.

They will, or they won’t, but they’ll do so at some point today. And when they do, we’ll learn a whole lot about where their priorities are for this offseason [/coughs out Kyle Schwarber’s name] and what their tolerance for risk truly is.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...lux-nontender-deadline-cincinnati-reds-rumors