Cincinnati Reds
Team Leader
Reds bring in former Rockies 1B Michael Toglia on minor league deal
Source: https://www.redreporter.com/hotstove/49403/michael-toglia-cincinnati-reds-rumors-colorado-rockies
A cumulative .201/.278/.389 batting line across 1067 big league PA isn’t going to tear the roof off your expectations for a baseball player, not after that player having plied his trade in a home ball park for parts of four seasons that’s notorious for inflating offensive production. Especially not when that player is also already 27 years old and pretty much limited to 1B duties only on defense.
The same can somewhat be said for a cumulative .233/.275/.404 batting line across 501 big league PA, not after that player has plied his trade in a home ball park for parts of three seasons that’s notorious for inflating offensive production. Especially not when that player turns 27 years old and is pretty much limited to 1B duties only on defense.
The second player I’ve talked about here is none other than Christian Encarnacion-Strand, whom we’d all pretty well agree is a player you’d love to have in your system for one more year if a) you aren’t counting on him and b) he’s got plenty of opportunity to ‘figure it out’ finally while stashed in the minors. There have been flashes from him throughout his pro career, and at times you were even damn excited about him!
The first player I’ve talked about here is also now part of the Cincinnati Reds. That would be former Colorado Rockies 1B Michael Toglia, who put together a 25 homer campaign in 2024 (with a feasible .767 OPS) and inked a minor league deal with the Reds over the weekend.
At this point of the offseason – when the Chicago Cubs are literally matching this move by signing Alex Bregman for $175 million – this is no move that will move any needles. It’s a depth move, a chance to bounce back, a bargain-bin purchase every so slightly below the bargain-bin signings of JJ Bleday (and the deal for Dane Myers). It’s a fringe-roster move, albeit with a guy who did sock 25 big league homers in the 2024 season – 17 of which actually came away from Coors Field.
Toglia’s flawed in many of the same free-swinging ways as CES. He struck out an astounding 39.2% of the time in his 337 big league PA last year, that after being between 32.1% and 36.7% in every other minor league season. He walks quite a bit more than his counterpart – a career 9.5% rate at the big league level that’s the exact same as TJ Friedl’s career mark – and the former 1st round draftee out of UCLA has mauled AAA pitching to the tune of .286/.379/.557 (.936 OPS) in 754 career PA at that level.
Again, we’re talking about the Reds signing a player who we’ll only see if their actual plans fall completely apart. It’s hard to get truly excited about the move in that context when there are so many things about their actual plans that still need to be addressed. But as scratch-off tickets go, this one at least has a reasonable chance of turning into something non-zero in that event, and that’s not nothing, I suppose.
Maybe it’s nothing. It’s still the Reds, after all.
Source: https://www.redreporter.com/hotstove/49403/michael-toglia-cincinnati-reds-rumors-colorado-rockies