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[Cincinnati Reds]

On Noelvi Marte and the Reds search for outfield help

Photo by Ishika Samant/Getty Images

T-minus 9 days until the trade deadline.

After over 300 games as a professional (and over 2600 career innings spent in the field), Noelvi Marte started a game as an outfielder on Sunday.

He did just fine, albeit in incredibly limited action out there in New York. He fielded the one grounder hit his way that made it through the infield, and he even got to show off his big arm on a throw back to the dirt. That’s surely what the Cincinnati Reds have in mind for him for the time being - to hide him out there a bit, let him get his feet wet, and put him in a position to slowly show them whether corner outfield is something that’s in his repertoire.

It’s a story that’s similar to that of another Cincinnati Reds infielder-outfielder.

Before starting 48 games in corner outfield spots back in 2023, Spencer Steer had logged a grand total of one (1) game as a RF across his minor league career. That didn’t stop the Reds from chucking him out in LF just as often as they started him at 3B that season, leaning hard into his versatility to help unlock a lot of what else they had coming up through the minors to their lineup, too.

That ‘what else’ included Marte, by the way. Now, it seems the Reds may well be giving him the Steer treatment to see just how many spots they’ll have available for other faces as they make their way to the Reds. What, you aren’t buying that they’re merely trying to get Santiago Espinal’s bat into the lineup against LHP?

To me, it seems very much like the first part of a three-part plan, and that being the basic ask of can he actually play RF?

If he can - and I tend to think he can, passably - then the Reds suddenly have the ability to look for another bat who can fill in positions that mirror Marte. If all Marte could do, after all, was play 3B, you can’t really go shopping for another 3B without creating a problem. It’d be much the same if all he could do was play RF, as that would prevent the Reds from shopping for an additional bat who only plays RF as they hunt a playoff spot in 2025.

That’s the second part of this plan, by the way - figuring out how Marte’s ability to play some RF helps them get better in 2025. Ideally, that means Marte still has a spot to play when the Reds go reacquire Eugenio Suarez and install him as their 3B. Or, it simply adds depth all over, and when the Reds go acquire Randal Grichuk to play RF when the team’s up against a LHP, Marte slides back to 3B as a significant upgrade offensively over Espinal.

Marte’s flexibility opens up the Reds search to a much wider audience, for one. It also helps the team’s bargaining power when trade talks begin - no longer to all teams have the ability to leverage the Reds lack of a RHH corner OF when at the table.

Part three of this plan is the long-game. Much like with Steer each year, Marte may well walk into spring camp in 2024 knowing he can play all over the place - and therefore not knowing where he’ll play most any given day. That’s if this all ends up working out, of course, as the flexibility sure would be nice. It would be especially nice when Sal Stewart shows up in camp, too, as a guy who’s much more likely to be a 3B option only than Marte.

The Reds seem to be doing this to not only get themselves a better bat in the lineup now, but to also open up the ability to be a better overall lineup in two weeks and in two years. Let’s just hope it’s the first move that unlocks a series of moves that let’s it all happen.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/2025/7/22/24472361/noelvi-marte-cincinnati-reds-rumors-grichuk-laureano

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

A series loss to the Washington Nationals is a vintage 2025 Reds thing

Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images

One step forward, one step back.

The Cincinnati Reds lost again to the Washington Nationals on Tuesday, the hosting club having dropped 10 of 12 games overall to fall 20 games under .500 prior to the start of the series. Since they lost on Monday, too, the Reds officially dropped the series and now must win in the getaway-day matinee on Wednesday to salvage a winning road trip that once looked so, so promising.

It’s emblematic of this club, really, who has both not yet been swept all season yet never managed to eek more than 5 games above the .500 mark - something they did a blink ago before immediately dropping 3 straight.

Momentum, the single toughest thing to find in the game of baseball this side of Joey Votto, has continued to elude this Reds club. On Tuesday, it eluded them in one of the most frustrating ways possible.

Chase Burns, their electric rookie, had been absolutely befuddling Nats hitters for most of the night, entering the Bottom of the 6th on roughly 80 pitches and having yielded a trio of runs. He’d been lights-out with his slider - he struck out 10 against just 2 walks after eventually exiting. For a rookie whose overall innings cap has been much discussed, the idea of leaving him out there for the 6th at all was up for discussion, let alone after he allowed a pair of walks around a double to load the bases.

Burns didn’t get out of the inning. He yielded a 2-out single that scored a pair after an errant throw home from Jake Fraley bounced off catcher Tyler Stephenson, and the end result was the rook heading to the showers with 6 runs allowed (5 earned) on a night when he was much, much better than than. That’s now twice in his handful of starts where something similar has occurred, the end result being a frustrating end to something that, for a long time, had been so brilliant.

That’s the storyline of the Reds right now, who sit just 2 games over .500, are once again back in 4th place in their own division, and are now 3.5 games back of the final NL Wild Card spot (behind each of the Padres, Giants, and Cardinals). They’ve been so brilliant - at times - and keep ending up frustratingly right back where they began.

There’s a part of me that thinks this was Terry Francona giving Burns a chance to learn, to learn to fail, and to learn to eventually get back up after failing. That’s the kind of long-game move that very much will matter to the future star’s development. It’s just hard to be forced to once again endure that kind of marginal difference when this team - all ‘2 games over .500’ of them - is as close to being an actually ‘good’ team as we get once a decade around these parts.

It’s simply hard to stomach these kinds of losses when we’ve waded through so goddamn many that didn’t matter for so long.

This loss shouldn’t alter the Reds direction in the week leading up to the trade deadline. They’re still good, they still have Hunter Greene (and maybe Rhett Lowder and Wade Miley) on the mend, and they still owe it to us all to actually give a damn and try to get better in the next week. They’re close enough to justify it, and they owe us a freaking fortune in goodwill.

It would just be a whole lot easier to demand it if they’d finally find a way to string some positive momentum together, for once.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/2025/7/...washington-nationals-recap-chase-burns-rumors

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds interested in an Eugenio Suarez reunion, per report

Photo by Matthew Grimes Jr./Atlanta Braves/Getty Images

Who wouldn’t be? It shouldn’t have to be a reunion in the first place!

The Cincinnati Reds need power, power from the corner infield, and someone who can mash left-handed pitching as the July 31st trade deadline nears. Anyone who’s lived anywhere but under a rock the last four years knows that there’s a guy out there on the trade block who’s still playing on an incredibly team-friendly contract with the Reds name on it who’d be an absolutely perfect fit, both in the lineup and in the dugout.

Eugenio Suarez has absolutely obliterated baseballs for the Arizona Diamondbacks lately, his 36 total dingers this year pacing the National League. And ever since the Reds originally dealt him to the Seattle Mariners back in 2022, they’ve been searching for someone, anyone to replace his production.

You can do the math on how much money they sunk into their options if you’d like. Mike Moustakas and Jeimer Candelario sure made a whole lot more money than Geno over the last handful of years just for the Reds to have dumped Suarez in the first place.

Mercifully, as the Diamondbacks enter a trade season where it looks more and more like they’re going to sell, Suarez - who’ll finally be a free agent at season’s end - has become one of the most sought-after trade chips at the deadline. According to C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic, you can add the Reds to the list of teams who have formally inquired about Geno’s services.

It’s the kind of move for the kind of player where you’d deal first and answer questions later regarding lineup construction and who plays where. We’ve already seen resident 3B Noelvi Marte get some time out in RF, something that would make sliding Geno into the 3B spot a lot more seamless should it materialize.

Obviously, the Reds would have to outbid the entirety of the rest of baseball to land Geno once again. Teams such as the New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners, etc. have all been linked to the slugger, and names like Chase Petty have been floated by C. Trent already when it comes to the type of headliner this deal would take to even get Cincinnati in the conversation.

Am I optimistic this front office will get that aggressive this deadline? I’m not, though it’s at least encouraging to see that they’re clearly aware that there’s a need (and an urgency) that is firmly in place with this 53-50 club and manager Terry Francona.

Stay tuned!

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/2025/7/...rs-eugenio-suarez-diamondbacks-trade-deadline