Cincinnati Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall spoke to the media on Monday afternoon, reflecting briefly on the team’s crash out of the Wild Card round of the 2025 playoffs before quickly turning the page to the 2026 season.
Though the team finished just 83-79 in the regular season, didn’t even secure an above .500 year until the season’s final week, and once again failed to win even a single playoff game,
Krall told MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon that “
we took a step in the right direction, something that we’ve been building towards for a couple of years.” Presumably, that’s in reference to the last three seasons in which the Reds emerged from the teardown that sent away Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray, & Co. and brought in a wave of young players from outside the organization that would, in theory, emerge alongside the young core already within the franchise.
We – us – are three years into this already. Keep that in mind with every quote you hear from Krall. Also keep in mind that over the course of the last three seasons combined, the team is collectively 2 games under the .500 mark and still without so much as a victory in a single playoff game – and definitely has not even hosted a playoff loss.
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We’re losing some key parts and we’re losing some leaders,“ Krall went on to say.
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Internally, some guys need to step up. We need guys to have good offseasons, show back up ready to go, show back up ready to take the next step.”
On the surface, that’s a perfectly fine, benign thing to say – and to expect. Plenty of guys who had played at the big league level prior to 2025 played worse in 2025 than they had before, and that’s a list that includes vital names like Elly De La Cruz, Matt McLain, Spencer Steer, and Will Benson, among a few others. The position player part of the equation simply didn’t cut it in 2025, with extreme splits, subpar offense, and bottom-tier defense littering the roster all season long, though we’ve at least been able to see each of the above names perform better in other seasons – and that should, in theory, give us hope they can tap back into it.
Digging deeper, though, and it’s an omission by Krall that they are pretty pot-committed to this group as is. TJ Friedl, who was pretty good in 2025 but not the same as he was in 2023 before the hamstring injuries, already turned 30. Stephenson will hit 30 during next season. Steer will be 28 in another two months, McLain hit 26 in August, and this is not a case (outside of Elly and Noelvi Marte, who was one of the very few hitters to actually take a step
forward in 2025) where another year of time passing necessarily equates to another year of
growing up.
A lot of these guys were, for the most part, who they are this year. That extends perhaps to Christian Encarnacion-Strand, who fell completely off the radar after more struggles and effectively got replaced on the
dear god I hope he actually turns into a legit power hitter bingo card by Sal Stewart. Gavin Lux (28 in a month) was exactly what Gavin Lux has always been, the move to GABP as his home park doing nothing to magically inflate his lack of power.
The offensive portion of this club doesn’t look to me like it’s going to magically just create more offense, especially when all signs point to them continuing to massively scale back the run game under Terry Francona that helped – for lack of a better phrase – magically create more offense out of this group under David Bell. This was, and
is, a ‘single and steal’ offense that was put together by design and then intentionally asked to steal less, and I don’t know how you coach improvement on those aspects significantly beyond what is already there.
This offense is also set to lose Austin Hays, who was injured for a big portion of the year the way the entire industry knew he’d be when the Reds signed him on the cheap last winter. His .453 slugging percentagewas the highest of all the ‘regular’ Reds, topped only by the even smaller samples we saw from Migual Andujar (post-trade and mostly against LHP) and Stewart (let me just reiterate how much the hopes of overall offensive improvement rest on his shoulders alone).
Back to Krall, I’ll add that he is under zero contract nor expectation to come right out to the media the day after the season ended and lay out exactly what he plans to do before Opening Day 2026. I would never expect him to grab a microphone and tell the world how he has huge plans to shake everything up, to trade two starting pitchers for corner outfielders and that Zach Maxwell has already been tabbed as the closer. That’s not who he is, nor should it be. Still, given what he’s said throughout this again multi-year Reds rebuild has mostly been what he’s ended up doing, and that is, frankly, not a whole lot.
They built this thing the way they did to let it play out over a long, long time, in hopes that after a long, long time they’d have some wins to show for it. It’s been three years, that’s felt like a long, long time to me – can you imagine 25+ other franchises just, like, waiting around for three (now four) years? – but it’s not too long for them and their plan. So, given his actual words and his penchant for being pretty honest about staying the course, here’s how I think this offseason shakes out.
The Money
Money. It really doesn’t need more of an introduction, since that’s what drives everything this franchise does. There will be no big spends, and that’s just how it is.
Earlier this week
I detailed how their 14 arbitration eligible players will earn around $51.5 million in 2026, should they all be tendered contracts, after that group made just $27.75 million last year. That’s a big bump, one that eats up nearly all of the money coming off the books to Nick Martinez, Hays, and Emilio Pagan as well as the prorated portions owed to deadline acquisitions like Andujar, Zack Littell, and any of the other options they buy out.
They’re still going to be paying Jeimer Candelario $13 million for next season (and then a $3 million buyout of his 2027 option) despite cutting him this year. Ke’Bryan Hayes ($7 million), Hunter Greene ($8.33 million), and Jose Trevino ($5.25 million) all are under contract already, bringing the total already guaranteed to that group to
$36.78 million.
That’s 17 players of the 26-man active roster who’ll combine to make a bit over
$88 million, and rounding out the final 9 players on that active roster with pre-arb players making the $780,000 league minimum would put their payroll obligations at over
$95 million.
Per Cot’s Contracts, their Opening Day payroll in 2025 was $111.9 million after sitting at just $90 million in 2024 and $82.8 million in 2023. That means there’s probably a little bit of spending money in there somewhere, but it sure isn’t a lot (without some significant subtractions).
What They Need
Hayes, De La Cruz, and McLain seem pretty set as 3/4ths of the infield. If Stewart takes 1B the way I hope he does, that could, in theory, push Steer to a more permanent LF role (even though his defense at 1B was one of his better aspects last year). That would form an outfield of Steer, Friedl, Marte, and Benson (with the positionless Lux perhaps part of that) which isn’t completely terrible – but certainly not enough to be considered a ‘plus’ unit. Unless, of course, they all just
take the next step somehow. Adding a bat somewhere (and leaning into the potential versatility of Steer, Stewart, and perhaps even Marte) seems like a pretty vital thing to do.
The Reds are also going to lose a huge portion of their bullpen. Pagan and Scott Barlow are free agents while Brent Suter could be (depending on his option decisions), and Chase Burns will be moving back into the starting rotation mix going forward. And somehow, this isn’t even a roster that has several would-be bullpen guys who ended up on the 60-day IL and will be back next year to fill immediate spots. Adding arms down there (while admittedly being excited about Connor Phillips, Graham Ashcraft, Lyon Richardson, Luis Mey, and Maxwell
taking the next step) seems like an absolute must alongside Tony Santillan.
What They Have
They have starting pitching, and lots of it. Lots of really, really good starting pitching. Perhaps, dare I say,
too much good starting pitching, as they just put up the 2nd best team fWAR by SP in 2025 despite having Hunter Greene miss two months, Chase Burns fight an arm issue, and each of Brandon Williamson, Rhett Lowder, and Julian Aguiar being out all season long.
You can never technically have too much starting pitching, but the Reds might be just about as close to that as they possible can be. Frankly, they’re close enough to it that when you factor in the budget constraints and how much they’re spending on that really, really good starting pitching, there immediately becomes an obvious wonder whether they could move some of it to fix holes elsewhere.
What They’ll Do
First and foremost, they’ll wait and see what Lowder looks like in Arizona Fall League play. If he looks like his former top prospect self, they’ll cross their arms, chuckle, and head into winter transaction season knowing they’ve got a full deck again.
Assuming that’s the case (with fingers very much crossed), they’ll probably shop a starting pitcher not named Greene or Burns. Those two, I’d wager, are completely off limits both for talent and team control purposes.
They’d probably prefer to move Brady Singer – he’s set to be the team’s highest paid player ($11.9 million) while being in his final year of control before reaching free agency – but they know how valuable a guy who can make 30+ starts is for this otherwise dinged-up bunch.
They’ll probably listen on Andrew Abbott because a) he’s in his final cheap year before he’ll get a giant arbitration bump, b) he’s already dealt with shoulder issues, and c) they, like the rest of us, wonder just how long he’ll continue to outpitch his peripherals (while wondering if he’ll ever be better and more marketable than he is after his 2025).
They’ll listen on Nick Lodolo, too. He set career-best marks in both quantity and quality this year, but once again routinely dealt with the kind of nagging injuries that have come to define him so far. He’s also already in arbitration (estimated at $4.3 million for 2026), and there’s been zero talk of extension with him like there was with Greene. Keep in mind he’s a guy who declined to sign as a 1st round pick in order to bet on himself in college, so the idea of getting him to sign now on the cheap doesn’t really fit his mold.
They’ll deal one of those three for a young, controllable bat, ideally one who either is (or can be) an outfielder when called upon. Ideally, they’ll get a concrete bullpen piece as part of that, too, since Francona seems like the kind of manager who prefers particular hierarchy at the back end and needs a closer he can call on in precisely defined scenarios.
If they don’t land that second piece – a guy who will be their closer despite not really having been one already – they’ll go sign one, be it a Pagan reunion or betting on Ryan Helsley’s stumble with the Mets having him tumble into their price range. I do actually think they’ll spend a bit of money on that need, as they did once upon a time in getting Pagan in the first place.
Then, the Reds will hit the pause button for a bit. We’ll all wonder if they’re really going to roll into spring training in Goodyear with
just those moves. As mid-February approaches, though, they’ll dole out a one-year contract to an established reliever who’d not yet found a home, and he’ll roll into camp two days after pitchers and catchers reported and assume the resident Scott Barlow/Buck Farmer role as a setup guy.
It’s at this point when we’ll all get to see for real if everybody can
take the next step together.
