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[Cincinnati Reds]

Blue Jays at Dodgers – World Series Game Four

After reaching base a staggering nine times during last night’s epic 18 inning Game 3, Shohei Ohtani will toe the rubber for the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 tonight at Dodger Stadium (while also leading off, because of course).

The Toronto Blue Jays will look to claw their way back into a level series on the arm of Shane Bieber, the former American League Cy Young Award winner and Cleveland stalwart whom they acquired at this summer’s trade deadline.

First pitch is set for just after 8 PM Eastern, and the game will once again be televised on FOX.

Considering how gassed both bullpens are, I’d wager that we’ll be seeing the most possible out of these two starters, and if either is knocked out early this game could get sideways in a hurry. On top of that, George Springer is not in the lineup for the Jays to begin as he’s still nursing the side/oblique issue that forced him out of the game last night. Rumor has it he may still be available to pinch-hit (or pinch run, even) should the need arise, but that puts Toronto without its best hitter from the regular season as tonight’s pivotal matchup begins.

Let’s baseball!

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/playoffs/49009/blue-jays-dodgers-world-series-game-four

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Should the Reds try to sign catcher Tyler Stephenson long-term?

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Reds fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

It’s somewhat hard to believe, but the Cincinnati Reds drafted catcher Tyler Stephenson in the 1st round of the 2015 MLB Draft, meaning he’s already been in the organization for over a decade at this point.

On the very June day when he was picked, Mike Leake scattered 10 hits across 6 innings of 2 ER ball against the Philadelphia Phillies in what became a 6-4 Reds victory. The top of the lineup that day will give you nostalgia – Brandon Phillips at 2B, Joey Votto at 1B, Todd Frazier at 3B, Jay Bruce in right, and Zack Cozart at short. Manny Parra, JJ Hoover, and Aroldis Chapman later came on to finish that one out.

If that makes it feel like it was an eon ago, well, it was. Stephenson has been in this organization for a heckuva long time, and we’ve now reached the point where next season will see him turn 30 years old while in the final year of team control before he reaches free agency. That is, of course, if the Reds don’t sign him to a contract extension before that point, something that sure hasn’t had any public rumor leaked if it’s in the works.

That somewhat begs the question, then. Should the Reds explore an extension with the guy who’s been their main catcher for the last five seasons after debuting late in 2020?

When Tyler was drafted out of high school back in 2015, the hope was that his big frame and projectionable power would turn into a middle of the order bat. At times you’ve still seen glimpses of that, but he’s never hit more than 19 dingers in a season nor slugged more than .482 – and that latter mark was in an injury-shortened 50 game season in 2022. To date he’s hit .261/.338/.426 in nearly 2000 career PA, good for a 104 OPS+ (though he’s only been a total 98 OPS+ hitter over the last three seasons of work combined). That’s a decent enough hitter (especially for the slap-hitting Reds roster), but hardly the kind of thumper they hoped he’d be.

Arbitration estimates suggest he’ll earn somewhere around $6.4 million in 2026 in his final year through that process, and any extension will obviously build off that significantly. He also ranked as one of the worst framers among all catchers in the game last season while also ranking towards the bottom of the pack in pop times to 2B, and the Reds already traded for – and gave a contract extension to – Jose Trevino as a catching option.

On top of that, catching prospect Alfredo Duno posted a Top 3 wRC+ among all hitters in affiliated minor league ball stateside during the 2025 season and could very feasibly be in the discussion for major league time by the end of 2026.

So, what do you think? Is Tyler the kind of stalwart the Reds should throw money at to stick around for a few more years? Or is it probably time to start thinking about what they’ll do when he’s in another team’s uniform?

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...ds-rumors-tyler-stephenson-contract-extension

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Tyler Stephenson enters walk year with his Reds future uncertain

It’s still tough to truly wrap your head around the season that Tyler Stephenson just had for the Cincinnati Reds, as a dive into the numbers sends you the four corners of the planet.

His strikeout rate spiked over 11% to a career worst 33.9%, just one year removed from it being a career best 22.7% during a 2024 season that most hoped was a breakout. His BABIP somehow increased, though, up from .307 to .322 while his average still managed to dip from .258 down to .231.

His walk rate increased, which was a positive – up to a career best 10.8% from the 9.3% level in 2024.

He also managed to cut his groundball rate drastically, dropping it from 47.4% during the 2024 season down to just 38.0%, and that came with a requisite increas in fly ball rate and line drive rate. His ISO, though, remained mostly stagnant (.186 in 2024, up to .191 in 2025) even though he pulled the ball 3.6% more and upped his hard-hit rate from 43.9% up to 49.2%. His barrel rate jumped significantly, too, up to 14.4% from just 9.1% in 2024.

There’s a lot in there to suggest there was a tangible change in his approach, something that obviously coincides with a new manager and new hitting coach in the dugout for the first time in a bit. Still, his overall production dipped tremendously, his wRC+ down to 99 from 113 and his wOBA down to just .319 from its .339 peak in 2024.

That’s a lot to process for anyone, let alone a catcher who’s turning 30 in the same year he enters his final year of team control. If you put yourself in the shoes of the front office of the Reds and try to figure out just what to make it all, odds are it would be a pretty tough decision to make, too.

Who is Tyler Stephenson at this juncture, entering his twelfth year in the Reds organization? And is it worth doing what it takes to keep him around beyond just 2026?

I asked that question of you for in the latest MLB Reacts post, and when I got the results I’ll admit I was a little bit surprised. Frankly, I thought the lack of a ready-made replacement in-house (Alfredo Duno is incredibly promising but likely a bit further away) would make folks pine to keep him, and I was pretty sure nostalgic reasons would boost support for keeping him around, too.

I was wrong. Just 36% of those who participated in the poll think the Reds should do what it takes to get Stephenson under contract, meaning nearly two-thirds of those respondents think letting him walk when it’s time is a decent idea.

Maybe the frugality of this front office has gotten to plenty of folks, and they simply don’t think it’s worth throwing money at anyone. Or, maybe the frugality of the front office has gotten to plenty of folks who realize that if there are going to be extensions thrown around to the current Reds roster, Tyler’s simply not high enough on the pecking order to be the guy who gets one.

This also begs an interesting question – if you don’t think the Reds should work out an extension with Stephenson, is it worth exploring what you can get for him on the trade market this winter and at least get something longer-term for his services? He was valued at just 1.1 fWAR (1.3 bWAR) last season, and that’s probably something the Reds could find elsewhere on the market this winter, and there’s always a chance an acquiring team would still view him as the 3.3 fWAR (2.4 bWAR) catcher he was in 2024.

It’s quite the interesting conundrum, one complicated by the team’s decision to trade for and extend Jose Trevino prior to the start of the 2025 season. It’s really, really hard to envision the Reds doling out the kind of money it would take to lock up Stephenson when they’ve already dedicated a good chunk to the guy who’d be his backup, after all.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...tephenson-cincinnati-reds-free-agent-catchers

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Cincinnati Reds outright Santiago Espinal to AAA Louisville

Over the final 54 games in which he played during the 2024 season, Santiago Espinal hit .311/.361/.446 with 55 hits for the Cincinnati Reds. The utility infielder, never a huge source of offense, chipped in enough to be counted on in 2025 as a pretty valuable depth piece on the roster.

At least, that was the hope. The reality was that he was more or less an abject disaster with the bat (.243/.292/.282 in 328 PA) and even his defense began to slip. After the Reds made the move at the trade deadline to acquire 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes from Pittsburgh to up the defensive acumen on the dirt, Espinal got just 32 PA before season’s end, starting only 8 times (none of which came in September).

Espinal was set to be arbitration eligible for the third and final time this winter, with estimates suggesting he’d take home a $2.9 million salary for 2026. I say ‘was’ here, however, because the Reds chose to outright Espinal off the roster and down to AAA Louisville on Friday afternoon, removing him from the 40-man roster altogether.

As MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon noted on Bluesky, Espinal has enough service time to reject the AAA assignment and become a free agent should he so choose, though either way he’s now off the roster.

IF/OF Santiago Espinal was sent outright to Louisville. He can reject the assignment and become a free agent. Either way, he is now off the Reds 40 man roster.

— Mark Sheldon (@msheldon.bsky.social) 2025-10-31T18:36:25.939Z

The 2025 MLB season could well end tonight if the Toronto Blue Jays dispatch the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 6 of the World Series, and that would start the administrative clock on all offseason transactions. That includes returning guys on the 60-day IL to the 40-man roster, and the Reds have the likes of Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson, Julian Aguiar, Carson Spiers, and Tyler Callihan in need of spots. With Espinal a pretty clear non-tender candidate anyway, the Reds seem to be getting a jump on cleaning out their roster before those moves become mandatory.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-news/49026/santiago-espinal-cincinnati-reds-roster-rumors

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Matt McLain likely to qualify for Super Two status, raise

The salary structure and team control matrix for Major League clubs is complicated and convoluted, but there are at least a couple of tenets to it that generally hold.

Clubs get six years of team control over players, and the players typically operate at or around league-minimum salaries for the first three of those years – after which time they go through the arbitration process and begin to get raises based upon their performance. The better you’ve been (in at least the right specific categories of production), the more money you make each trip through arbitration, and previous year salaries serve as a benchmark on which you get your raise.

Guys like Spencer Steer and TJ Friedl are hitting that threshold for the first time this winter, and will begin to make significantly more money going forward.

Those years, though, are full years, and partial years don’t quite get you there. This comes into play when you see teams waiting conspicuously long to call up top prospects at the start of seasons, often waiting until May or June to promote them in pretty clear efforts to manipulate their service time – the years of team control – to effectively get 3/4ths of a seventh year of control over them.

As a way to combat that, the top 22% of players with more than two years of service time (and less than three years) become eligible for Super Two status, effectively giving them a fourth year of arbitration eligibility (and kick-starting their increased earnings a year early). As the fine folks at MLB Trade Rumors explained yesterday, that typically involves a service time threshold of two years and 120 to 140 days, with all players who’ve logged at least that much qualifying.

This year, the cutoff is expected to be two years and either 139 or 140 days, and Cincinnati’s Matt McLain has exactly two years and 140 days of service time under his belt. So, rather than play the 2026 season on a roughly league-minimum salary of $780,000, he’s estimated to command a $2.6 million salary through the arbitration process for which he’s about to officially qualify.

Brandon Williamson similarly sits with two years and 139 days of service time, so there’s a chance he qualifies as a Super Two, too. He won’t command quite the same salary increase as McLain, but it would still be at least a few hundred thousand above actual league-minimum.

(If you’re at home doing the math, yes, players earn service time even when they’re on the 60-day injured list rehabbing. So while it still seems like we’ve barely seen any of McLain and Williamson, they picked up service time while on the big league roster even while sidelined with their respective ailments over the last two seasons.)

Each of Andrew Abbott and Elly De La Cruz have more than two years of service time (and less than three), but both will fall short of Super Two status by several weeks, meaning they’ll once again play on a salary at or around league-minimum for the 2026 season (assuming the Reds don’t hammer out longer-term contracts independent of mere team control between now and then).

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinnati-reds-rumors/49022/matt-mclain-super-two-arbitration-salary

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Ian Gibaut, Santiago Espinal elect free agency

The Cincinnati Reds made make or break roster decisions with a pair of veterans over the past week, choosing to outright both right-hander Ian Gibaut and infielder/outfielder Santiago Espinal off the 40-man roster and assign them to AAA Louisville.

Both Gibaut and Espinal, though, have enough service time as veterans to control their own destinies in these situations. Rather than accept those assignments, both elected to become free agents in search of big league opportunities.

The Enquirer’s Gordon Wittenmyer had the details this morning on Espinal, while Gibaut’s decision was noted in the MLB.com transaction log on Friday.

A day after the Reds announced they outrighted Santiago Espinal to AAA Louisville, he exercised his right to become a free agent.

— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubMLB) November 1, 2025

It’s a common occurance this time of year as teams look to free up spots at the end of their roster for administrative purposes. Players on the 60-day IL who still have team control have to be returned to the 40-man after the World Series, for instance, and the Reds now have just 37 men on the 40-man to help accommodate those returns (of Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson, and Julian Aguiar, in particular).

It’s also a common occurance for veterans in similar situations as Espinal and Gibaut. Both are arbitration-eligible players again this winter, though both are coming off the kinds of 2025 seasons that wouldn’t really inspire a team to give them a raise on salaries already above league-minimum. In other words, both guys were firmly in the non-tender crosshairs, but the non-tender deadline is another three weeks away – waiting for those three weeks before cutting them loose wouldn’t free up the roster spots they’ll need before then.

So, the Reds went ahead and made it happen.

Of course, both players likely cleared waivers for similar reasons in that no team is going to claim them right now given their expected salary raises. Teams often try to pass guys like this through waivers at precisely this time because they know those 40-man spots are precious right now, though that occasionally means a guy who’s more fringe than teams realize will become available on waivers. Now, the Reds have a little bit more wiggle room to pounce on such a player should the chance arise.

As for Gibaut and Espinal, both have shown they’re capable big leaguers in smaller roles over the last few seasons, and their own expectation is that they’ll be able to land a big league deal to do so elsewhere, even if it’s now at a rate that’s below what their arbitration estimates were had the Reds kept them around through that process.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...ian-gibaut-santiago-espinal-elect-free-agency

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Key administrative dates for the MLB offseason

It is a perfectly fine and normal reaction this morning to have woken up and proclaimed that the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series last night. In a perfect world, they’d have. In the real world, the pretty much kind of did, for a bit, and that’s enough for most of us.

That the Los Angeles Dodgers completely a completely bonkers comeback on the field in their opponents’ stadium is the reality, but that’s a mere detail to that Evil Empire at this juncture of their dominance. That they were so close to the brink by this Jays club is the real story, and likely will be for many in the game as we drift further and further from the actual details.

It’s akin to the same way so many remember the ‘97 Marlins and ‘01 Diamondbacks instead of a decades-long Yankees dynasty that won however goddamn many titles they won in that span. Baseball fans across the world, perhaps especially in markets that so rarely make it to the big stage, naturally gravitate to those special, similar teams who actually do.

Anyway, the 2025 MLB season is in the books. Players whose contracts reached their conclusion at the end of the 2025 MLB season officially become free agents today, and five days from today they’ll be able to sign with any team in the game (should they so choose). That means the likes of Emilio Pagan, Nick Martinez, Miguel Andujar, and Zack Littell could only negotiate with the Cincinnati Reds for five days (should they so choose), after which they can sign elsewhere – but as of today, they’re all free agents.

Qualifying Offer (QO) decisions must also be made within five days from today, though there is zero expectation of that being a drama-inducer for the Reds again this year. They can’t give a QO to Martinez again after they did so last year, and nobody else who’s a free agent warrants that kind of one-year, $22.025 million dice roll.

Trades, though, can officially begin happening again today (if any front office exec is up to it and not laying on a beach somewhere for a few days). It feels as if Nick Krall’s entire personality is I got sunburned once when I was seven, so it’s doubtful that he’s out there on la playa. Maybe he’s already hard at work!

Option decisions from both the player side, the team side, and those rarely-activated mutual options must be decided upon within five days from today, too. Players on the Reds that fall into that category include Scott Barlow, Brent Suter, and Austin Hays, with varying expectations on the reality that they get picked up and return.

November 21st marks the deadline to tender contracts to players who are under team control and within the arbitration and pre-arbitration windows. The non-tender deadline, it’s when the Reds will face tough decisions on keeping guys around who are now earning raises due to service time but may not be producing better than players they can find for cheaper. Sam Moll and Connor Joe might see their time up at that point, while the likes of Ian Gibaut and Santiago Espinal likely would have had the Reds not gone ahead and lopped them off the roster within the last week.

December 10th will see the Rule 5 Draft, where clubs can effectively pluck prospects who haven’t been promoted fast enough out of other organizations under the right set of parameters. Each club gets the chance to ‘protect’ players who’ve spent enough time in their own systems by placing them onto the 40-man roster, but obviously those roster spots are pretty precious and limited. So, you’ll see a lot of transactions in the run-up to that draft as teams try to position themselves for the long-term the best they can.

For those players who get tendered a contract in November and are arb-eligibles, they’ll have to sort out a precise figure with the team by mid-January lest an independent arbitrator get involved and settle it for both parties in truly awkward fashion.

How the Cincinnati Reds manage to navigate a lot of this administrative stuff will ultimately determine how much risk they’ll take in the more liquid markets of player acquisition, since finding out a) exactly who’s still around and b) how much those guys will precisely cost is of the utmost priority for this penny-pinching franchise. If they can get through the options/roster-adds/arbitration section of their offseason without any big surprises, we’ll find out just how many low-level guys they’ll be willing to spend on in late January and February this time around, players in the typical mold of Hays, Wil Myers, Tommy Pham, Barlow, Buck Farmer, and Hunter Strickland. You know the deal.

Those are the key dates to look forward to now that the Toronto Blue Jays have more or less basically won themselves a World Series. Congratulations to them, and I suppose to the Dodgers for playing a great heel.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinnati-reds-rumors/49035/key-mlb-offseason-dates-deadlines

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Looking back at Red Reporter’s preseason predictions for the Cincinnati Reds

Every year as a new season dawns, I do my best to come up with spur of the moment, lightly researched predictions for the upcoming season. I am not living completely under a rock, however, so these do tend to be hunches that accumulate over months of casual offseason observance of happenings around the league, and while I don’t normally scour my spreadsheets prior to making these calls, there’s at least a smidgen of real reasoning behind why I go with them.

I also try to make them a bit outlandish, because nobody needs to waste time reading that Tarik Skubal is going to be really good.

Therefore, they start out as dumb predictions. And when the end of the season rolls around, they almost always end up looking even dumber!

Here’s the link to my Five Dumb Predictions for the 2025 Cincinnati Reds I made back in March.

Get out your red (Reds?) pens and start the grading!

1) Nick Lodolo clears 150 IP, leads all Reds pitchers in WAR​

Hey! I got this one correct!

Well, I got the idea of it correct, at least.

All signs pointed towards Nick Lodolo entering this season as healthy as he’s been at any point of his tenure with the Reds, and that paired with his talent meant I felt confident he’d end up leading the line for Cincinnati pitchers. He held up his end of the bargain, too, firing 156.2 innings of brilliant 3.33 ERA ball – good for 4.9 bWAR and a hefty bump in his salary via arbitration this winter.

That’s about as good as I could have asked for, and given Hunter Greene’s inability to stay healthy for a full season I felt confident that ‘150+ innings of Lodolo pitching as good as he can’ would be the default for ‘best Reds pitcher.’ Fortunately, I completely overlooked Andrew Abbott’s ability to be even better than that, and that’s precisely what he was.

Abbott topped Lodolo in bWAR (5.6 to 4.9) and fWAR (3.9 to 2.8 in a really awkwardly terrible underestimation of them both), so I only get half credit for this one. Props to both Nick and Andrew on pretty damn stellar seasons, though!

2) TJ Friedl steals 40 bags​

TJ Friedl did not steal 40 bags. No Cincinnati Red stole 40 bags, even, as the runnin’ Redlegs of the David Bell era held up completely under new manager Terry Francona, who opted to rein in his speedsters in lieu of making too many outs on the bases, something that still seems incredibly odd given this team is build on singles and speed and nothing else.

I digress.

Friedl, I thought, would be back to the healthy pre-injury guy he was in 2023, and a full season atop the order with his OBP skills would produce some runnin’. I was wrong. He barely moved. He stole 12 bags, which is not 40 bags.

3) Sal Stewart is a key cog in the infield by season’s end​

At just 21 years of age, Sal Stewart bashed his way through the AA Southern League to begin the 2025 season before completely obliterating AAA International League pitching for 38 games.

Then, in August, he got the call from the Reds themselves.

Across 18 games and 58 PA, Stewart mashed to the tune of a 121 OPS+, socking 5 dingers and helping the moribund offense squeak into the playoffs by the smallest of margins.

The only question now, though, is where he’ll play in the infield going forward, as the front office’s incredibly odd decision to acquire Ke’Bryan Hayes and his noodle of a bat at the hot corner has created a logjam at 1B with Stewart and Spencer Steer.

Sal, though, officially arrived. I’m 1.5 for 3.

4) Elly De La Cruz socks 44 dingers​

I’m 1.5 for 4.

Elly got off to a hot enough start to the 2025 season, a hot June leaving him with 18 homers through his first 79 games of the season. That’s not quite a 44-dinger pace, but it isn’t too far off, and my hopes on this one were still high heading into the heat of the summer when balls usually begin to fly out of every park – especially GABP.

Sadly, hitting coach Chris Valaika got to Elly (and the rest of the offense) and turned each hitter on the roster into peak Jack Hannahan, and Elly went eons without so much as hitting even one dinger. He finished with just 22 on the season despite his legendary power, and it’s just the starting point for questions to be asking about what the living hell the front office and coaching staff actually has in mind for this roster.

5) The Reds – yes, the Reds – make the playoffs​

I’d like to personally thank Rob Manfred for expanding the playoffs so much that you, me, little Jimmy, and even the Cincinnati Reds can find a way to make the playoffs despite entering the final week of a 6+ month season wondering if they could even finish the year over .500.

The superexpanded megaplayoffs have diluted the sport and made the regular season significantly less meaningful, but despite that having been the case for years the Reds still hadn’t found a way to sneak into them for some 13 years. That changed in 2025 as they held a tiebreaker over the New York Mets that earned them the #6 seed in the NL Playoffs and a chance to finally play on the big stage again.

I’m still reconciling my feelings about the 2025 Reds. They never felt like they were really a ‘good’ team despite their elite pitching, and I still don’t know exactly how many of the pieces they have seem like they should be around long-term. Still, they were good enough to clear this particular threshold before crashing out, and that’s not nothing.

2.5 out of 5. I’ll take it!

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/off-season/49014/cincinnati-reds-preseason-predictions-lodolo

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Ke’Bryan Hayes wins NL Gold Glove Award for work at 3B

Defense has never really been the calling card for the Cincinnati Reds, at least not of late.

This is the same franchise with the same owner and a lot of the same members of the front office who doled out big money deals to bring in Nick Castellanos for a corner outfield spot and Mike Moustakas, whom they tried moving up the defensive ladder despite him being old and slow and woefully outmatched.

Dating back to the start of the 2020 season, the Reds total team DEF via FanGraphs checks in at -175.4, a mark that’s only worst-ed by five other clubs across Major League Baseball. That list includes perennial losers like the Los Angeles Angels, Chicago White Sox, Washington Nationals, and Oakland/Sacramento/Vegas A’s, too.

The Reds hadn’t had a Gold Glove winner since Tucker Barnhart took one home back in 2020, and it sure felt like they hadn’t had a player in front of the plate take one home since the signing of the Magna Carta. In reality, it had been since Brandon Phillips won one for his work at 2B back in 2013 – and Cincinnati hadn’t had a 3B win one since Scott Rolen in 2010.

That changed on Sunday evening, mercifully. Trade deadline acquisition Ke’Bryan Hayes won the National League Gold Glove Award for 3B, and did so incredibly deserving fashion. He had previously been named a finalist at his position (as had Spencer Steer at 1B, though Steer did not win at his position), and it was pretty obvious at that time that he was the frontrunner to win.

Defense is the obvious calling card for Hayes, who owns just a 63 wRC+ in 966 PA dating back to the start of the 2024 season. That’s good for the 5th worst among the 316 MLB players who’ve logged at least 500 PA in that time, which is a painful thing to write. That said, his 25.7 DEF in that same span ranks 10th overall, and that’s behind the outsized weight of four catchers alongwith superstars Bobby Witt, Jr. and Francisco Lindor, among several others.

That’s what the Reds paid for, both in prospects and taking on the remaining millions on his long-term contract, and that’s precisely what they received. Hayes is an absolutely elite defender, and he’s plenty good enough at that to carry him in your everyday roster provided that you surround him with enough offense elsewhere that it’s not a problem. It’s that latter part that the Reds struggled to do in 2025, and it damn well should be the primary goal of the front office heading in to 2026.

Congrats to Ke’Bryan!

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-news/49040/kebryan-hayes-nl-gold-glove-award-3b

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Hot Stove Links – Top trade targets & free agents

The season is over, the tee-times are booked, and the players who are the fuel and backbone of Major League Baseball are beginning their rest after the grueling eight-ish months of the daily grind.

It also flirted with 32 degrees where I am this morning, and the hot stove season has officially begun.

The Cincinnati Reds enter this winter with a number of needs despite having seen their once young roster mature into a club capable of actually sneaking into the playoffs. But to actually advance in the playoffs, they’re going to need more than what they had, and free agency has already claimed a good portion of the roster that got them there in the first place.

Gone are Nick Martinez and Emilio Pagan, to begin, as well as deadline additions Miguel Andujar and Zack Littell. Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut were effectively cut. When the option decisions come down this week, they’ll also lose Austin Hays, with both Scott Barlow and Brent Suter potentially out the door, too.

That’s a huge portion of their bullpen from the 2025 season that needs replacing, while losing Hays and Andujar from an already frail offense puts another huge dent in the roster. How the Reds address that remains to be seen, of course, though the idea that it’ll be done frugally is more or less gospel around here. With that in mind, here are some early looks at who might be out there on the market for them to acquire this offseason, as well as a list of names before those names that will undoubtedly cost more than they’re willing to spend.

Over at The Athletic, Keith Law has put together his list of the Top 50 free agents for this offseason. Names that would fit the Reds roster perfectly like Kyle Tucker, Bo Bichette, Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, and Kyle Schwarber all rank near the top here, showing just how much depth there is at the top of this particular class of free agent hitters. Of course, none of those guys will come cheap, and that’s precisely how you have to become a Cincinnati Red with this ownership group, so you might need to scroll on down to the Ryan O’Hearns of the list before getting realistic, and likely all the way to Paul Goldschmidt and Andujar before even beginning to get your sugars up.

The fine folks at MLB Trade Rumors released their list of the Top 40 trade candidates for this 2025-2026 offseason, and interestingly enough that’s a list where pitchers dominate the top in an almost perfectly inverse way from how hitters dominated the aforementioned free agent list. Dualism, yin and yang, wonderful complements! It’s a list featuring a lot of players from teams entering rebuilds (read: the St. Louis Cardinals and Minnesota Twins) and those who don’t like paying players they won’t sign long-term (read: the Rays and Guardians), as well as one Brady Singer (at #17) due to his dwindling team control and Reds depth at starting pitcher. It’s an interesting list filled with names who’d make the Reds better, though there are a lot of high-priced former stars on there who could be landmines, too.

Finally, the folks over at MLB.com dropped their list of the Top 30 free agents this winter, a list that all but says the Reds should really sign Kyle Schwarber in a true and just world, but there’s likely no way in hell that’s actually going to play out. Or, it says something like that. They also put together a comprehensive list of all free agents this winter that includes positional breakdown and total fWAR accumulated dating back to the start of the 2024 season.

Now’s the time of the offseason to get your hopes up, Reds fans, even if you know deep down (or pretty shallow down at this point) that it’s likely going to end up being a winter of we just need to get some guys back healthy and for them to take another step forward.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinn...mlb-hot-stove-links-trade-targets-free-agents

 

[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