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[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

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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

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds non-tender Will Banfield, Roddery Muñoz, Carson Spiers

As Friday’s deadline to tender contracts to all arbitration-eligible and pre-arb players neared, questions arose about which of the litany of players in that category would still be on the roster of the Cincinnati Reds by day’s end.

Some 14 players who finished the 2025 season on Cincinnati’s roster were originally destined to go through the arb process, ranging from first-timers like Brandon Williamson and Matt McLain all the way up to last-timers like Brady Singer and Tyler Stephenson. Cincinnati alleviated some of that by effectively cutting both Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut over a week ago, but they found still more room to remove the bloat on Friday afternoon.

Pre-arb players Will Banfield, Roddery Muñoz, and Carson Spiers were all non-tendered by the Reds, and Cincinnati reportedly settled on a 2026 salary of up to $1.025 million with arb-eligible reliever Sam Moll. So said MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon on Bluesky.

The Reds non-tendered C Will Banfield, RHP Carson Spiers and RHP Roddery Munoz.LHP Sam Moll avoided arbitration and agreed to a one-year contract. The 40-man roster is at 38 players.

— Mark Sheldon (@msheldon.bsky.social) 2025-11-21T22:08:14.146Z

That means potential non-tenders like Gavin Lux and Will Benson were retained, for now. Lux’s estimated salary in his final trip through the arbitration process was set at $5 million by the model created by MLB Trade Rumors, while that of Benson is at $1.7 million. Those numbers don’t become final for quite some time depending on how well the players’ agents and the Reds front office negotiate, with outcomes ranging from them going through the formal hearing process in January to them getting a multi-year contract extension signed or even to them being traded away to another team to figure out.

All this means as of today is that they’re still rostered players on the Cincinnati Reds, with the details of how much they’ll be paid set to be sorted out down the line.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/hotstove/49171/reds-non-tender-will-banfield-roddery-munoz-carson-spiers

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Deadline to protect players from Rule 5 Draft is today

Major League Baseball’s Rule 5 Draft isn’t until December 10th, but today (Tuesday, November 18th) marks the deadline for teams to protect prospects who would otherwise be draft-eligible by adding them to their 40-man rosters.

Teams have until 6 PM ET this evening to make additions, and the Cincinnati Reds have several key pieces from down on the farm I suspect they’ll add. That is, of course, unless those players become part of a larger trade/transaction before the deadline, as all 30 MLB clubs are looking to finagle players onto crowded rosters and may be more willing than ever to make moves before time’s up.

For the record, the Rule 5 Draft exists to prevent teams from simply hoarding prospects in the minors. Players who have been pros for long enough – five or six years, depending upon their age when they were first signed – deserve the right to advance, and this prevents clubs from simply cornering the market on certain talented prospects to prevent other clubs from giving them a path to big league playing time.

If you aren’t willing to (or simply cannot) give them promotions when they’ve played well enough to deserve them, well, the players association thinks those players should get a chance to play somewhere else.

The Reds jumped the deadline a bit last week when they added righty Jose Franco to their roster, the #25 ranked prospect in the system per MLB Pipeline. According to them, each of Edwin Arroyo (#8), Hector Rodriguez (#9), Carlos Jorge (#22), and Leo Balcazar (#23) are the rest of the team’s prospects within the Top 30 who’d be Rule 5 eligible if not added to the roster today. I think each of Arroyo, Rodriguez, and Balcazar are locks at the moment, and Jorge’s upside likely means he’ll get an add today as well.

Keep in mind that while a prospect’s upside is obviously part of the decision to add them to the 40-man, teams also get cagey with their decisions. That’s because any player drafted in the Rule 5 must remain on the drafting team’s active roster throughout the next season or else be offered back to their previous organization – sometimes, teams will leave players even they themselves are high on off of the 40-man simply due to their belief that those players are still too far away from being big-league ready for someone to take them. For instance, Jorge, for all his defensive prowess and emerging power at just 21, still hasn’t played above High-A Dayton, so the odds of a team selecting him and putting him right into the majors seems slim – and an extra 40-man roster spot might well be valuable enough for the Reds right now to roll that dice.

We’ll find out if the Reds make these additions later this afternoon, as well as whether they make any more surprise additions beyond them.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-news/49125/cincinnati-reds-roster-rule-5-draft-rumors

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Mets, Rangers posture through huge trade of Marcus Semien for Brandon Nimmo

Major League Baseball’s offseason is still in its infancy, yet the New York Mets and Texas Rangers shook its pillars late on Sunday evening. The two sides came to an agreement on a deal that sent second baseman Marcus Semien to Queens and outfielder Brandon Nimmo to Arlington, an extremely rare one-for-one swap of nine-figure contracts that featured both a former 1st round pick and a three-time All Star.

Semien, 35, is fresh off a season that saw him valued at 3.3 bWAR despite posting just a .669 OPS – the worst full-season mark of his career. He still landed a Gold Glove award for his excellent work at 2B, however, and that (alongside a hopeful offensive rebound to something akin to the .783 OPS he posted across 2021-2024) is why New York took a chance on him. He’s due $26 million a season through 2028.

Nimmo, 33 in March, is a former 1st round pick of the Mets who spent some 14 years in the organization prior to Sunday’s trade. He’s fresh off a season where he posted a career high 25 dingers alongside a 114 OPS+ that was a click below his career mark of 126 entering the season, and that’s largely due to a walk rate that plummeted to just 7.7% in 2025 after having sat between 10.5% and 18.1% during the previous six seasons. He’s owed $20.5 million through the 2030 season.

From a pure monetary perspective, this is a deal that lowers the annual salary of the Texas Rangers and raises it for that of the New York Mets, but only over the course of three years. Texas is taking on the larger overall amount of cash, but it’s spread out over five seasons instead of three. For luxury tax purposes, that’s a decided consideration, especially for a Texas team that just non-tendered knowns like Adolis Garcia and Jonah Heim rather than pay them for relatively expensive final arbitration years in hopes of a rebound.

It’s a posturing move from two of the most high-profile, big spending teams in the baseball landscape. Texas gets a corner outfielder to backfill where Garcia left off, slicing off some of their luxury tax payroll and opening up a middle-infield spot for either one of their top prospects or an outside addition. New York, meanwhile, picks up a defender who’ll complement Francisco Lindor up the middle with elite defense while potentially freeing up an outfield spot for a pursuit of, say, Kyle Tucker in free agency.

The latter seems to also open up a pretty obvious path to another trade. The Mets now boast the likes of Lindor, Semien, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio, Luisangel Acuna, Jeff McNeil, and Mark Vientos as additional infield options, with only McNeil boasting legitimate experience on the outfield grass. That’s a logjam that screams trade, potentially with New York looking to bolster a starting rotation that woefully underperformed last season.

(I’m not saying the Cincinnati Reds are perfectly aligned for a deal here, per se, but I will point out that Mark Vientos brushed off a slow start to the 2025 season to post an .801 OPS over his final 48 games and isn’t even arb-eligible until the 2027 season.)

Anyway, it’s clearly a big deal in terms of dollars and name-brand talent, but it also seems a need-for-need deal between two teams that clearly have a lot more up their sleeve. That’s always some good intel for the rest of the clubs in baseball as they try to find angles to exploit in both free agency and trade as the hot stove season begins to heat up.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/hotstove/49176/mets-rangers-posture-trade-marcus-semien-brandon-nimmo

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Four Reds boost earnings through MLB pre-arbitration bonus pool

One of the pre-agreed upon additions to the compensation structure of Major League Baseball during the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement was the addition of an annual $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool. In essence, it’s a way to compensate newer players who haven’t logged enough service time to reach their arbitration (read: bigger earning) years based on their performance over the course of the season.

There are hard and fast numbers in place for awards, for instance. Should a pre-arb player win an MVP or Cy Young – like Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates did this year – they get an automatic $2.5 million bonus. How the voting shakes down in those awards, as well as Rookie of the Year awards, includes scaled bonuses for the players who finish in second, third, fourth, etc.

Beyond that, though, there’s a WAR-based formula to determine bonuses for the rest of the pre-arb corps, and four members of the 2025 Cincinnati Reds made the cut, according to the breakdown of the payouts by AP News.

Leading the way was Elly De La Cruz, who posted 4.3 fWAR/3.6 bWAR and was rewarded with a $631,080 bonus. Just behind him was lefty Andrew Abbott, who took home a $520,065 bonus on the back of his brilliant 3.9 fWAR/5.6 bWAR campaign. TJ Friedl gets a check for $409,167 after posting a 2.9 fWAR/2.3 bWAR season, while Matt McLain snuck in with $206,056 – the second lowest who made the cut – after his 1.4 fWAR/0.0 bWAR 2025.

Not making the cut were likes of Noelvi Marte, Tony Santillan, and Spencer Steer, whom the particular WAR formula simply didn’t appreciate enough.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-news/49181/elly-de-la-cruz-pre-arbitration-bonus-pool-paul-skenes

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

Reds bring back RHP Carson Spiers on minor league deal

Carson Spiers has appaeared in 29 games for the Cincinnati Reds across the last three seasons, pitching to a 5.69 ERA (79 ERA+) and 5.28 FIP across 117.0 IP. He’s been versatile – 14 of his outings have been starts, and he’s managed to finish 6 games in that time – and that’s been valuable enough to the club to offset his overall numbers being worse than you’d like to see.

That didn’t stop the Reds from designating Spiers for assignment back on November 18th as the deadline to add players to the 40-man roster prior to the upcoming Rule 5 Draft approached, however. Those spots were needed for younger prospects who could get plucked out of the farm system altogether. Still, the Reds felt there was enough left in the tank with Spiers that they wanted to keep him around the organization, and on Monday they brought him back on a minor league contract with an invite to spring training.

So said the MLB.com transaction ledger.

Spiers, 28, spent the bulk of the 2025 season on the 60-day IL with a shoulder impingement, an aspect to his year (and series of transactions) that likely helped leave him unclaimed on waivers when he was DFA’d. Now, he’ll get to continue working his way back to being big league caliber within the only organization he’s ever known since being signed by the Reds as an undrafted free agent after his college career at Clemson University wrapped in 2020.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/cincinnati-reds-rumors/49179/carson-spiers-minor-league-deal

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

MLB Roundup – Cardinals rebuild escalates with Sonny Gray dealt to Boston

It became pretty clear prior towards the end of the 2024 season that the St. Louis Cardinals were destined to begin a pretty epic rebuild. Bloated contracts for aging stars that simply weren’t good enough to drag them to contender status led longtime GM slash president of baseball operations John Mozeliak to announce in September of that year that 2025 would be his final season in charge, with Chaim Bloom – formerly of the Boston Red Sox – due to take over for him for 2026.

They’ve shopped future Hall of Famer Nolan Arenado ever since then, to no avail just yet. Willson Contreras, while still incredibly thumpy with his bat, still hasn’t been dealt, though it’s pretty clear after this week’s news that the eyes of the rest of the baseball world will be those of vultures looking to scavenge.

That’s because Sonny Gray, former Cincinnati Reds ace, officially got dealt to Bloom’s former club in Boston. In exchange, the Cardinals get Boston’s former #5 prospect in Brandon Clarke as well as durable arm Richard Fitts, notably eating $20 million of the $40 million still owed to Gray to facilitate the deal (and actually get talent in return).

A rebuild that is, to a T – eating some money to make the moves that will build for the future, taking it on the chin with the long-game in mind.

That St. Louis was willing to do so to that end signals it’s something they’ll almost certainly be willing to do next with Arenado, who still has $42 million total owed to him over the next two seasons. And in doing so (to a scaled extent), they’ll likely be able to get a tangible piece or two for the future instead of just being stuck with sunk-cost salary for players they no longer put on the field in their uniforms.

It’s an interesting dynamic given what the Cincinnati Reds have been up to during their own climb out of the cellar the last few years. Rather than being able to dump any of their dead money contracts, they simply had to eat the remaining money left on the deals to Mike Moustakas, Shogo Akiyama, and Jeimer Candelario, failing to get anything from other franchises and being forced to pay their entire rates themselves.

How dedicated to the bit St. Louis is remains to be seen, though as Will Leitch notes in his takeaways from the Gray deal, they really don’t have much in the way of starting pitching at all on their roster right now. That’s one clear way to enter into a season with low expectations, something that (in theory) benefits the Reds as they embark upon a 2026 season with contention again in mind. It’s rare, really, that St. Louis is ever really out of it, let alone out of it at the same time the Reds are actually in it. So, I think it would behoove the Reds to get off their snoozy butts and make some moves to capitalize on this window, as it’s not the kind of thing I expect will stick around for too long.

Milwaukee’s excellent, yes. The Cubs are a behemoth when they choose to be, even though it looks like they’re going to miss out on Kyle Tucker long term. The Pirates are the Pirates, and that leaves the Reds teetering somewhere in the middle with the Cardinals seemingly looking beyond 2026, and not to it. If if ever there were a time to capitalize on that, well, I’d say it’s right now.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/latest-news/49184/mlb-roundup-sonny-gray-trade-cardinals-rebuild

 

[Cincinnati Reds]

A trade concept I hate, but this is the Reds we’re talking about

Thanksgiving is in the rear-view mirror, and that launches us firmly into the Hot Stove season across Major League Baseball with the Winter Meetings set to take place December 7th through 10th down in Orlando, Florida.

It’s a time of little concrete activity, but the next week and a half will feature teams doing their best to set their budget expectations for 2026 and firmly establish what they need – and what they have to move – in order to best match their roster to their expectation for the upcoming season. The revival in Orlando will then be the first real chance to hobnob with their rival peers in person and begin to make some serious deals.

The Cincinnati Reds are in the fortunate position of a) having been decent in 2025, b) boasting a roster with some really good top-end talent, and c) controlling some enviable pitching. They need offense, obviously, and they’re entering the offseason with their predictably cries of austerity and shoestring budget needs, two complicating factors when it comes to trying to fix this roster in a thorough fashion.

Nick Deeds of MLB Trade Rumors explored the needs and pursuits on the Reds ledger this winter, sourcing from a trio of the staff writers at The Athletic. In it he points out that much of the Reds current core has positional versatility going for it, which bakes in some pretty decent flexibility when it comes to targets for hitting upgrades this winter. Sal Stewart can play all over the infield, Spencer Steer has LF/1B up his sleeve, you can try to hide Gavin Lux in a number of places, etc. Yet there was one name he brought up in detail as a key part of the Reds going forward who, despite my best efforts, increasingly looks like a guy the Reds should maybe consider cashing in on in trade sooner rather than later.

Consider this in anonymity until you get my gist, if you will.

He’s seen his sprint speed drop from the 74th percentile in 2023 down to the 26th percentile during a leg-injury riddled 2024, and that only bumped back up to the 32nd percentile in 2025. He once swiped 27 bags in a season (2023), but that dipped to just 12 in 2025 despite almost 130 more PA – one part a change of managerial direction, one part likely obvious from the tidbits of the first part of this paragraph. He also saw his slugging peak at .467 during that healthy 2023, and it’s dropped to just .379 in over 1000 PA since. He’ll turn 31 during August of next season, and he’s reached arbitration on the back of enough speed and dinger numbers that he’s expected to jump from earning league-minimum salaries in each of the last three seasons to some $4.9 million for the 2026 season.

He plays a premium defensive position, yet his arm value and range metrics have dipped drastically since his injuries. He’s been an on-base machine with walk rates rising and pretty elite strike zone coverage, the calling card that led him to being a 2.9 fWAR/2.3 bWAR player in 2025.

It’s TJ Friedl we’re talking about here, which I’m sure you long figured out. He is, in many ways, the Cincinnati Reds personified – overlooked on draft day, scooped up somewhat on the sly, small in stature but greater than the sum of his parts, and a relentless and rock-solid player when not injured (who, sadly, has been injured a good bit). He’s also a quintessential Red in that he never got a contract extension to set his rates, and here I am now wondering how he’s anything other than precisely the kind of player the Reds should be shopping this winter given literally everything they preach about their threadbare coffers and commitment to going young.

Hitting 30 with hamstring injuries that have clearly impacted two of his most vital tools is a worry. The escalating salary, to the Reds at least, is a complication. Still, there is seemingly ample value in what tools he still has (and has improved upon), and it’s hard not to wonder if he’d be precisely the kind of piece who – if paired with, perhaps, one of their arms – could both shed some salary and bring in some pretty damn elite talent that’s not slated to make about $5 million bucks during the 2026 season. The Baltimore Orioles, for example, seem like precisely the kind of club who’d be looking for both of those things.

On paper it seems idiotic and asinine to suggest that the Reds should trade the guy who was pretty obviously their second best offensive player last year in a time when they need to be upgrading their offense. The same could well have been said about Jonathan India last year. I get that, and it’s not a wrong take – this is me doing my best to view things through the lens of those running the Reds, however. Clearly, the bulk of their mantra for how to improve their offense for 2026 isn’t replace those who were bad in 2025, it’s do what we can to make sure they are better in 2026.

They’re already banking on Matt McLain, Sal Stewart, Elly De La Cruz, Noelvi Marte, and Spencer Steer to be better next year as the driving force that will fuel their offensive improvements, not ‘sign Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso.’ Reading everything they say about this roster, they want Friedl to only be the fourth, fifth, or sixth best offensive player on the 2026 Reds – not because he got significantly worse, but because the underperformers around him got better. The young Reds got better, if you will, and through this lens the Reds wouldn’t be trading away their second best offensive player, they’d be trading away their fourth, fifth, or sixth best – and getting cheaper and younger in the process.

It’s convoluted, and it involves one of my favorite Reds, so I’ve not committed myself to this bit by any means. The 2026 Reds can and would be better with Friedl in the fold in almost every scenario that involves them actually spending more than bottom-tier payroll, but we know how non-negotiable that latter clause truly is with this club. That means they will treat this like a business first, and do so with the need to get creative at times, and it’s enough to lead my brain in this particularly uncomfortable direction.

Source: https://www.redreporter.com/hotstove/49187/cincinnati-reds-trade-rumors-tj-friedl