Red Reporter 13 hours ago
MLB Winter Meetings Primer - What’s next for the Cincinnati Reds?
Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Let’s make a deal! Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings begin next week, with Sunday the day that executives, agents, players, and representatives from the entire industry will convene at Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee to shape the future of the sport. Monday is technically when the ‘meetings’ begin, but the larger point is that the upcoming week usually represents the highest concentration of transactions of the entire offseason. We may see Shohei Ohtani sign somewhere for a half a billion bucks, or more. We may see...
Red Reporter Nov 30, 2023
Cincinnati Reds bolster pitching staff with addition of Nick Martinez
Photo by Quinn Harris/ Another addition to the staff - be it to the rotation, or bullpen. Starting pitcher Nick Martinez excelled for the San Diego Padres during the 2023 season, pitching to a tidy 2.32 ERA and holding opponents to a paltry .557 OPS, his 1.08 WHIP indicative of just how stingy he was at allowing opposing baserunners. Reliever Nick Martinez excelled for the San Diego Padres during the 2023 season, too. He struck out 69 batters in 67.2 IP of relief work, his 3.14 K/BB a significant uptick from his work as a starting pitcher. That’s the thing about...
Red Reporter Nov 29, 2023
Cincinnati Reds sign reliever Emilio Pagan to two-year contract
Photo by David Berding/ Finally, a free agent splash! On the back of a heater that averaged 95.8 mph and a tiny HR/FB rate of just 5.3%, Emilio Pagan limited opponents to just a .553 OPS across 69.1 brilliant innings for the Minnesota Twins in 2023. His 2.99 ERA and 3.27 FIP backed that up, too, if that’s more your thing when it comes to evaluating relief arms. It was good enough to earn him a contract valued at two-years and $16 million with the chance for bonuses to add on to that, per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal - with the Cincinnati Reds the ones who’ll be...
Red Reporter Nov 28, 2023
Cincinnati Reds exploring trade for Cleveland ace Shane Bieber
Photo by Emilee Chinn/MLB Photos via Could a former Cy Young Award winner be the next addition to Cincinnati’s pitching staff? Shane Bieber is no stranger to the Cincinnati Reds. In 6 career starts against them, the Cleveland Guardians ace has held Reds hitters to just a .617 OPS, striking out 46 in 39.1 IP combined while pitching to a tidy 3.20 ERA. The 2020 American League Cy Young Award winner also finds himself in an interesting situation this winter in that he’s entering his final year of team control with Cleveland, an organization notorious for dealing...
Red Reporter Nov 27, 2023
Cincinnati Reds miss out on Sonny Gray, have interest in Tyler Glasnow
Photo by Michael B. Thomas/ As the pitching world turns... There will be no reunion between Sonny Gray and the Cincinnati Reds for the 2024 Major League Baseball season. The veteran righty, fresh off a brilliant 2023 campaign for Minnesota that saw him finish as the runner-up in American League Cy Young Award voting, has struck a deal to sign with the rival St. Louis Cardinals, instead. He’ll earn some $75 million across three seasons, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, and the Reds will have to search elsewhere for a top of the rotation addition. Free-agent RHP...
Red Reporter Nov 26, 2023
Cincinnati Reds sign Alex Blandino, Reiver Sanmartin to minor league deals
Photo by Stacy Revere/ Old faces in old places! Shin-Soo Choo got on-base at a ridiculous 42.3% rate during the 2013 season for the Cincinnati Reds, eventually garnering some down-ballot MVP votes before entering free agency for the first time. That came after the Reds issued him a qualifying offer, which he rightfully declined, and Choo went on to sign a massive 7-year, $130 million contract with the Texas Rangers later that winter. Because of the declined QO, the Reds ended up with a compensation pick in the 2014 MLB Draft the following summer, one they used on...
Red Reporter Nov 22, 2023
Black Friday deals on the best Cincinnati Reds gear!
Get the best from BreakingT here! Was it a banner season for the Cincinnati Reds in 2023? Not quite! Was it the kind of season with the kind of refresh that has you heading into the offseason excited about what’s to come from them in 2024 and beyond? I sure hope so! The Reds welcomed a plethora of future stars to their big league roster this year, with rookies like Spencer Steer, Matt McLain, Elly De La Cruz, Andrew Abbott, Connor Phillips, Brandon Williamson, Noelvi Marte, Will Benson (by some qualifications), and Christian Encarnacion-Strand fronting the wave. They mashed...
Red Reporter Nov 20, 2023
Would the Reds take a flyer on trading for Blue Jays starter Alek Manoah?
Photo by Lauren Leigh Bacho/ Might Toronto be shopping their former ace? Finding a pitcher who put up a 6.0 bWAR (4.1 fWAR) season as recently as 2022 does not come without cost. Finding one who isn’t even arbitration-eligible until the 2025 season and has team control through 2027 is even more difficult. Finding a Major League Baseball team who’s willing to deal such a rare commodity, then, is enough to make you ask a plethora of questions. Such is the case currently with the Toronto Blue Jays, who are reportedly ‘open to’ trade offers on Alek Manoah, their...
Red Reporter Nov 17, 2023
Cincinnati Reds non-tender Nick Senzel
Photo by Aaron Doster/ Thus ends the era in Cincinnati of the former 2nd overall draftee. Is Nick Senzel a 3B? A 2B? A CF, LF, or SS? Is Nick Senzel a productive big league hitter when healthy? These are all questions the front office of the Cincinnati Reds have been asking internally for years, as the former #2 pick from the 2016 MLB Draft continued to confound them. These are questions that others will now have the opportunity to ask, as it appears the Reds have opted against tendering Senzel a contract for the 2024 season ahead of this evening’s deadline, rendering...
Red Reporter Nov 17, 2023
The Jonathan India trade rumors just won’t stop
Photo by Joe Puetz/ Will the 2021 NL Rookie of the Year be on the move? An offensive output of 100 OPS+ is a good thing to have from a player. It’s perfectly league average! That kind of performance can cover for other flaws in the right circumstances. A 100 OPS+ bat who, say, plays in 150+ games a year, doesn’t show extreme platoon splits, plays some reasonable defense, and makes the league minimum salary is something of a dream for a front office, as that would allow them to ‘align payroll to resources’ by focusing their precious cash elsewhere. When a 100...
Red Reporter Nov 14, 2023
Deadline for the Cincinnati Reds to protect prospects from the Rule 5 Draft is today
Photo by Norm Hall/MLB Photos via Who will they add? Who will they leave exposed? The Rule 5 Draft is designed to effectively prevent franchises from hoarding too much talent and keeping them mired in their minor league systems. If you’ve got more talent than your 40-man roster can accommodate and said talent has already spent a handful of years in your minor league system sans promotion to the big leagues, well, the Rule 5 Draft allows other franchises to pick those prospects and give them their chance. Designed to level the playing field, it’s an instrument...
Red Reporter Nov 13, 2023
Cincinnati Reds sign C/1B P.J. Higgins
Photo by Megan Briggs/ That’s one! There have so far been only three players ever drafted by Major League Baseball clubs who attended Lyman Hall High School in Wallingford, Connecticut. One of them was named Rusty Brooder, and I’m pretty sure that name has immediately rocketed to the top of my all-time favorite baseball names list. (I keep one. Of course I keep one!) Only one Lyman Hall graduate has ever made it to the big leagues, however, and that was not the aforementioned Rusty Brooder. It was P.J. Higgins, a former 12th round pick by the Chicago Cubs out of Old...
Red Reporter Nov 13, 2023
Red Reposter - Prospect rankings, trade targets, & more!
Photo by Aaron Doster/ Monday links! Bit of a slow weekend for news around the Cincinnati Reds. Surely the fact that the GM Meetings that were on-tap for this past week had to be canned early due to a virus running through (literally) the attendees had nothing to do with that! The non-tender deadline is Friday, November 17th, and my best guess is that we’ll begin to get a little bit more action here, there, and everywhere in the run-up. The good folks at MLB Trade Rumors provided a list of players who were firmly on the bubble for being tendered at the end of October,...
Red Reporter Nov 10, 2023
The Cincinnati Reds might have to unearth starting pitchers once again
Photo by Aaron Doster/ It’s going to get pricey out there, folks! Erik Kratz with 5 for 26 with nary a homer socked during the 2015 Major League Baseball season, doing so in efforts split between the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals. That was only a blip on the long transaction ledger he’d already been riding, as between December of 2013 and November of 2015 he went from the Phillies to the Toronto Blue Jays via trade, was traded from the Jays to the Royals, claimed by the Boston Red Sox from Kanssa City, granted free agency, signed by Seattle, released...
Red Reporter Nov 8, 2023
Cincinnati Reds rumors - Interest in Jonathan India, Joey Votto to Toronto?
Photo by Cody Glenn/Icon Sportswire via Fire up the Hot Stove! The 2021 Major League Baseball season wasn’t that long ago, was it? The world was still newly viral, yet felt slightly more open than it had been during the truncated 2020 season at the hands of COVID. Somewhere out of the blue came a pair of Cincinnati Reds to steal the stage around here, one after years of scuffling and another after a year of being almost completely invisible. Joey Votto’s late-2020 swing change paid off in spades, and his 2021 campaign was one part throwback and another part...
