Frankie Montas makes Cactus League debut today as Reds face Cubs

Is this start of something special?

The Cincinnati Reds pursued a reunion with Sonny Gray this offseason prior to his signing with the St. Louis Cardinals. Gray, the runner-up in voting for the American League Cy Young Award last year, clearly would have been a serious upgrade to the fledgling Reds starting rotation, and for a club with ‘limited’ resources to pursue a player who ultimately signed for some $75 million guaranteed, it’s clear that rotation help was their major priority.

The Reds did not get Gray. The Reds did get Frankie Montas, however, and got him at a much lower cost thanks to the precarious nature of his shoulder during the 2023 season. If he’s right again, though - and all signs point to that being the case right now - the Reds may well have landed the steal of the offseason.

Prior to being traded to the New York Yankees in the summer of 2022 - the same Yankees pitching philosophy that nearly wrecked Sonny, you’ll recall - Montas had settled in as an upper-echelon starter with Oakland. From the start of the 2021 season through the end of July 2022 (when Montas was traded), he ranked as the 14th most valuable SP in the game with 5.9 fWAR (among qualified pitchers), one spot behind Cincinnati’s own Luis Castillo (13th with 6.0 fWAR). That was better than Lucas Giolito, better than Charlie Morton, better than Jordan Montgomery.

If that is the guy the Reds got after he spent almost all of last year shelved with a shoulder issue, they got an absolute bargain. More importantly, though, they got a guy who may well end up posting numbers as good or better than Gray, now the ace of their division rivals.

Montas makes his Reds debut in Cactus League play this afternoon against the Chicago Cubs in Mesa, with first pitch set for 3:05 PM ET. If you’ve got access to MLB.tv, it’s available to view thanks to the Cubs feed.

Here’s to the start of something beautiful!

Reds Lineup

Cubs Lineup