The Reds still desperately need a Bat™.
When the Cincinnati Reds signed future Hall of Fame manager Terry Francona back in early October, there was a rumble among many that it was a sign they were finally going to get aggressive about winning.
Francona, who’d been away from the game for health reasons after leading the Cleveland Guardians to the cusp of a World Series title back in 2016, surely wouldn’t come out of retirement for anyone - let alone the spendthrift Reds - if they weren’t all about winning, right?
The Reds moved quickly to get Nick Martinez on the books with their gamble on the $21.05 million Qualifying Offer, and the hope then was that it was merely the first of many big moves and not, just, the move. The deeper we get into the offseason, the more clear it becomes that any additional ‘spending’ to improve the roster is going to have to come in the form of ‘sending prospects elsewhere via trade,’ since the free agent bats out there keep signing elsewhere.
The latest is Teoscar Hernandez, who swatted 33 dingers for the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, a club who’s made clear all winter that they’re willing to spend pretty much anything it takes to chase another title in 2025. While they missed out on Juan Soto, their pursuit made clear they had dollars galore, and they threw $66 million over 3 years at Teoscar to sign him just yesterday.
This news should be no disappointment for Reds fans - Hernandez was almost always going to end up a Dodger after Soto signed with the Mets. Like the Joc Pederson news, however, it’s one fewer bat that’s out there on the market when there are dozens of other clubs starved for them, and that just drives the asking price higher for the one thing the Reds need perhaps more than anything else.
That’s the only reason I can truly fathom them being connected to free agent RHP Nick Pivetta, still. In his Friday blurb-dump for the New York Post, MLB insider Jon Heyman once again listed the Reds as being ‘connected’ to Pivetta, among others, but to me that’s merely an indication that Cincinnati may well be shopping some of their talented, young starting pitching in an attempt to land a controllable bat via trade and may well need to backfill the rotation should that materialize.
There’s still plenty of time for Nick Krall to pull off a magic act and ‘fix’ this roster on paper. There’s still plenty of time to begin wondering how they’ll try to spin a Jake Fraley/Mark Canha platoon in LF to us come March, too.
