The Reds roster appears to be in a holding pattern due to off-field reasons. Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic report that the club has interest in players like infielder Eugenio Suárez and outfielder Austin Hays but the club is waiting for more clarity on their broadcast situation before proceeding.
Cincinnati was one of nine teams who terminated a contract with Main Street Sports earlier this month. The company has been flailing for years and was in bankruptcy for most of 2023 and 2024, back when it was known as Diamond Sports Group. The company previously ran broadcasts under the Bally Sports moniker. After emerging from bankruptcy, they changed the company name and also signed a new naming rights deal, so the channel has had the FanDuel Sports Network label more recently.
Though the company did emerge from bankruptcy, they haven’t escaped trouble. They recently missed payments to a few clubs, which is what prompted the terminations. The regional sports network (RSN) model has been eroding for years due to cord cutting and streaming.
This puts some clubs in an awkward spot. The RSN model has been a good source of revenue in the past but it has been declining. Some teams have pivoted to having MLB running their broadcasts. This allows them to offer customers a direct-to-customer streaming option with no blackouts, increasing viewership. However, that model generally leads to revenues which are not only lesser but also not guaranteed, as they are contingent on how many people sign up.
Going back to Diamond/Main Street is another option but that usually involves the club taking in less money from rights fees than before. Going into 2025, the Reds looked around for different options but ended up working out a new deal with the company in mid-January.
At the start of the current offseason, president of baseball operations Nick Krall said that the Reds would likely have a similar payroll in 2026 to what they had in 2025, though that was before the Main Street situation cropped up.
Their winter has been fairly quiet, all things considered. They re-signed Emilio Pagán to a two-year, $20MM deal, a small raise over the two-year, $16MM deal which had just expired. They also gave one-year deals worth less than $7MM each to Pierce Johnson, Caleb Ferguson, JJ Bleday and Keegan Thompson, though Thompson was lost to the Rockies via waivers.
The Bleday signing perhaps made Gavin Lux expendable, as the Reds including him in a three-team trade a few weeks later to get lefty Brock Burke. That deal saved Cincinnati a few million, as Lux is going to make $5.525MM this year compared to Burke’s $2.325MM.
RosterResource currently projects the club for a payroll of $112MM. Cot’s Baseball Contracts put them at that same number at the start of 2025. It appears nudging this year’s number up a bit won’t happen without more clarity on the TV situation. Trading Brady Singer would free up some space, as he will make $12.75MM this year, but he has stayed on the roster despite trade rumors this winter.
Suárez would appear to be the less likely of the two potential pursuits. He is coming off a 49-homer campaign and MLBTR predicted him for a three-year, $63MM contract at the beginning of the offseason. Since he has lingered unsigned this long, perhaps it’s more like he ends up with a two-year deal, but it would still be with a decent average annual value.
The Reds have Ke’Bryan Hayes at third base but Suárez is not a great defender and is 34 years old, so he could be slotted into the first base and designated hitter mix, where the Reds have Sal Stewart and Spencer Steer. Stewart had a nice debut in 2025 but only has 58 big league plate appearances under his belt. Steer is coming off a couple of average seasons with the bat and could move into the outfield mix.
Hays should be more viable. The Reds signed him last year with a $5MM guarantee on a one-year deal. He had a solid season but his earning power shouldn’t be too much higher than it was then. He made for a nice complement to their outfield with his righty bat, pairing with lefties TJ Friedl and Lux. He could serve a similar role in 2026, but with Bleday swapped in for Lux.
That would be contingent on him staying unsigned while the Reds sort out their broadcast situation. Hays has also received reported interest from the Royals, Yankees, Mets and Cardinals this winter, though most of those clubs have made other outfield moves since those reports came out.
Photo courtesy of Ron Chenoy, Imagn Images
This team has a chance to make the playoffs, but they need improvements. Sad for small market teams like this.
Just cheat then
They don’t want to lose their draft picks and get fined. Also, the penalty is probably worse than the Astros.
The Castellini family is worth at last half a billion. They bought the Reds for $270 million in 2006, and the franchise is worth over a billion now, per Forbes.
It’s an original MLB franchise in a fantastic baseball city. They have a great history and a nice ballpark. If they can’t or don’t want to spend, that’s on them.
They should stop crying and sell the team to someone who cares.
Not that easy with the income disparity in the game. Their local TV deal don’t pay the players like in New York or LA. The RSN model is broke except for only a few situations.
If you noticed, only a half dozen teams actually spent a lot this off-season. Ought to tell even people with large market blinders something.
Next CBA, no more local TV deals, all national like the NFL. All monies in a pot to be divided equally among the teams. Salary cap and floor. All monies paid out count against the contract value for the length of the contract no matter when it is paid.
Then and only then can you even think about expansion because no one will join this s***show otherwise.
That being said, Bob needs to sell the club to someone that cares…if he can find a buyer. Others couldn’t recently. But that doesn’t take away from the underlying problem.
With financial transparency and parity and a guaranteed % of revenue going to players, there would be no need for a cap to achieve performance parity, only a floor.
Do you know any ownership group that wants an operating loss? Me neither.
Don’t blame the small market clubs then.
They need some of their youngsters to be productive again. McClain, CES, Steer, and Bleday all fell off. If they get some recovery years from that group plus having Marte and Stewart on the roster the entire year… with the starting pitching they have this team COULD be dangerous, imho.
Some of these situations fall under the category of “sad”. This team has a history of not spending available funds and belittling its fans. The only thing sad here is that ownership won’t pony up for the fans’ sakes.
Wow wouldn’t that be so unfair if they had to put an entertaining team on the field in order to make more revenue? What a messed up world we live in.
Underwhelming if true. They should’ve never pretended to entertain 30 million to Schwarber if they were gonna be this anti-aggressive for the rest of the offseason. Sigh. Hope these young guys can start to click.
Wow, a playoff team can’t even spend the league average. I guess we’ll blame the Dodgers for this too.
No one’s blaming the Dodgers, they’re blaming the revenue structure of the league. The Reds simply do not have the money. When the Dodgers sign Tucker et al, that just reminds fans of the massive unfairness of it. No one’s saying the Dodgers are at fault for taking advantage while they can.
Maybe no one is saying that here but everywhere else they are saying it.
Actually, they should be thanking the Dodgers for making the economic problems that MLB has even more obvious to everyone with half a brain.
Now, what will be done about it?
Remains to be seen what, if anything, is attempted…
They have money they are not spending. Do they have as much as the Dodgers? Of course not, but there are more funds than they are shelling out.
Go look at the history of ownership and general management, their words, their about faces, and their focus on maximizing retention of funds for ownership.
Going from cable to streaming most certainly does NOT produce more viewers. It reduces viewership by quite a bit, as the effect of no-blackouts is overwhelmed by the effect of viewers having to pay specifically to watch the games. The reason why the Dodgers get so much from their RSN is because cable viewers, back when the agreement was signed, had no choice what was included in their package.
Didnt know this. Thanks for the info!
An article from the San Diego Union Tribune last spring puts numbers to this:
“The Padres have received significant financial assistance from MLB to help make up for what they lost in the TV deal, which was valued at about $50 million per year. Multiple sources have indicated, however, that the Padres generate somewhere between $20 and $30 million from their media deals. That would put them by many industry estimates not only at the bottom of the league but at less than 10% of what the Dodgers are making from their TV deal.”
At this point a free agency I would be actually more excited to see them resign Andujar than them sign any of the other ones on an overpay
You get what you pay for, which is their problem for decades now.
Darragh, there is no evidence that having MLB manage the team’s broadcast has led to lower revenue. In at least two cases the team’s CEO or managing partner has expressed that their TV revenue has increased and as a result they have increased spending. Please stick to the facts.