Reds Rumors

Reds Sign Nick Castellanos

By Jeff Todd | January 27, 2020 at 5:10pm CDT

The Reds have officially struck a four-year, $64MM pact with free agent outfielder Nicholas Castellanos. The Scott Boras client also obtains opt-out opportunities after the 2020 and 2021 campaigns.

Castellanos will be paid in the form of a $16MM salary in 2020, $14MM in 2021 and $16MM salaries in 2022-23. There’s also a $20MM mutual option for a fifth season that comes with a $2MM buyout. Those salaries are impacted by a series of deferrals that alter the payout structure.

This is a fascinating agreement for a variety of reasons. It represents a finishing flourish from Boras, who orchestrated a masterful winter of signings. MLBTR had predicted a four-year, $58MM deal for Castellanos. The young slugger had been the last major free agent left unsigned; attention now will turn to an uncertain but highly interesting trade market. And the Cincinnati organization has now poached a top performer from a division rival — and not for the first time this winter. (This deal matches the guarantee the team used earlier in the winter to lure Mike Moustakas.)

Most of all, it’s a deal that may portend more action to come. The Reds outfield picture is so fully loaded that one or more current players will surely end up out of the frame — perhaps with another organization entirely.

When the Reds added Shogo Akiyama, we noted the resulting roster crunch and wondered whether the club might spin off a younger talent via trade. Thus far, the Reds have only shed Nick Martini. But with Castellanos on board the case for a blockbuster is arguably all the more compelling.

Akiyama and Castellanos figure to command fairly regular playing time. Jesse Winker could take the larger side of a platoon situation. Perhaps Nick Senzel will be included in that group to form a strong four-man primary unit. But that’d mean optioning Aristides Aquino … and figuring out what to do with players like Scott Schebler, Travis Jankowski, Phil Ervin, Jose Siri, and Rule 5er Mark Payton.

Both Senzel and Aquino are potentially intriguing trade candidates, depending upon the Reds’ plans. In the wake of the Castellanos news, it has emerged already that the former is being dangled on the market to some degree.

While we wait to see whether there’s any broader fallout from this move, there’s one takeaway that we can make straight-away: the Reds’ lineup is now rather loaded. Castellanos will presumably slot into the middle of a unit that now features Akiyama and Moustakas along with preexisting stars Joey Votto and Eugenio Suarez.

Castellanos has had some ups and downs but the numbers have been there at the end of each of the past several seasons. He has produced at about 20% north of the league-average rate since the start of the 2016 season. And Castellanos ended 2019 on a tear, mashing out a .321/.356/.646 run in 225 plate appearances with the Cubs.

Could there be more in the tank? A voluminous accumulator of doubles, Castellanos began to find his long ball stroke late last year and could be a breakout candidate in the homer-friendly environs of Great American Ballpark. And he won’t even reach his 28th birthday until March.

On the other hand, there’s some downside that must be considered here as well. Castellanos runs rather well (73rd percentile sprint speed) but has rarely translated that into contributions on the basepaths (-9.8 career BsR) or in the field (-100 career DRS). While the DRS and UZR grading systems both saw some improvement in Castellanos’s glovework in 2019, neither graded him as even an average performer. And Statcast’s outs above average measure placed him in just the 4th percentile leaguewide.

C. Trent Rosecrans and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported the deal (Twitter link). Contract details were reported by Jon Heyman of MLB Network (links to Twitter), Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer (on Twitter), MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon (via Twitter), and ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan (via Twitter).

Reds “Considering” Nick Senzel Trade Scenarios

By Jeff Todd | January 27, 2020 at 8:59am CDT

After adding another significant free agent to their lineup, the Reds may not be finished. The club is “considering” finding a deal involving top young talent Nick Senzel, according to Jon Heyman of MLB Network (via Twitter).

It doesn’t appear that there’s a specific deal already lined up, but the signing of Nicholas Castellanos to a four-year contract further crowds the outfield mix, representing the latest move that seems to limit the opportunities for Senzel.

While Senzel was heralded as a potential franchise centerpiece, he hasn’t quite found a fit yet in Cincinnati. At various points since he was selected second overall in the 2016 draft, the versatile 24-year-old has been tasked with lining up at second base, third base, shortstop, and center field.

As presently constituted, the Reds would seem likely to deploy Senzel in some kind of outfield timeshare while perhaps also giving him some innings in the infield. But there’s an obvious alternative, laden with both risk and upside: cashing him in via trade.

Just what might be contemplated isn’t yet clear. The roster’s one glaring area for improvement is shortstop, though perhaps there’s still room to add pitching and the team has long been said to have interest in finding a more offensively capable catcher. Senzel has exhausted his prospect eligibility, but he’s still the type of controllable, MLB-ready asset who could conceivably be a headliner in a package to acquire any of the myriad high-profile trade targets who’ve been discussed over the course of the winter.

There’ll surely be wide interest in Senzel, who could be plugged right into a lineup and remains controllable through the 2025 season. His debut effort wasn’t a grand slam; he slashed .256/.315/.427 (90 wRC+) with a dozen home runs in 414 plate appearances last year. But that’s hardly a miserable showing for a rookie and he’s still seen as possessing ample talent with the bat. The positional versatility makes him a potential fit just about anywhere and the contract situation is a huge positive.

Report: Reds “Clear Frontrunners” To Sign Nicholas Castellanos

By George Miller | January 26, 2020 at 2:53pm CDT

According to a report from Jon Paul Morosi of MLB Network, the Reds are now seen as the “clear frontrunner” to sign free-agent outfielder Nicholas Castellanos, with Morosi adding that the two sides have made progress in their negotiations over the past few days.

The Giants have also been in contact with Castellanos in recent weeks, per Morosi. The Rangers have also been strongly linked to the 27-year-old. And while Castellanos is decidedly the best slugger left on the market, it could very well be a three-team race for his services; when we explored the best fits for Castellanos last week, we also named the Indians, Cardinals, and Cubs as potential landing spots, but all of those teams have displayed a certain reluctance to splurge on free agents and seem unlikely to do so in this case.

Cincinnati is already looking at a pretty busy outfield mix—especially at the corners, where Castellanos would play—but none of the Reds’ existing pieces can quite match the offensive firepower that Castellanos would add to the lineup. Aristedes Aquino, Jesse Winker, and Phil Ervin are all likely to be deployed frequently in the outfield corners, with Shogo Akiyama and Nick Senzel representing options for the centerfield job.

If indeed the Reds wind up inking Castellanos, two of the aforementioned teams would be doubly hurt by missing out: the Cubs and Cardinals, of course, would have to turn around and deal with the division rival Reds several times every year.

MLBTR originally predicted that Castellanos would earn a four-year, $58MM deal in free agency. There’s still a chance he could reach those numbers, but the one-year, $18MM contract signed by Marcell Ozuna last week might reflect how the industry values Castellanos, whose profile and on-field value resembles that of Ozuna. Castellanos, though, is more than a year younger and doesn’t come with a qualifying offer attached, so signing teams won’t have to worry about surrendering draft pick compensation.

Marcell Ozuna Reportedly Turned Down Multi-Year Offers

By Jeff Todd | January 23, 2020 at 8:33am CDT

Before deciding to take a one-year deal with the Braves, outfielder Marcell Ozuna contemplated much lengthier arrangements with other teams, according to Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter links).

On the one hand, this is mostly academic. Ozuna is headed to Atlanta and the prior offers are off the table. On the other, there are actually some interesting forward-looking elements to this report.

First and foremost, it’s notable that Ozuna drew not only three-year but four-year offers, per Heyman. The offered money evidently wasn’t enough to sway the veteran from the $18MM he got for one year with the Braves, but it’s still an indication that the market has some appetite for a longer pact on this sort of player.

That’s probably good news for Nicholas Castellanos and Yasiel Puig. We just ran a poll regarding the former, with nearly four in ten respondents predicting an Ozuna-esque signing and most of the remainder guessing he’d secure much less than had been anticipated in a multi-year pact. Expectations on Castellanos were always tough to set and have continued to waver. But it’s at least somewhat easier to fathom a bigger, lengthier contract given this recent report.

It’s also a generally promising sign for Ozuna himself, who is now slated to return to free agency at the end of the upcoming season. He only just reached his 29th birthday and can certainly anticipate long-term interest the next time around — if he makes good on the prove-it contract he just inked.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the involvement of the Reds in the bidding. Long rumored to be kicking around the market for these bat-first corner outfielders, the club’s recent signing of Shogo Akiyama further stuffed its outfield mix and made a further addition seem unlikely. But Heyman says that the Cincinnati outfit “made a spirited try” to land Ozuna with a multi-year deal.

If indeed the Reds had serious interest in Ozuna, it adds to the plausibility of Heyman’s prior reporting on the team’s pursuit of Castellanos. There are abundant options on hand, but perhaps the club simply isn’t satisfied — or has its eyes on adding another piece to help facilitate a trade involving one or more of its existing outfielders. The theoretical possibilities are endless, adding to the intrigue of the remaining corner outfield market.

Minor MLB Transactions: 1/22/20

By Connor Byrne | January 22, 2020 at 11:46pm CDT

The latest minor moves from around baseball…

The Reds have added outfielder Boog Powell on a minor league pact, Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America reports. Powell has bounced around several organizations since Oakland chose him in Round 20 of the 2012 draft, but he hasn’t hit poorly during his brief major league experience. The 27-year-old owns a .262/.333/.383 line in 160 career plate appearances. Most of Powell’s at-bats in recent years have come in Triple-A ball, where he has hit .279/.368/.390 in 1,356 PA.
The Marlins have released outfielder Brayan Hernandez, per Hilburn-Trenkle. Hernandez, who joined the Miami organization in a 2017 trade with Seattle centering on David Phelps, was a touted prospect when he came out of Venezuela in 2014. The 22-year-old didn’t perform well in the minors from 2018-19, however, and managed a miserable .461 OPS in 166 trips to the plate between Single-A and low-A ball last season.
The Mariners have signed catcher Joe Hudson to a minor league contract with an invitation to major league spring training, Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times tweets. Hudson entered the pro ranks as a sixth-round pick of Cincinnati in 2012, and he ended up appearing in the majors with the Angels in 2018 and the Cardinals last season. The 28-year-old collected just 13 plate appearances during that span, though. Hudson spent most of last year at the Triple-A level, where he hit .223/.293/.411 with 10 home runs in 222 PA.

NL Central Notes: Castellanos, Ozuna, Pirates

By Steve Adams | January 22, 2020 at 10:17pm CDT

The Reds “remain a player” for free-agent outfielder Nicholas Castellanos, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. The extent to which the Reds are interested is far from clear, though. Cincinnati has already signed Shogo Akiyama to a three-year deal and has Nick Senzel, Jesse Winker and Aristides Aquino atop an already deep list of incumbent outfield options. And, unlike the Rangers, who are also said to have interest in Castellanos, there’s no option of plugging him in at first base, where Joey Votto is entrenched in Cincinnati.

It’s difficult to envision much of a fit in Cincinnati unless Castellanos winds up taking a short-term deal along the lines of the one Marcell Ozuna signed in Atlanta just yesterday. Even if such an opportunity were to materialize for the Reds, they’d likely still need to move an outfielder to alleviate the logjam that’d come with signing Castellanos. Corner outfielders have had a hard time cashing in this winter, and the market for Castellanos looks rather limited at this point. If he and agent Scott Boras are willing to wait things out, it’s possible that an injury early in camp or a Cubs trade that sheds some cash will change his market’s landscape. At present, however, demand doesn’t exactly appear frenzied.

This Date In Transactions History: Sonny To Cincy

By Connor Byrne | January 21, 2020 at 8:46pm CDT

It was on this date a year ago that the Reds made one of their best pickups in recent memory. Then desperate for rotation help, the Reds took a flier on former standout right-hander Sonny Gray, acquiring him and young reliever Reiver Sanmartin from the Yankees in a three-team trade that also included the Mariners. The Yankees received middle infielder/outfielder Shed Long and a Competitive Balance Round A draft pick in the swap, though they quickly flipped Long to the Mariners for outfield prospect Josh Stowers.

It was obvious entering last offseason that the Yankees would try to trade Gray, whose tenure in their uniform was a letdown. The Yankees paid what was then a high price to acquire Gray, who was coming off a strong run in Oakland, back in July 2017. But Gray wasn’t the same pitcher in New York, particularly struggling at Yankee Stadium, and the club left him off its playoff roster in 2018. After that, general manager Brian Cashman admitted that “it’s probably best to try somewhere else” for Gray.

Twelve months later, the change of scenery has been a godsend for Gray and Reds. For the team, not only has the trade paid off, but the three-year, $30MM contract Cincy gave Gray the moment it acquired him looks like a bargain.

In his first season as a Red, the 30-year-old Gray performed like one of the premier starters in the sport and earned his second All-Star nod in the process. Gray tossed 175 1/3 innings, his most since 2015, and turned in the third-lowest ERA of his career (2.87). He also notched a 3.42 FIP with a 50.8 percent groundball rate and fanned more hitters than ever. Gray’s 10.52 K/9 was easily a personal best, while he also posted his second-highest swinging-strike percentage (11.3). When batters did make contact, they seldom did much damage, as Gray ranked near the top of the league in hard-hit rate, exit velocity and expected weighted on-base average against.

Despite Gray’s efforts, the Reds endured yet another sub-.500 season in 2019. However, he’s still among the reasons they now look like a team on the upswing. Gray, Luis Castillo, Trevor Bauer, Anthony DeSclafani and Wade Miley now make up one of the game’s most formidable-looking rotations on paper. That’s a drastic 180 for a club whose starting staff was among baseball’s worst the season before it hauled in Gray.

The Gray-less Yankees, for their part, appear to have an even better rotation than the Reds at this point. That said, no one knows whether they’ll get anything from the players they landed for Gray. Both Stowers and lefty TJ Sikkema, whom the Yankees chose with the pick they received in the trade, are still a ways off from the majors. The 22-year-old Stowers isn’t far removed from going in Round 2 of the 2018 draft, though, and he was plenty productive at the Single-A level last season, hitting .273/.386/.400 with 35 steals across 460 plate appearances. Sikkema, 21, had a very brief but very dominant showing in low-A ball after the Yankees drafted him.

As for the rebuilding Mariners, it looks as if they did well to insert themselves into this swap. Long joined the team as a promising prospect and then lived up to the billing in his first major league action last season. The 24-year-old amassed 168 PA and batted .263/.333/.454, also gaining a solid amount of experience at second base and in the outfield. Long figures to see even more time in Seattle this year, when the team no doubt hopes he’ll further demonstrate that he’s capable of serving as a core member of its roster.

Thanks to this trade, the Reds have a core piece for their rotation in Gray. A year into Gray’s time in Cincinnati, he and the team are surely thrilled with how their union has worked out.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Reds Sign Jesse Biddle

By Connor Byrne | January 17, 2020 at 7:31pm CDT

The Reds have signed left-handed reliever Jesse Biddle to a minor league contract, C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic reports. The deal includes an invitation to major league spring training.

Biddle’s the second veteran reliever the Reds have added on a minors pact this week. They previously picked up former White Sox standout Nate Jones on a low-risk accord.

As recently as 2018, Biddle was a standout in his own right. The former first-round pick (2010, Phillies) fired 63 2/3 innings of 3.11 ERA/3.88 FIP ball with 9.47 K/9, 4.38 BB/9 and a sterling 55.6 percent groundball rate as a member of the Braves. But things went south in a hurry for the 28-year-old, who divided his 2019 among the Braves, Mariners and Rangers. Biddle dealt with shoulder troubles and stumbled to an 8.38 ERA/6.46 FIP across 28 frames, and the rest of his numbers also took a turn for the worse. He struck out 8.36 hitters per nine, posted a whopping 7.07 BB/9 and saw his grounder percentage plummet to 45.8. His average fastball velocity also tumbled a bit, going from 94.5 mph the prior season to 93.9.

Despite the difficulties Biddle endured last season, there’s no real harm in taking a flier on him from the Reds’ standpoint. He’ll compete for a spot in a bullpen that has one lefty lock, Amir Garrett, and could also feature Cody Reed.

Reds Interested In Brock Holt

By Steve Adams | January 17, 2020 at 12:21pm CDT

The Reds are among the teams with interest in free-agent utilityman Brock Holt, per Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer. The report comes just one day after Cincinnati president of baseball operations Dick Williams indicated that his club may not yet be done adding pieces prior to the season.

The 31-year-old Holt landed on MLBTR’s Top 50 free agents heading into the offseason after putting together a solid campaign in the last season of a seven-year run with the Red Sox. An eye injury (scratched cornea) kept Holt off the field for several weeks early in the season, but he returned to post a quality .297/.369/.402 slash through 295 trips to the plate. That output aligned closely with what Holt managed to produce a year prior, and his combined .286/.366/.407 slash in 662 plate appearances dating back to 2018 marked a decidedly above-average output.

Holt’s strong showing of late is all the more valuable when factoring in his defensive versatility. He’s been primarily a second baseman over the past two seasons (914 innings) but has also seen time at third base (57 innings), shortstop (186 innings), first base (61 innings), left field (50 innings) and right field (107 innings). Holt has brief experience in center field as well but hasn’t lined up there since 2015. Not only is he versatile, but Holt has racked up +9 Outs Above Average playing around the infield over the past two seasons, per Statcast.

For the Reds, it’s unlikely that Holt would be viewed as a starter at any one position, but he’d give them a nice backup option for any of Joey Votto, Mike Moustakas, Freddy Galvis or Eugenio Suarez. His ability to play virtually any position on the diamond is all the more appealing to an NL skipper who’ll be making frequent double-switches, too. And Holt provides a particularly nice safety net in the event of an injury to Suarez; in an extended absence for Cincinnati’s excellent third baseman, Moustakas could slide over to his natural position at the hot corner with Holt stepping in for regular reps at his own best position, second base.

From a payroll vantage point, the Reds could surely work what would figure to be a modest salary for Holt into the mix. Cincinnati is currently projected to open the year at roughly $128MM, per Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez, with only $148MM in luxury obligations. That’s only marginally higher than the roughly $126.5MM payroll with which they opened the 2018 season, and ownership has shown increased aggression and a willingness to move payroll forward.

It’s been a relatively quiet winter with regards to Holt and the rumor circuit, although with most of the top options now off the free-agent market, several clubs should have interest in bolstering their infield mix with a player who boasts this level of versatility.

NL Notes: Giants, Zimmerman, Reds

By Mark Polishuk | January 16, 2020 at 5:02pm CDT

The Giants finalized their coaching staff with today’s announcements that Alyssa Nakken and Mark Hallberg have been hired as Major League assistant coaches. Nakken becomes the first woman to ever hold a coaching position on a big league team, after working for the Giants in various organizational roles since 2014. Hallberg, a former Diamondbacks minor leaguer, has coached in the Cape Cod League and spent the last two seasons as a coach and manager with the Giants’ short-season A-ball team.

The two new hires give San Francisco an unusually large 13-person coaching staff under new manager Gabe Kapler. Third base coach Ron Wotus is the only member of that group to return to the club from Bruce Bochy’s 2019 coaching staff.

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