Reds Rumors

Minor MLB Transactions: 3/27/19

By Steve Adams | March 27, 2019 at 10:11pm CDT

Some minor moves from around the game on the eve of Opening Day (for most of the league)…

The Cardinals announced this afternoon that lefty Chasen Shreve has cleared waivers following this week’s DFA. He’s been assigned outright to Triple-A Memphis. While Shreve does have enough service time to reject the assignment, electing free agency would mean forfeiting the $900K salary to which he’d agreed earlier this winter. The 28-year-old Shreve came to the Cards as part of the now-lopsided deal that sent Luke Voit to the Yankees last summer. Over the past four seasons, Shreve has posted a solid 3.85 ERA and missed bats (10.3 K/9), but he’s also been far too prone to walks (4.7 BB/9) and home runs (1.8 HR/9) for either the Yankees or Cardinals to deem him a reliable bullpen option. Furthermore, he’s not a candidate for a more specialized role, as left-handed opponents have been even more successful against Shreve (.248/.335/.444) than right-handed opponents have been (.222/.316/.430).
The Blue Jays reportedly agreed to acquire minor league outfielder Jordan Patterson from the Reds — a move that was prompted by injuries to Dalton Pompey and Jonathan Davis, as Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet explains. The 27-year-old Patterson received a bit of MLB experience with the Rockies back in 2016 but has spent the bulk of the past three seasons with Colorado’s Triple-A affiliate. The Reds inked him to a minor league pact back in December, but he never stood much of a chance of cracking the roster by the time Spring Training rolled around. Patterson hit .271/.367/.525 in Triple-A last year and owns a lifetime .282/.363/.516 slash in 1517 plate appearances at that level, making him a solid fill-in option to help round out the Jays’ Triple-A roster. Presumably, for a transaction of small magnitude, the Jays are merely sending cash to Cincinnati in return.

Nick Senzel Out Several Weeks Following Ankle Injury

By Steve Adams | March 26, 2019 at 2:50pm CDT

Top Reds prospect Nick Senzel, who was recently reassigned to minor league camp, incurred a right ankle sprain while sliding into second base during a minor league game and will be in a walking boot for seven to 14 days, the team announced. As president of baseball operations Dick Williams tells Bobby Nightengale Jr. of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Senzel will require multiple weeks to get back up to speed once he’s out of the boot.

Cincinnati assigned Senzel to minor league camp earlier this week — a move that was met with noted protest from agent Joel Wolfe, who called the decision a “simply egregious case of service-time manipulation” in a statement to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Whether the move was indeed fueled by service time — the Reds can at least plausibly maintain that they’d like Senzel to continue getting reps in center field after shifting there from the infield just this spring — the injury will definitively keep in the minors long enough for the Reds to garner an additional year of club control over the former No. 2 overall draft pick (2015). Assuming Senzel is called up to the Majors later this season and sticks, he’ll be controlled through the 2025 season and, depending on the exact date he’s called up, would be eligible for arbitration after either the 2021 season (if he’s a Super Two player) or the 2022 season.

With Senzel sidelined, Scott Schebler will now get a lengthier look as the primary center fielder with the Reds to begin the 2019 season. He’ll be flanked by Jesse Winker, Yasiel Puig and (more occasionally) Matt Kemp in the outfield for at least the first few weeks of the season.

Reds Reassign Matt Wisler

By Jeff Todd | March 26, 2019 at 10:37am CDT

The Reds are expected to place righty Matt Wisler on outright waivers, according to Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer (Twitter link). He was reassigned to minor-league camp today, with Robert Stephenson and Wandy Peralta being chosen instead for bullpen slots.

Wisler was one of three players with MLB experience who headed to the Reds in the July 2018 swap that shipped Adam Duvall to the Braves. He’s out of options and therefore will need to be traded or exposed to waivers if he’s to miss out on the active roster.

While he has largely disappointed at the game’s highest level, Wisler has actually been rather good in brief action in a relief capacity since landing in Cincinnati. He allowed just three earned runs in 13 1/3 frames late last year and racked up a 16:1 K/BB mix in a dozen innings this spring.

Roster Notes: Rox, Brewers, Phils, Nats, Reds, Marlins

By Connor Byrne | March 23, 2019 at 7:31pm CDT

The latest on several teams’ rosters…

First baseman Mark Reynolds will make the Rockies’ roster, Nick Groke of The Athletic tweets. A Rockie from 2016-17, Reynolds rejoined the club on a minor league deal this past January after spending last season with the Nationals. In his return to Colorado, the 35-year-old Reynolds will back up the team’s headlining offseason acquisition, Daniel Murphy.
More from Groke, who reports catcher Brett Nicholas has requested and received his release from the Rockies. However, it’s possible the Rockies will try to keep Nicholas, Groke adds. An ex-Ranger, with whom he totaled 110 plate appearances from 2016-17, Nicholas signed a minors pact with the Rox in November. He has always faced an uphill battle to make the team, though, considering it has Chris Iannetta, Tony Wolters and Tom Murphy on its 40-man roster.
Catcher Erik Kratz won’t crack the Brewers’ roster, leaving him to await his trade/waiver fate, per Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This had been the expected outcome for Kratz, who’s stuck behind Yasmani Grandal and Manny Pina on Milwaukee’s depth chart.
Infielder Philip Gosselin won’t make the Phillies, Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia relays. It seems the 30-year-old will remain on hand as minor league depth, however. The journeyman has accrued 579 major league PAs, though he didn’t play much at the MLB level from 2017-18, and batted .263/.314/.361.
The Nationals have informed left-hander Vidal Nuno he won’t make their roster, per Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post. Nuno now has six days to decide whether to opt out of the minor league deal he signed in January. The 31-year-old has logged solid results this spring, having allowed two earned runs in 5 2/3 innings while recording six strikeouts against one walk. Nuno was similarly effective across 33 innings with Tampa Bay last year, when he put up a 1.64 ERA (with a much less impressive 4.46 FIP) and 7.91 K/9 against 2.73 BB/9.
The Reds have sent right-hander Anthony Bass to minor league camp, according to Mark Sheldon of MLB.com. Bass had been competing for a bullpen spot with the Reds after they signed him to a minors deal in December. He owns a 4.51 ERA/4.20 FIP with 6.07 K/9 and 3.31 BB/9 and a 47.9 percent groundball rate in a combined 299 1/3 innings with the Padres, Astros, Rangers and Cubs.
The Marlins are “expected” to retain Rule 5 pick Riley Ferrell, Joe Frisaro of MLB.com reports. The club took the right-hander fourth overall from the Astros in December, and he has since pitched well over 6 2/3 spring innings (two earned runs allowed on five hits and five walks, with 10 strikeouts). Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel of FanGraphs regard the 25-year-old Ferrell as “at least a big league-ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.”

Scooter Gennett To Spend 8-12 Weeks On Injured List

By Mark Polishuk | March 23, 2019 at 12:10pm CDT

Reds second baseman Scooter Gennett will be sidelined for the next 8-12 weeks due to a right groin strain, Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports (Twitter link). Gennett suffered the injury yesterday during the second inning of the Reds’ Spring Training game, while making an awkward slide on a fielding play.

The news is a major blow to a Reds team that had a busy offseason in preparation for a return to contention in the NL Central. Now, Cincinnati will have to wait until mid-May at the earliest to welcome back their All-Star second baseman.

Gennett has been nothing short of outstanding since joining his hometown team prior to the 2017 season, as the infielder has hit .303/.351/.508 with 50 homers over 1135 plate appearances in a Reds uniform. Originally seen as something of a utility infield option when he first arrived with the team, Gennett’s emergence made him into an unexpected building block for the Reds, and perhaps even a long-term answer at second base (though recent extension talks hadn’t delivered much progress).

Gennett is scheduled to hit free agency after the season, and while the 29-year-old can still produce quite a bit over three or four months of action, his hopes of a big platform year have now been dented by this lengthy stint on the IL. He’ll have to hope for a relatively quick recovery and then no lingering after-effects from his groin strain, though on the plus side, Gennett has been a pretty durable player throughout the rest of his big league career.

The vacancy at second base will be filled by Jose Peraza, whose former shortstop role will be assumed by minor league signing Jose Iglesias. Peraza took a big step forward at the plate last season and actually grades out better defensively as a second baseman than as a shortstop, so the Reds should be in decent shape at the keystone. Iglesias is one of the sport’s better defensive shortstops, so he’ll bring value to the everyday lineup even if his hitting has generally been subpar. Derek Dietrich, also in camp on a minors contract, was already expected to make Cincinnati’s roster, and Gennett’s absence should solidify Dietrich’s spot as a backup utilityman.

Nick Senzel’s status won’t be impacted by the Gennett news, Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams told reporters (including C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic). The top prospect has played second base in the past, though Senzel is still ticketed to begin the season at Triple-A and will be playing as a center fielder, in order to eventually help the Reds at that position.

Reds Reassign Nick Senzel To Minor League Camp

By Steve Adams | March 22, 2019 at 1:38pm CDT

The Reds announced a slew of players who’ve been reassigned to minor league camp Friday, headlined by top prospect Nick Senzel. Cincinnati’s decision to do so has prompted a response from Senzel’s agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman, who spoke harshly of the organization’s decision to ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Twitter link).

“I don’t believe I’ve ever made public statements on this issue in my career,” said Wolfe, “but I feel compelled to do so in this case where it feels like a simply egregious case of service-time manipulation. We are well aware of the mandate from ownership for the Reds to win this year — and this seems to fly in the face of it. The NL Central was decided by one game last year. Every game matters. This is a shortsighted move that may be frugal now but could cost them dearly later.”

Reds president of baseball operations Dick Williams, unsurprisingly, told C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic that the decision was not tied to service time (Twitter link).

The Reds’ Senzel decision is, at the very least, more defensible than some recent service-driven minor league assignments (e.g. Kris Bryant, Eloy Jimenez, Ronald Acuna). Senzel is learning a new position on the fly after being moved from the infield to center field, and injuries limited him to just 44 games last year while also preventing him from taking place in the Arizona Fall League.

That said, Senzel is hitting .308/.300/.462 with six doubles and four stolen bases in 39 spring at-bats thus far, and he batted .310/.378/.509 as a 22-year-old in his first exposure to Triple-A pitching last season. There’s an argument that Senzel’s bat is ready for big league work, and the timing of his promotion to the big leagues will be an interesting situation to monitor in the coming weeks. The Reds would only need to keep Senzel in the minors for just over two weeks in order to secure an extra year of club control over the 2016 No. 2 overall draft pick.

Regardless of whether the move is service-driven, the Reds are well within their rights to make it and are arguably even wise to do so. The fact that they’re hoping to be more competitive and contend for a postseason berth in 2019, as Wolfe suggested, does muddy the waters a bit, and the Reds will unquestionably receive their share of criticism if they call Senzel up early in the season and narrowly miss the playoffs.

However, the current service time constraints were collectively bargained long ago and were not addressed in the latest wave of negotiations between the league and the MLBPA, thus maintaining a clumsy and antiquated system that is a disservice to virtually every party other than ownership. The game’s best young players are often held down longer than need be, slowing their path to significant earnings, while fans are deprived from seeing rising stars on the game’s biggest stage. Even front offices are left to make thinly veiled and often transparent statements to their fans, knowing full well that they’re setting themselves up to incur an angry backlash. It’s an out-of-date mechanism that would be better served to be restructured, and it’s likely to be a focal point as the league and union begin preliminary discussions well in advance of the next wave of the current CBA’s expiration.

In other Reds news, Cincinnati skipper David Bell announced that right-hander Tyler Mahle will open the season as the team’s fifth starter while Alex Wood heals up from back spasms that have plagued him throughout the spring (Twitter link via Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer). Wood’s injury isn’t expected to sideline him long, so he may only be in line for a small handful of starts before either shifting to a bullpen role or heading back to Triple-A to continue making regular starts.

Giants Acquire Connor Joe, Designate Drew Ferguson

By Jeff Todd | March 21, 2019 at 7:45pm CDT

The Giants have acquired utilityman Connor Joe from the Reds, per a club announcement. Righty Jordan Johnson and cash considerations are headed to Cincinnati in return. To open a 40-man roster spot, the Giants designated outfielder Drew Ferguson for assignment.

Both Joe and Ferguson were selected in last December’s Rule 5 draft. The former went to the Reds from the Dodgers, while the latter came from the Astros organization. Ferguson would be offered back to Houston if he clears waivers, but every other team in baseball will have a chance to step into his Rule 5 rights.

With a deal coming together at this late stage of camp, it seems likely that Joe has the inside track on a job in San Francisco — perhaps bumping out veteran Pablo Sandoval. New president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi is amply familiar with the former Dodger farmhand, having just come over from the L.A. organization. If Joe can make and stay on the MLB roster all year, his rights would move permanently.

Joe, 26, is a former first-round pick who had largely struggled until a breakout 2018 season. In 435 plate appearances in the upper minors, he turned in a robust .299/.408/.527 slash with a career-high 17 home runs and sixty walks to go with 88 strikeouts.

Ferguson is also 26 years of age. The former 19th-rounder put himself on the map with some strong offensive showings, including a .305/.436/.429 run in 292 Triple-A plate appearances last year. But he has struggled since in short stints in the Arizona Fall League, Puerto Rican Winter League, and Cactus League.

On the Cincinnati end of this swap, Johnson will give the organization another upper-minors arm to work with. He earned a call-up to the highest level of the minors after 15 solid starts at Double-A last year, but struggled thereafter. In 58 frames over 11 outings at Triple-A, Johnson managed only a 4.66 ERA with 37 strikeouts against 33 walks.

NL Roster/Health Notes: Taylor, Verdugo, Cecil, Romano, Kennedy

By Jeff Todd | March 15, 2019 at 12:15am CDT

The Nationals are suddenly facing a potential roster gap in the outfield, as Mark Zuckerman of MASNsports.com reports. Michael Taylor tweaked his knee today and is slated to be looked at more closely tomorrow. With Howie Kendrick also in limbo, both of the club’s right-handed-hitting reserve outfield pieces could be out of commission to open the season. Lefty hitter Andrew Stevenson is the only other 40-man outfielder. Perhaps there’s a chance that the Nats will look to the free agent market — Austin Jackson seems the closest match to Taylor as a right-handed-hitting center fielder — or consider claiming a late-spring roster casualty to boost their depth.

Here are a few more roster notes from around the game:

The Dodgers expect to carry Alex Verdugo on the MLB roster to open the year, manager Dave Roberts says (via Pedro Moura of The Athletic, on Twitter). After spending two seasons at Triple-A, where he owns a healthy .321/.389/.452 slash, Verdugo certainly deserves a shot. It remains to be seen how he and others will actually be utilized. As things stand, Joc Pederson and Cody Bellinger are also available as left-handed-hitting outfield options, though perhaps some roster tweaking could still occur.
Cardinals lefty Brett Cecil pitched in an instrasquad game today and threw more balls (15) than strikes (12) in his latest shaky outing, according to Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This spring has been a trial for the veteran reliever, who’s still trying to find himself on the mound after losing a bunch of weight following a brutal 2018 season. Command and velocity are both problems at the moment, as Frederickson’s colleague Derrick Goold recently explored.
Right-hander Sal Romano, who has spent the vast majority of his career as a starter, will be converted into a relief role for the Reds moving forward, Bobby Nightengale Jr. of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. He’ll still be stretched out to the point where he can be relied upon for two- and three-inning relief appearances if needed, though. Unlike some other Reds roster hopefuls, Romano has a minor league option remaining, so it’s possible he’ll continue to acclimate to his new role at the Triple-A level before getting a look the big league ’pen. Romano, who turned 25 this offseason, has long rated as one of the more intriguing arms in the Cincinnati system but hasn’t found MLB success yet. In 232 2/3 innings, he’s mustered just a 4.99 ERA with 6.9 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 — including a 5.31 ERA in 145 2/3 innings of work last year. Making it into the Reds’ rotation would’ve been challenging anyhow, as offseason acquisitions Sonny Gray, Alex Wood and Tanner Roark are expected to join holdovers Luis Castillo and Anthony DeSclafani to round out the starting five.
Padres right-hander Brett Kennedy has been diagnosed with a lat strain, per James Clark of the East Village Times (Twitter link). The expectation is that he’ll be sidelined for about a month. Kennedy, 24, scuffled last year in his first six MLB appearances and wasn’t expected to command a big league job out of camp. But he posted impressive results in 2018 at Triple-A, with 89 1/3 innings of 2.72 ERA ball over 16 starts, and is certainly part of the depth picture in San Diego.

NL Central Notes: Lyles, Strop, Reds

By Steve Adams | March 12, 2019 at 7:28pm CDT

Right-hander Jordan Lyles is still the leading candidate for the Pirates’ final rotation spot, general manager Neal Huntington said today (Twitter link via Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Huntington candidly indicated that the 28-year-old entered camp as the favorite to win the job, adding that neither he nor his primary competition — Nick Kingham and Steven Brault — has done anything to change that. Those comments did come before Lyles exited today’s appearance with some cramping in his right side (link via the Post-Gazette’s Nubyjas Wilborn), though the move was described as “precautionary.” Lyles hasn’t exactly dominated this spring, pitching to a 4.91 ERA on 13 hits and five walks with seven strikeouts through 11 innings, although the Pirates are surely more concerned with the quality of his offerings than his bottom-line results in a small sample of exhibition innings. Lyles signed a one-year deal worth $2.05MM to join the Pirates this offseason after posting a 4.11 ERA with career-best K/BB numbers in 87 2/3 innings between the Padres and the Brewers.

Here’s more from the NL Central…

Cubs righty Pedro Strop sustained a “mild” right hamstring strain in his most recent Cactus League outing on Saturday and is now questionable for the beginning of the season, Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times reports. (That, it should be noted, is not the same hamstring that sidelined Strop near the end of the 2018 season.) Strop will continue to play catch while resting and rehabbing the leg issue, and there’s still a chance that he could be ready to open the season on the active roster rather than the injured list. Currently, he’s in line to close games in Chicago while Brandon Morrow is out early in the year, though if Strop does hit the IL, veteran Steve Cishek would seem likely to be the next man up.
The Reds’ offseason additions of Sonny Gray, Alex Wood, Tanner Roark, Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp were a welcome departure from what has become standard operating procedure for many noncompetitive teams in recent seasons, opines Joel Sherman of the New York Post. While many teams have followed the Astros’ model of aggressively tanking to stockpile draft picks and international bonus resources, the Reds at least positioned themselves to have a chance in the division, even if few would peg them as any sort of favorite. “For the first time in a long time we added multiple well-known major league players to this team in an offseason,” president of baseball operations Dick Williams tells Sherman. “That clearly has people’s imaginations going. That is part of the fun. … Just to be able to ponder the possible and the excitement is a huge psychological benefit to our fans.” Even if the moves ultimately fail to yield dividends, several of the newly acquired assets (namely Wood, Roark and Puig) could hold value on the summer trade market, and the Reds didn’t sacrifice any of the organization’s very top prospects in order to take a shot at improved results in 2019.

Central Notes: Moustakas, Boxberger, Lorenzen, Rupp

By Jeff Todd | March 11, 2019 at 11:46pm CDT

The Brewers will press ahead with their unconventional plan for Mike Moustakas. Skipper Craig Counsell says the long-time third baseman will indeed line up at second base in Milwaukee, as Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was among those to tweet. The move from the hot corner to second isn’t particularly common. And it’s all but unprecedented for a player to be handed the keys to an up-the-middle defensive position that he has never before played professionally. (Moustakas does have minimal experience at shortstop dating to his first two seasons as a pro.) The Brewers obviously feel the tools are there to allow Moustakas to succeed — once he has been positioned optimally, at least.

Headlines

Reds Rumors

Navigation

MLBTR INFO

Connect