New Year, New Reds?

Reds say to expect no more major moves. Have they done enough?

Happy New Year! Wait, how long are we supposed to keep saying that? Is four days too long?

Anyway, I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year’s celebration. The lovely Mrs. Dotson and I spent a few days in New York over the holiday weekend. We’ve been there many times, but this was our first visit at this time of year. We had a blast: caught an Islanders game, saw a show (“Some Like It Hot”), went back to the Comedy Cellar, and rang in the new year with Phish at Madison Square Garden.* Pretty great time in the Big Apple overall.

*Gamehendge!

While in town, I also had lunch with a longtime friend who is a hardcore (and astute) Yankees fan. This was just a couple of days after the Reds had signed soon-to-be 31-year old right-hander Frankie Montas to a one-year, $16 million free agent contract. I asked for my friend’s opinion of Montas.

“Who knows?” he said, referring to Montas’ injury-riddled tenure with the Bronx Bombers. “I like him. I fear this is going to be another Sonny Gray situation.”

Dare to dream. Another former Athletics star excelling with Cincinnati after a brief and rocky tenure in New York? I’ll take it!

Shortly thereafter, Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall told reporters that the team is unlikely to make any other “major moves” before spring training. So, if we’re to believe Krall, the Reds are essentially finished with their off-season activity, and the roster will largely consist of players currently in the organization. Good time to take stock, I’d say.

Now, I actually expect that the Reds will still bring in a number of guys for bullpen, bench, or organizational depth. These will be your yearly minor league deals with invitations to spring training. None will be impact players. They rarely are.

The Reds missed the playoffs by just two games last year. Whether Krall and company have done enough to get the team across the post-season finish line in 2024 remains to be seen. But it’s clear that the club is better than they were after game 162 last season. That’s something, right?

Hope springs eternal.

To me, the Montas signing looked a lot like the rest of Nick Krall’s off-season deals, a player who almost certainly makes the Reds better, but doesn’t exactly move the needle as much as maybe we’d hope.* Nick Martinez is a guy I love having on the club; he’s been pretty effective the last two seasons since returning from Japan. Can he be a starter, as he desires? If so, he gives the Reds depth in the rotation, something they decidedly did not have last season. If not, he gives the Reds more bullpen depth, something they also need.

*Here’s a pretty great analysis of the Montas acquisition if you’re unfamiliar with him.

So yeah, Martinez absolutely makes the Reds a better team, even if just marginally. That’s good! But at age 33, he’s not the front of the rotation starter many observers think the Reds need. Will Montas be that guy? I could squint and see that happening, if he’s healthy. He has real talent, no question. But he’s only had more than 2.6 bWAR once in his big league career. Don’t bet the ranch on it.

The other pitching acquisition of note was reliever Emilio Pagan, who posted a 2.99 ERA in 66 appearances out of Minnesota’s bullpen last year. Pagan is certainly better than a lot of the dreck manager David Bell ran out to the mound from the pen last season. So he makes the team better…but check out his career ground ball and home run rates. Will Great American Ball Park be a good fit for him?

And then there’s Jeimer Candelario. Cincinnati inked the infielder to a three-year, $45 million deal back in December. I still don’t understand how he fits in with the glut of talented infielders already in Bell’s stable; to me, the signing only made sense if the Reds were going to trade Jonathan India or someone else.* Nonetheless, Candelario is a pretty good hitter who should look good at GABP. But is he the player who posted 3.3 fWAR in 2023 and 3.8 fWAR in 2021…or the player with -0.1 fWAR in 124 games in 2022?

*Shows what I know. Though I guess it’s technically possible that the Reds could still make a trade, despite Krall’s comments.

And that’s where we are. I thought MLBTR did a pretty good job of summing it up:

It’s not necessarily a surprise that the Reds don’t expect to make any other significant additions in free agency, as the club has made more than $100MM in salary commitments this offseason after much smaller offseasons in recent years. On the other hand, RosterResource projects the club for a payroll of just $101MM next season even after all of that spending. That still leaves a healthy amount of room relative to the club’s all-time high of $126MM back in 2019 (per Cot’s Baseball Contracts), though it does represent a significant step up from the club’s $87MM payroll in 2023 and roughly in he same ballpark as 2022’s $107MM figure.

Cincinnati definitely spent some money, and that’s a good thing! And the roster is almost certainly better than it was last spring, and that’s also a fantastic development. I’m genuinely excited to see what happens with this crew in 2024.

But if nothing else is to come, they didn’t acquire a single sure-fire impact player during this pivotal winter. If you don’t take a big swing, you can’t make a big miss, I guess. The Reds are seemingly going to bank on the hope that all the kids will continue to improve and remain relatively healthy. There is a lot of exciting young talent on that 40-man roster, but still, that’s a pretty risky strategy.*

*Insert my catchprase here. Someone write it in the comments for those that don’t know.

For now, there is plenty of unknown about how the 2024 season will unfold. The Reds have improved, but did they do enough to get them firmly into playoff contention? Hard to say, since there are still three months until Opening Day, and I guarantee that certain other teams in the NL Central haven’t stopped trying to improve their club just yet.

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What if the Reds had just kept Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray?

My friend Wick Terrell has a fantastic thought experiment:

What I do know, though, is that the Reds traded away their pitching to rebuild their hitting, with hopes their cadre of young arms would emerge to re-fill their pitching void. They waited a year and a half, discovered they mostly liked their new, young hitting, and have begun investing heavily back into acquiring pitching to supplement that new, young hitting. Did the addition of Montas, Martinez, and Pagan really make them better than what they could have been if they’d just maintained with Gray and Castillo?

Read the entire piece here.

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What’s Chad Watching?

Holiday travel put a dent into my movie-watching, but I did catch Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest, Poor Things. Lanthimos is one of the most interesting directors in the world; I rated each of his last three films* 4.5 stars out of 5. I really enjoyed his most recent one, but I haven’t rated it yet. I’m still thinking about it.

*The Favourite, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster.

The movie is good. Emma Stone will probably win an Oscar for her starring role. It’s worth seeing, and I definitely recommend it, especially if you have enjoyed any of Lanthimos’ previous efforts. Be prepared; it’s not exactly a Hallmark romance, but I definitely want to see it again.

The problem is that I was so distracted by Mark Ruffalo’s over-acting (just like in literally every single role he’s ever taken) that I’m not sure how to rate the movie. It may have been a 5-star masterpiece, or it may have been a pretty good 3.5-star movie.

I’ll make a decision at some point. Until then, I am pleading with everyone in Hollywood to stop casting Ruffalo in otherwise good movies. He’s not necessarily the worst actor on earth, but he’s certainly the most annoying.