Welcome home, Eugenio Suarez!
The Reds add power and Good Vibes Only to their lineup
The weather is cold and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning so it looks like we’re in for an extended winter. But somehow, I’m suddenly feeling much warmer about the Reds’ prospects for 2026.
Eugenio Suárez is back in Cincinnati.
This off-season, most of Cincinnati’s roster moves appeared on the transaction wire and then evaporated. No reason to get excited about any of them, you know? But yesterday was a big one, for more than one reason.
The return of Eugenio Suárez to Cincinnati is important. Not because it solves everything (it doesn’t), not because it makes the lineup suddenly bulletproof (it won’t), and not because nostalgia wins pennants (ask a lot of franchises, including ours). It matters because it’s Geno, a player this town adopted, and a player who adopted the town right back. He’s a fan favorite for a reason. But he’s also a player who happens to address the single most persistent problem facing the Reds since Suárez was traded away: the absence of a real, fear-inducing power threat in the middle of the order.
Today, I’m thinking back to March 14, 2022. The Reds were out in Arizona, after the lockout, and the Reds were supposed to have a team meeting to set the tone for the season. Instead, Jesse Winker and Suárez were hugging teammates goodbye, headed to the Seattle Mariners. It was a gut punch, and an admission by Reds management that they did not intend to compete that season. Again. There are many ways to announce your intentions. Few are as blunt as trading the heart of the clubhouse before the season even starts.
And if you think that trade was a gut punch to the fans, Suárez felt it deeply, too. Watch the clip below, as he arrived in the media room and could barely speak between tears. “My heart is always in Cincinnati,” he said, and he clearly meant it. Then he told us what he always told us, his mantra: Good vibes only.
At the end, he also says: “Maybe I’ll finish here,” in Cincinnati.
That video encapsulates pretty well what I love about baseball, and about Suárez in particular. The production on the field matters, because obviously it does. But other things matter, too.
I was a big proponent of the sabermetric revolution that took over baseball earlier this century, but the advanced analytics bore me now. Fans don’t fall in love with spreadsheets. They fall in love with people. They fall in love with the guy who plays like he’s thrilled to be here. They fall in love with the guy whose joy feels contagious, even when the Reds are losing more than they win. In Cincinnati, Suárez became a symbol of the version of baseball I prefer these days: always smiling and always capable of flipping a game in one violent swing.
So let’s talk about that swing, and how it changes things for the 2026 Reds.
Geno is coming off a season in which he matched the career-high home run total he first reached as a Red (49), splitting that damage between Arizona and Seattle. He’s also the same guy who authored a four homer game against Atlanta last season. Will he display similar power this season? Who knows? He’s a year older, after all. But I have no doubt that his power will have an impact.
This move represents Reds management finally making an admission: the Reds can’t keep trying to win modern baseball games with 14 singles and a dash of hope. The club needed thump. Suárez provides that and, in the process, he really changes everything about this lineup. Maybe an opposing manager won’t be so quick to pitch around Elly De La Cruz in a tense situation. Maybe the Reds won’t have to hope to string together hits to score runs in bunches. Maybe the pitching staff won’t have to hold the other team to one run every day to give the club a fighting chance.
Of course, I’m excited because it’s Geno, but there are obvious caveats, and I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending otherwise.
Suárez is not the defender he used to be at third, which is why the Reds can use him as a frequent DH and sprinkle in work at first and third. He also still strikes out a lot. The on-base percentage is not what I’d like to see. Geno is not a perfect player; he’s more like a specialized tool. But here’s the part that makes all of that feel manageable: it’s really a very small commitment, one year at $15 million, with a mutual option for 2027. That is exactly the kind of risk profile the Reds should be using when the goal is to add impact without handcuffing the future.
So I’m ready for some good vibes. And the very existence of this deal is a small, meaningful counterpunch to the winter we just watched unfold.
The Reds, alas, are never going to live in the Kyle Schwarber neighborhood, even if they pretended to go after the kid from Middletown this off-season. I’ve given up all hope that the Reds, under current management, will ever go all-in to try to win a championship. So if we’re not going to live in that neighborhood, then can we at least live in the neighborhood where Cincinnati acquires guys we want to root for? Guys who make the summer more fun?
And, credit where credit is (barely) due: the Reds pushed payroll above what we’d been led to expect, despite the continued weirdness and uncertainty around the local TV money. They did it to obtain a player that actually moves the needle on the club’s chances of being competitive. When’s the last time they acquired a player who moved the needle?
It’s so easy to forget that the Reds made the playoffs last year, mostly because they were so embarrassingly bad in their brief appearance under the October lights. It was the “cockroach season,” the one where they kept crawling out from under the fridge no matter how many times the baseball gods tried to stomp them. They were a flawed team who couldn’t compete on the biggest stage…but they were not a bad team.
Is it possible that they are now poised to take the next step?
I’m not going to bet the ranch on it but the path, while narrow, is not imaginary. The Reds are competing against the Cubs and the Brewers, after all. They don’t need to be the 1927 Yankees. They need to be a team that is more consistent, that avoids week-long tailspins, the team that punishes mistakes instead of making so many of them. And they, quite simply, need to score more runs.
Suárez helps with that immediately. Now you can squint and see a team that could score runs in bunches. We’ll have a healthy Elly De La Cruz, and my biggest prediction for 2026 is that Elly takes the next step to superstardom this year. (More of that in a future newsletter). And what if Noelvi Marte continues to develop while Sal Stewart comes into his own? We saw glimpses of greatness in both those players last year. Yes, I’m leaning into hope here, and hope is not a strategy. But you can see it, right?
If nothing else, perhaps the Geno signing will change the emotional experience of watching the Reds this summer. When you’ve been living on 2–1 and 3–2 games, when you’ve been trying to win in the margins every single night, a three-run homer feels like a dream come true. Maybe we’ll see more of that soon.
So yes: this is a homecoming story. It’s also a baseball story. The Reds don’t need Suárez to be perfect. They need him to do the thing he’s always done at his best: show up, smile, and punish any baseballs that wander into his swing path. They need him to make it harder to pitch to Elly. They need him to make it easier for the pitching staff and Tito Francona to just breathe.
That’s why the Reds need him. I need him, perhaps most of all, to remind me why exactly I spend so much time watching this hapless franchise.
Over the years, I’ve had to accept that, often, the best version of Cincinnati baseball is about more than the final record. It’s been about the characters in this drama (or tragedy, more like it). It’s been about joy over the beauty of this game, and about the feeling that, on any night, a player I love might do something fun or ridiculous, and I feel glad I stayed up for it.
Suárez brings that back the moment he walks into the clubhouse. The “good vibes only” guy is home. The lineup looks more dangerous on paper than it did last February. The Reds are coming off a playoff season. The division is there to be grabbed by someone who gets hot. If the cockroaches are coming back in 2026, it helps to have one who hits the ball 450 feet.
Good vibes only. Let’s do this.
What’s Chad Watching?
Over the weekend, I watched two fun movies that I want to recommend to you. They won’t be Oscar winners, but they represent something I think we’ve lost. Years ago, we would have had films like these debuting in theaters every other week. Fun thrill rides that aren’t expected to make a billion dollars or win awards or spawn sequels. Just a great time at the movies.
The first was “Shelter,” the latest by Jason Statham. Plot: A man living in self-imposed exile on a remote island rescues a young girl from a violent storm, setting off a chain of events that forces him out of seclusion to protect her from enemies tied to his past.
Yes, it sounds like a typical Statham movie and yes — SPOILER ALERT — he does beat up a lot of bad guys. But it has a sweetness and emotion to it that I loved. But yes, I also love when Jason Statham beats up a lot of bad guys.
(I guess I need to update my Jason Statham Hall of Fame now.)
The other film, I was not able to watch in theaters. Because it’s not in theaters, which really stinks because I will never stop touting the theatrical experience. It’s on Netflix, and it’s the latest from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, “The Rip.” Plot: Trust frays when a team of Miami cops discovers millions in cash inside a run-down stash house, calling everyone — and everything — into question.
I encourage you to watch them both, and I encourage Hollywood to make more films like this. Pure entertainment.
congrats, reds fans
Well said, Chad