I don’t believe the entirety of Jake Fraley’s career with the Cincinnati Reds should be defined by the final play we watched him make in the uniform. For a time after being acquired from the Seattle Mariners, Fraley looked the part of an essential cog on a team like the Reds – versatile across the OF, a decent defender and baserunner, and a left-handed bat who could maybe pop 20 dingers a year if you just let him hit right-handed pitching.
Injuries have contributed to sapping his power, however, and
the last two seasons have seen him relegated to a mostly punchless bat who spends a lot of time injured. He’s playing on a torn labrum in his shoulder right now, for the record. But when he misplayed a ball in the outfield last night at a key moment in what became a 6-5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, it was hard not to wonder just how much of a future he had with the club.
Still, I didn’t expect him to be straight-up designated for assignment by the Reds today. The Reds, though, had other ideas.
Fraley and Will Benson have overlapped on a lot of rosters for awhile now, and it appears the role of ‘corner OF who hits lefty against RHP’ will be Benson’s for the rest of this year. Given that Fraley was earning some $3.3 million in 2025 in his second year of arbitration and was clearly trending towards being a non-tender at season’s end, it’s purely administrative that the Reds are making this move now.
In other words, they weren’t going to pay Fraley’s raise to be around next year, and they’ve reached the point where they think Benson is better than Fraley in enough ways in 2025 to render him roster fodder.
Fraley’s a big leaguer, and someone will roster him down the stretch in 2025 – if his injuries aren’t more severe than we currently know. He’s just reached the point where nobody’s going to pay him more than he’s already making, and they aren’t going to let his skillset serve as a roadblock for other hitters if they emerge.
The Reds, also, need a spark, and Benson has a penchant for being that spark. Maybe, just maybe, this will catch a little lightning in a bottle for the Reds, even if Benson’s not in the starting lineup on Sunday with lefty Jose Quintana on the mound for Milwaukee.
