Anyone who has followed the Cincinnati Reds closely over the last decade deserves both a stiff drink and the acknowledgement that this discussion may stir up some long, lost memories you’d hoped to forget forever. I hate needing to add that preface, but folks, we’re about to dig up some skeletons regarding the team’s attempts at solving their 3B problem.
The hot corner, specifically for a club determined to keep its costs and payroll in the lower third of Major League Baseball every year, has been
an abject disaster for years running.
You can roll the clock back a full decade, if you’d like. Back in the summer of 2016, the Reds jumped at the chance to draft Nick Senzel out of the University of Tennessee with the #2 overall pick, a player who had potential positional versatility yet was primarily a 3B coming up through the minors. Of course, as his prospect status soared the Reds boxed him out of the chance to take over at third, instead choosing to ink established 3B star Eugenio Suárez a 7-year, $66 million extension in early 2018 to keep him at 3B.
They moved Senzel to CF, and that didn’t work. Then, they reached to sign 3B Mike Moustakas to a 4-year, $64 million deal in late 2019 under the ruse that he’d be able to magically figure out 2B on the fly in his age-31 season, and that didn’t work, either.
Cincinnati had sunk the #2 overall pick and $130 million worth of contracts into players who, by all accounts, should have been playing 3B. Yet by the middle of 2023, all three of those players had been jettisoned by the club as its failures necessitated another rebuilding effort, one that eventually led them to signing Jeimer Candelario to a 3-year, $45 million deal to be their 3B as the emerged back into contention.
That brought the total to $175 million (and the signing bonus for a #2 pick) in attempts at solving 3B. Canderlario, you’ll recall, posted -1.6 bWAR and a brutal 78 OPS+ before being jettisoned early in 2025, at which point in time the Reds sent actual prospect Sammy Stafura to Pittsburgh to acquire 3B Ke’Bryan Hayes and the remainder of the roughly ~$38 million owed to him over the life of his contract in their surprise push to make the postseason.
Hayes has been the single worst hitter on the planet for the better part of three full years. His back injury has kept him sidelined just enough to not make that matter quite so much, and he’s now over 30 himself. I began to think this wasn’t going to work out the day they surprisingly announced they’d made this move in the first place, and now it’s pretty easy to point out that it’s simply not working, either.
A club that can’t find a way to land Kyle Schwarber or sign Elly De La Cruz to a long-term contract extension has doled out roughly $220 million to 3B options over the last decade in one of the most futile attempts at solving the position I can fathom. That’s before you factor in that they went back to Suárez for $15 million more in 2026 to initially be their DH, but the movings and shaking on their roster as the team crumbled into the cellar meant Geno ended up playing in 50 games (with 49 starts) at the hot corner during this most recent season.
Geno’s a free agent, again, despite the only team with whom he’s ever actually signed a big league contract being the Reds. Once again, the Reds head into an offseason where they need to solve 3B despite the running total for the last decade pushing over $235 million.
*****************************************************************************************
All of this – every last bit of it – is a Sal Stewart reference.
Sal, who is still just 22 years old, played in 38 games from August 17th through the end of the 2026 season, nd he didn’t play a single inning as the Reds 3B. All but two of those appearances came as the team’s 1B despite them residing in last place in the NL Central (and out of the Wild Card race entirely) throughout, many of which came despite Hayes being sidelined with the same chronic back injury that has plagued him for years.
This all after Sal, who is still just 23 years old, played 3B in 203 of the 323 games in which he participated at the minor league level after being drafted in the 1st round of the 2022 MLB Draft.
Hayes was hurt. Geno was a free agent waiting to be. The Reds were in last, they were giving time in the outfield to the likes of Carlos Jorge and Hector Rodriguez, and Sal was hitting his way to the Rookie of the Year Award after having been an All Star in July. Still, the Reds found it suitable to park their most promising young player at 1B despite him having shown ability at the more valuable 3B.
1B, it should be noted, is a position that can seemingly be filled at will these days. Nate Lowe, for instance, was picked up off the scrap heap on a minor league contract despite closing strong with Boston in 2025 and a lengthy track record offensively, defensively, and even in World Series play. Ty France and Jake Bauers were similarly picked up from the compost bin within the last two seasons. Shopping there seems to be precisely the place to find bargains when needed, yet as the Reds have shown solving 3B is something that takes a whole lot more nuance.
Yet there things were, all set up for Sal to get experience at the highest level doing what he’s done most throughout a professional progression that landed him in the All Star Game and with Rookie hardware at season’s end, and the Reds simply didn’t find a way to let him play 3B anymore.
I don’t know what they’ll do with Hayes. I do know – they’ll continue to play him and hope he magically figures out something he’s never figured out before – but I do know the time to cut him and move on was so, so long ago and he’s still around for whatever reason. What I also know, though, is that the best way to get the most out of this incredibly mis-managed roster while Elly is still on it is to hand 3B to Sal, let him cement the best left-side of the infield the Reds have had in ages, and find a solution at 1B in fashion cheaper than the quarter-billion they’ve wasted at 3B at some point this winter.
Maybe he’ll stumble. Maybe he’ll fail altogether. But given how many damn chances the front office has had to solve 3B – and how many of those they’ve failed at miserably – it’s the least that the kid deserves at this juncture. You ride, you die with him because you’ve backed yourself into a corner where there’s nothing else in the pipeline, and maybe, just maybe, you find out he’s actually equipped enough to make it worth everyone’s while.
You don’t just give up and park him at 1B at age 22. That’s chickenshit stuff.
Sal Stewart deserves the chance to show he can be the 3B of the present and the future regardless of who’s still around from bad decisions made before he got here. If he fails the Reds are out nothing, yet if he succeeds he’s made the job of his otherwise incompetent bosses infinitely easier for years going forward.
It’s just that simple.
