The Christian Encarnacion-Strand era of Cincinnati Reds has come to an unceremonius close. The slugging 1B was designated for assignment back on April 8th as a way to get PJ Higgins onto the roster for catching depth in the wake of Jose Trevino’s injury, and the Reds revealed today that CES did not, in fact clear waivers.
Instead, the Reds struck a deal with the Baltimore Orioles for his services, accepting cash considerations as the return. Mark Sheldon of MLB.com relayed the news on Bluesky on Monday
afternoon.
CES joined the Reds at the 2022 trade deadline, doing so alongside pitcher Steve Hajjar and Spencer Steer in the deal that sent Tyler Mahle the other way to Minnesota. It was part of Cincinnati’s latest massive firesale as the Reds dealt away Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray, Eugenio Suarez, and Jesse Winker in other deals that calendar year (while also finally buying out the remainder of Mike Moustakas’ albatross contract). The hope was that CES would be the team’s 1B of the future with Joey Votto’s deal running down, and for a time that looked like a very real possibility.
After reaching the bigs midway through 2023, CES hit the ground running. He smashed 13 homers in just 63 games, and his 112 OPS+ led to him opening the 2024 season as the team’s 1B. It was soon revealed that he was actually trying to play through a small fracture in his wrist that had originally been overlooked, and the hope was his awful start to the year (.513 OPS in 123 PA through May 7th) was 100% due to just that. However, he’s struggled immensely ever since at the big league level as teams realized they didn’t have to throw him strikes to get him to swing, and his time with the Reds looked increasingly doomed as Sal Stewart (among others) jumped him on the right-handed hitting depth chart.
Now, though, he’ll join a Baltimore organization that just placed longtime 1B Ryan Mountcastle on the 60-day IL with a broken foot. Pete Alonso is obviously now there, but with Adley Rutschman, Heston Kjerstad, and Jackson Holliday all also out at the moment with injuries there could well be a path to some PA at the big league level through DH duties in the near term for CES.
