The Cincinnati Reds have Elly De La Cruz entrenched at shortstop, so much so that they moved fellow shortstop (and former 1st round pick) Matt McLain off the position altogether. Elly’s special defensively,
even though he’s had far too many lapses in his first two and a half seasons, but his athleticism, age, and arm strength suggest the Reds are going to give him plenty more time to grow into the key defensive spot on the infield.
Yet here I am, tossing out Washington Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams as a potential trade target for the Reds. What exactly am I on about?
Abrams, who just turned 25, is a former 1st round pick of the San Diego Padres who was flipped to the Nationals as part of the major package that sent superstar Juan Soto the other direction. The piece, by many estimations, as he ranked as a Top 10 overall prospect before the 2022 season by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline (Baseball Prospectus had him at #11). Since taking over as a full-time player for the Nats in 2023, he’s posted a combined 105 OPS+ while averaging 19 homers and 36 steals per season – and again, he just turned 25 in October.
He’s even seen a few things continue to improve along the way. His wOBA has risen from .306 to .322 to .324, and his wRC+ (91 to 106 to 107) has risen gradually, too. Inching up, too, has been his OPS+ (94 to 108 to 111), with each of these trios representing the 2023, 2024, and 2025 seasons.
That’s a good player, and Baseball Reference knows it – he’s been valued at 3.5 bWAR, 3.4 bWAR, and 3.4 bWAR in those respective seasons, with FanGraphs a slightly more tepid at 2.3 fWAR, 1.9 fWAR, and 3.1 fWAR in those same years. A 20/30 player perennially while never once playing at over age 24 just yet, and he’s got team control for each of the next three seasons…why in the world would any team put that on the trade block?
As the good folks at MLB Trade Rumors opined on Thursday, all is not well within the Nats organization, and hasn’t been for a bit now. They canned manager Dave Martinez during the season and finally fired longtime GM Mike Rizzo, as the Stephen Strasburg contract/injury fiasco and inability to pick up the winning after Soto’s departure has left this franchise in flux. Washington lost 96 games during the 2025 season, former #2 overall pick Dylan Crews has not yet taken off, and their farm system ranked just 23rd overall in MLB Pipeline’s midseason rankings.
In other words, a deeper, darker rebuild may well be in order for the Nats, and that means considering deals for guys who likely won’t still be under team control when they finally get back to respectability once again. That means Mackenzie Gore has seen his name in trade rumors already this offseason, and Abrams is getting that treatment as one of their other marquee names with dwindling team control.
Why the Reds, though? Why would they make a move for Abrams right now?
The lede-burying I’ve done here is to get you this far before diving into just how poor Abrams’ defense has been at shortstop. Statcast graded him as the second-worst defender at short in the game during the 2025 season (-9 per Fielding Run Value), and over the 2023-2025 period he’s far and away the worst at his position (-31, with JP Crawford second worst at just -15). He’s got speed, as evidenced by his stolen base production, but his range and arm simply have not translated into being a viable option at short at all.
So, he’s a guy you’d ideally acquire and move off the position, and that’s something the Cincinnati Reds have made a habit of doing to just about every player they’ve ever brought in during the Nick Krall era.
Abrams has a grand total of 3 games played in the outfield in his career, all coming during his rookie 2022 season with San Diego when Ha-Seong Kim was busy putting up a 5.0 bWAR season as their stalwart shortstop. He similarly played 13 games at 2B that year for the same reason, but has spent every other game since then at either shortstop or DH. So, a team like the Reds (with a resident shortstop already there) would a) have to give up a significant package to acquire Abrams while b) immediately moving him to a position he’s not really ever played.
Again, though, this is what they did with Noelvi Marte on the fly! They pretty much did it with Sal Stewart, too!
Moving Abrams down the defensive spectrum should, in theory, alleviate the biggest drain on his value, but simply getting him out of the Nationals home ball park could well unlock him a bit, too. During the 2025 season he hit just 4 homers with a .602 OPS in his home games, but swatted 15 on the road with a .288/.345/.548 line (.893 OPS). His 2024 told a similar story – just a .667 OPS with 9 homers at home, but an .816 OPS with 11 dingers on the road.
Conveniently enough, Nationals Park ranked as the 17th best park for homers for left-handed hitters during the 2025 season (per Statcast’s Park Factors) after ranking 15th the season prior. Great American Ball Park, however, ranked as the top ball park for lefties in terms of dingers in 2024 while ranking second in 2025, and we all know it was built with cozy dimensions for lefties so that Ken Griffey, Jr. could chase the all-time dinger record.
If – and it’s an admittedly big if – the Reds feel they could find ways to get him time at 2B, maybe even 3B, in a corner OF spot, or potentially even in CF, adding a lefty bat like Abrams’ and putting him in their home ball park may well be the kind of addition that could augment itself far beyond what the back of his baseball card has said prior to this. He’s projected to earn some $5.3 million in arbitration in 2026 with team control through 2028, so he’s hardly a pre-arb guy who wouldn’t impact the bottom line, but even with the expected raises he’d receive on that he’d be a player entering his prime who’d be making just about as much per year as the Reds have thrown (combined) at Tommy Pham, Wil Myers, and Austin Hays to be bats who can hit 20 homers in the middle of their lineup in recent seasons.
Plus, of course, the obvious upside.
Acquiring Abrams wouldn’t come easily, however. We’re talking multiple top prospects – a Lowder, a Collier, an Arroyo in some combination – but the concept is one that the Reds surely should be considering given the apparent availability and the lack of other affordable options in free agency (or on other rebuilding clubs) that look like as much of a fit.
What say you?
