Shortly after one of the Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays, Milwaukee Brewers, or (gasp) Los Angeles Dodgers wins this year’s World Series, Emilio Pagan will once again find himself a free agent.
Signed
to a two-year, $16 million deal prior to the start of the 2024 season, Pagan became the closer of the Cincinnati Reds in 2025 after Alexis Diaz completely fumbled that bag, and he went on to have a pretty damn convincing season as the anchor at the back of Cincinnati’s playoff-bound bullpen. He picked up 32 saves (topping his previous career high of 20 back in 2019 with Tampa), posted a career-best mark in H/9 (a meager 5.4), and established himself as one of the go-to arms any team would’ve loved to have had on the mound late in games in 2025.
He’ll be 35 next year, and that’s got him thinking. And as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed, Pagan’s still thinking about more time in Cincinnati.
He’s game for running it back with this group of Redlegs, who he says is capable of hoisting a World Series trophy given all the talent in their dugout. He’s probably right, assuming the front office spends what limited resources it has this winter on the right kind of complementary pieces to what’s already in-house.
The list of things they need is long, however. They need offense, as theirs sputtered terribly down the stretch this season. A corner outfielder to replace (and build on) what Austin Hays accomplished last year is pretty paramount. They also need, of course, a bullpen ahead of the closer they also need to replace, as the likes of Scott Barlow and Brent Suter could well be free agents pending option decisions, too.
Whether or not Pagan ends up part of those plans will be a huge portion of what Cincinnati can accomplish this winter, as he pretty well earned a raise over what he’d already been making these last two seasons. Nick Krall will be tasked with deciding whether 2025 was Pagan’s peak at age 34, and whether investing further funds into a guy getting up in age is worth the risk that he either declines gradually (or slips right back to the 98 ERA+ guy he was in his first year in Cincinnati).
In other news, Rhett Lowder looked awesome in his Arizona Fall League debut on Friday, throwing 21 strikes out of the 23 overall pitches he threw while fanning a trio of opponents in 2.0 IP. That’s a huge next step in his way back to being a viable option for the Reds come Opening Day 2026, as the departure of Nick Martinez into his own free agency opens a route for the likes of Lowder to seize a spot in the team’s starting rotation.
Over at ESPN, Bradford Doolittle broke down where the Reds stand after having been eliminated from postseason play by the damn Dodgers. His prediction may get your sugars up a bit, though I still don’t think what he suggests is going to happen at all.
Finally, the Dodgers and Brewers renew their rivalry this evening in Game 1 of the NLCS in Milwaukee. Game time is set for 8 PM ET (with coverage on TBS), and here’s more from the MLB.com crew on the start of what should be a pretty damn entertaining series. Unless, of course, the Dodgers actually win.
