Opening Day for the Cincinnati Reds is just 11 days away, yet the current number of players they have in camp right now still far exceeds the 26 they’ll carry on their Opening Day roster. That means we’re in for some pretty aggressive rounds of cuts in the coming days, and those began in earnest this weekend.
On Sunday morning, the Reds officially reassigned veteran righty Tejay Antone to minor league camp, as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed on Bluesky.
Antone, now 32, has thrown just 7.2 IP at the big league level since the start of the 2023 season, and that’s on the heels of missing all of the 2022 season, too. He missed all of 2025 as he recovered from his third Tommy John surgery, yet was in camp this year legitimately competing for a spot in the team’s bullpen.
His velocity hasn’t yet recovered to the 97.1 mph average he sported during his breakout 2021 season, but he did reportedly touch 95 mph while in camp this spring (and his breaking stuff has show considerable life, too). In other words, this seems like as much of an administrative decision as anything as he was in camp as a non-roster invitee who’s not currently on the 40-man roster.
They did reassign him to AAA after all, not release him. That seems to me that they plan on giving him some time and reps at that level to further work his way back to being as close to 100% as possible with an eye on him potentially providing bullpen depth at the highest level at some point later in the season.
This all comes a day after the Reds made a similar call with reliever Lyon Richardson, who was also in camp as a non-roster invitee after clearing waivers earlier in the offseason. He’s another depth arm who, when right, has stuff that’s plenty capable of getting big league hitters out, but a guy on whom the Reds won’t lean until something else goes wrong in front of him.
In a very similar move, Yunior Marte was reassigned to minor league camp on Friday.
