The season is over, the tee-times are booked, and the players who are the fuel and backbone of Major League Baseball are beginning their rest after the grueling eight-ish months of the daily grind.
It also
flirted with 32 degrees where I am this morning, and the hot stove season has officially begun.
The Cincinnati Reds enter this winter with a number of needs despite having seen their once young roster mature into a club capable of actually sneaking into the playoffs. But to actually advance in the playoffs, they’re going to need more than what they had, and free agency has already claimed a good portion of the roster that got them there in the first place.
Gone are Nick Martinez and Emilio Pagan, to begin, as well as deadline additions Miguel Andujar and Zack Littell. Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut were effectively cut. When the option decisions come down this week, they’ll also lose Austin Hays, with both Scott Barlow and Brent Suter potentially out the door, too.
That’s a huge portion of their bullpen from the 2025 season that needs replacing, while losing Hays and Andujar from an already frail offense puts another huge dent in the roster. How the Reds address that remains to be seen, of course, though the idea that it’ll be done frugally is more or less gospel around here. With that in mind, here are some early looks at who might be out there on the market for them to acquire this offseason, as well as a list of names before those names that will undoubtedly cost more than they’re willing to spend.
Over at The Athletic, Keith Law has put together his list of the Top 50 free agents for this offseason. Names that would fit the Reds roster perfectly like Kyle Tucker, Bo Bichette, Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, and Kyle Schwarber all rank near the top here, showing just how much depth there is at the top of this particular class of free agent hitters. Of course, none of those guys will come cheap, and that’s precisely how you have to become a Cincinnati Red with this ownership group, so you might need to scroll on down to the Ryan O’Hearns of the list before getting realistic, and likely all the way to Paul Goldschmidt and Andujar before even beginning to get your sugars up.
The fine folks at MLB Trade Rumors released their list of the Top 40 trade candidates for this 2025-2026 offseason, and interestingly enough that’s a list where pitchers dominate the top in an almost perfectly inverse way from how hitters dominated the aforementioned free agent list. Dualism, yin and yang, wonderful complements! It’s a list featuring a lot of players from teams entering rebuilds (read: the St. Louis Cardinals and Minnesota Twins) and those who don’t like paying players they won’t sign long-term (read: the Rays and Guardians), as well as one Brady Singer (at #17) due to his dwindling team control and Reds depth at starting pitcher. It’s an interesting list filled with names who’d make the Reds better, though there are a lot of high-priced former stars on there who could be landmines, too.
Finally, the folks over at MLB.com dropped their list of the Top 30 free agents this winter, a list that all but says the Reds should really sign Kyle Schwarber in a true and just world, but there’s likely no way in hell that’s actually going to play out. Or, it says something like that. They also put together a comprehensive list of all free agents this winter that includes positional breakdown and total fWAR accumulated dating back to the start of the 2024 season.
Now’s the time of the offseason to get your hopes up, Reds fans, even if you know deep down (or pretty shallow down at this point) that it’s likely going to end up being a winter of we just need to get some guys back healthy and for them to take another step forward.
