As Friday’s deadline to tender contracts to all arbitration-eligible and pre-arb players neared, questions arose about which of the litany of players in that category would still be on the roster of the Cincinnati
Reds by day’s end.
Some 14 players who finished the 2025 season on Cincinnati’s roster were originally destined to go through the arb process, ranging from first-timers like Brandon Williamson and Matt McLain all the way up to last-timers like Brady Singer and Tyler Stephenson. Cincinnati alleviated some of that by effectively cutting both Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut over a week ago, but they found still more room to remove the bloat on Friday afternoon.
Pre-arb players Will Banfield, Roddery Muñoz, and Carson Spiers were all non-tendered by the Reds, and Cincinnati reportedly settled on a 2026 salary of up to $1.025 million with arb-eligible reliever Sam Moll. So said MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon on Bluesky.
That means potential non-tenders like Gavin Lux and Will Benson were retained, for now. Lux’s estimated salary in his final trip through the arbitration process was set at $5 million by the model created by MLB Trade Rumors, while that of Benson is at $1.7 million. Those numbers don’t become final for quite some time depending on how well the players’ agents and the Reds front office negotiate, with outcomes ranging from them going through the formal hearing process in January to them getting a multi-year contract extension signed or even to them being traded away to another team to figure out.
All this means as of today is that they’re still rostered players on the Cincinnati Reds, with the details of how much they’ll be paid set to be sorted out down the line.
