The flirtation between the Cincinnati Reds and free agent slugger Kyle Schwarber appears to have been just that – a flirtation.
News broke on Tuesday morning that Schwarber will be re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies for a reported $150 million over five years, with Mark Feinsand of MLB.com doing the reporting. It’s a crushing blow to the Reds as they’ll watch the Middletown, Ohio slugger eschew coming home to anchor their burgeoning lineup and instead head back to the club where he’s had so
much success in recent seasons.
MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon helped relay the news on Bluesky.
The Reds now get to pivot into trying to add thump to a thumpless lineup in other ways, something that they’ll surely learn over and over again simply requires money to be invested in said thumping.
It won’t be fellow free agent Pete Alonso. It won’t be by simply promoting someone else from their farm system. It sure as heck won’t be from Gavin Lux, who they’ll nominally turn to as ‘DH vs. RHP’ again in 2026 in lieu of actually having a slugger like Schwarber around.
Signing Schwarber was always going to be a longshot with this ownership group, but the hype got just hot enough to where this ultimately feels like a horrible letdown despite the odds. Good luck finding a way to patch over that with some goodwill this winter, Nick Krall.
