Should the Cincinnati Reds be sellers? Buyers?

We are still quite a bit away from the trade deadline, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of talk from both the local and national media about the trades that should be made. Two weeks ago Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about how he believed the Reds should be sellers at the trade deadline. Two days later Cincinnati’s general manager Brad Meador pushed back on that idea – at least for the time being. And then earlier this week we saw Jeff Passan of ESPN write about how with June upon us teams began to start making calls to just gauge what everyone else might be planning on, looking for, etc.

All of that brings us back to the Reds. Fast forwarding from when Wittenmyer suggested the team become sellers at the trade deadline and the front office noting it wasn’t even June yet…. well it’s June now and as Cincinnati starts their weekend series against Arizona they are in 4th place at 30-33, and 9.5 games back of the Chicago Cubs in the division and 5.0 games back in the wild card race with six teams in front of them.

For what feels like the 947th year in a row, the Cincinnati Reds haven’t been able to remain healthy. Hunter Greene just hit the injured list for the second time with a groin injury. At best he’s going to miss a month’s worth of games between his first trip and his second trip to the injured list as each stint would require a minimum of 30 days off of the mound. Austin Hays has already missed half of the season to this point. Rhett Lowder has already missed two months and he’s not close to returning. Christian Encarnacion-Strand has missed the last seven plus weeks. You get the point.

Every team deals with injuries but the Reds don’t have the depth or the star talent to carry the team if they aren’t at or near full strength. So the question is – as a team below .500 who hasn’t been able to remain healthy, has had plenty of inconsistency on offense, multiple underperforming players, and has spent nearly all season running guys out as starting outfielders who are either in Triple-A now or were in Triple-A as a 30-year-old when acquired this year, or were flat out released  – can they actually put together a run the rest of the way to win around 87 games to make a real run at the wild card?

That’s a tough sell. The pitching staff might be able to pitch well enough for that to happen if they can stay healthy and Hunter Greene returns after missing the minimum amount of time and stays on the mound through the end of the year. But anyone who has watched this team’s offense knows that it’s quite unlikely that they can handle their side of that deal as constructed. And given that teams probably aren’t trading real difference makers until the end of July, where will the Reds be by then? They need help right now, not in seven weeks.

There are possible deals that would make sense, though. If a player with some team control beyond the 2025 season becomes available, that’s something that makes far more sense for the Reds to consider making a trade for. The team, short of going on a big run, probably shouldn’t be looking at acquiring a rental. First, they just don’t really seem like a contender. But also, the type of player they need – even as a rental – would cost a lot to acquire.

There’s a time and a place to “overpay” for a rental. It’s when you are a true World Series contender. It’s not when you are a team that will be lucky to win 86 games. Anything can happen in the playoffs and the Reds certainly have the starting pitching that could match up well, but on paper the team just doesn’t seem like they can stack up with the best teams in baseball who also have good pitching, but also much deeper lineups who don’t seem to go through spans of weeks at a time where they can’t score four runs consistently.

So if the Reds probably shouldn’t be buyers, then the question becomes should they be sellers? Yes, they probably should. That’s probably a tough pill to swallow for the front office, for Terry Francona, for ownership – all of whom probably expected something different than that for 2025 when they all agreed to a contract for Francona to become the new manager.

As for what the team could look to move, the answer seems to be quite simple: Anyone over the age of 30 that’s on the team that another team might have any sort of interest in. When it comes to position players there probably isn’t one of those except Jose Trevino, but the Reds aren’t likely to move him given their catching depth in the minor leagues and the free agent catching market.

When it comes to pitching, though, the Reds could have some valuable players on that front. Nick Martinez is getting paid fairly well, but he’s also pitching quite well, too. A team looking for an ace-ish pitcher to put them over the top in the playoffs probably isn’t looking at Martinez to fill that role. But a team that simply needs a good starting pitcher to help them get to the playoffs and fill out that 3rd/4th starter role in the playoffs could probably do a lot worse than Martinez.

The relievers could draw some interest, too. Like Martinez in the rotation, none of the relievers are going to fulfill that “shut down closer” role that a team may be looking for. But teams looking to add quality depth behind their closer and maybe setup man could certainly have interest in the Emilio Pagan, Brent Suter, Taylor Rogers grouping.