We are still a bit away from the start of free agency, which doesn’t begin until a day after the World Series ends. But even then it isn’t quite free agency season as teams have five days from that point to have exclusive negotiators with players who are now free agents who were also on their team this past season. After that time is up if players have not agreed to a new contract then they can become true free agents and negotiate with all teams unless they are extended a qualifying offer during that. I don’t remember the last time a player agreed to a new deal before testing the true free agent waters within that 5-day “exclusive negotiating” period of time.
The Cincinnati Reds have a few players who are set to become free agents in the next two weeks. We started this series earlier this week when we looked at Miguel Andujar and whether the team should try and bring him back. Today we’re going to take a similar approach and look at how the team should approach things with Emilio Pagan.
Just over two years ago the Cincinnati Reds signed Pagan to a 2-year deal at $16,000,000 where he would make half of that in 2024 and the other half in 2025. He was coming off of a season with Minnesota in 2023 where he had a 2.99 ERA in 69.1 innings for the Twins.
Emilio Pagan’s two years in Cincinnati were very similar to his final two years in Minnesota. His second to last season with the Twins saw him post a 4.43 ERA. In 2024 with the Reds he posted a 4.50 ERA. That final year with Minnesota he had a 2.99 ERA and this past season in Cincinnati he had a 2.88 ERA.
The 2024 season was a bit of a disappointing one for Pagan. He missed some time while on the injured list and only threw 38.0 innings and appeared in just 38 games after averaging over 60 appearances a season in the three previous years. He allowed more hits than he had innings pitched and he gave up more home runs than he did in 2023 despite throwing 31.1 fewer innings.
Things made a big turn around in 2025, though. Pagan saw his ERA drop to 2.88 – the second best of his career (2019) – in his 70 games and 68.2 innings. He would give up one more hit than he did in 2024 but threw 30.2 more innings. Pagan did that while maintaining a good walk rate and a strong strikeout rate, handing out 22 free passes and striking out 81 batters. All of that also came while he was picking up a career high 32 saves for the Reds during the year.
You can see the career stats for Emilio Pagan here.
The Qualifying Offer
This year the qualifying offer in Major League Baseball is $22,025,000 for a 1-year contract.
Cincinnati made a qualifying offer last year to Nick Martinez and he accepted it (at a slightly lower price). That made him the only player to accept a qualifying offer last year around Major League Baseball.
So the question at hand is should the Reds extend a qualifying offer again this season and should it be for Emilio Pagan? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that no closer makes that much money per season and while Pagan was quite good in 2025 he doesn’t have a long, proven track record of being the kind of reliever that a team should hand out that kind of deal to – even if it is just for one season. Relievers simply don’t throw enough innings for that kind of thing in nearly any case, but especially a case when the team in question doesn’t spend much money overall.
Should the Reds bring him back?
This is a very different question than the one above. Cincinnati shouldn’t give Emilio Pagan $22,025,000 for one season. But that does not mean that they should write him off as a player they should look to sign.
When the 2026 season starts, Pagan will be 34-years-old. He will turn 35 in early May, though, so he is going to be in his “age 35” season next year. At his age he’s going to be looking at what’s likely his last multi-year deal. And coming off of a season where he proved he could close, he will probably get a little more money than he otherwise would have even if his “stuff” doesn’t profile as an elite-level closer.
It seems likely that he will get a raise from the $8,000,000 per year he made while with the Reds over the last two seasons. The question is how much? Given the inconsistency of his career, his age, and the lack of what is considered “closer stuff”, it probably won’t be too much more than that and the deal won’t likely be for more than a few years.
The Reds don’t exactly have a lot of reliable options for the bullpen in 2026. Tony Santillan is returning and he’s thrown 159 games for Cincinnati since 2021 and has a career 3.02 ERA. After that there’s not much reliability in the bullpen. That’s not to say there’s not potential there – Graham Ashcraft has had some success in the past, Connor Phillips had some success in 2025, the team has more starters than spots in the rotation if everyone is healthy and they could get creative there if they wanted to – but the team certainly could use a reliable reliever pick up for 2026 given how things look right now.
It’s probably a fair question to ask if Emilio Pagan is actually a “reliable reliever”, though. In two of the last three years his ERA has been just under 3.00. But in two of the last four years it’s been over 4.40. In three of the last five it’s been over 4.40. In four of the last six it’s been over 4.40.
The 2025 season is more important than the 2024 season is more important than the 2023 season is more important than the 2022 season. And so on. More recent data is more valuable than older data. But there is something interesting when looking at something very specific with regards to Emilio Pagan – his fastball velocity.
In his career he’s had an ERA below 3.00 three times in his nine seasons. In those three seasons his fastball averaged 95+ MPH. In five of the other six seasons his fastball velocity was below 95.0 MPH. Only in 2022 was his ERA over 3.00 and his velocity on his fastball over 95.0.
In three of the last four years he’s been over 95 MPH and in the one season he wasn’t he missed a good chunk of time with an injury and rebounded the next year. So perhaps there’s a bit more of a reason to think that he could be a “reliable reliever” for the near term future if we are going to look at just this.
That isn’t the only thing we should be looking at, though. Diving into some other things we can see that when Pagan has been very good in his career it’s been when his BABIP was very low. For his career he has a BABIP that’s well below league average, so there’s probably something he is doing and capable of repeating over a longer period of time to reduce hits on balls in play against him. But in years where things don’t quite work out that way and his BABIP is near league average or higher he’s struggled and even in some years when he was much better than the league average with his BABIP he still wasn’t exactly good at keeping runs off of the board.
One reason for that is that for his career he’s given up home runs at a high rate. He’s an extreme fly ball pitcher. Fly balls don’t go for hits as often as grounders do. But when fly balls do turn into hits they are for extra-bases a lot more. And as we know – grounders never turn into home runs, while fly balls have turned into home runs 13% of the time in Pagan’s career.
With that said, his home run per fly ball rate was much higher from 2017-2022 than it has been since 2023 began. Since 2023 his rate is just 9%, while the league average has been 12%. Pagan does give up a lot more fly balls than the league, though, and as such his home runs allowed per 9-innings pitched is a bit closer to league average in this time because of it.
There’s a lot going on with Emilio Pagan and whether he can continue to be effective. Can he keep his BABIP low like he has in his career? Will his home run rate be more like it has been over the past three years instead of where it was earlier in his career? At age 35 can he maintain his stuff for the several years it will likely take to re-sign him? Does the dollar and year commitment make sense for the Reds?
The upside with bringing back Emilio Pagan is that he can do all of those things and you get a repeat or close to it of what you got in 2025. That’s quite valuable to have. But is that a realistic expectation? That’s a lot tougher to say given that he’s had some inconsistencies throughout his career when it comes to his ability to prevent runs. And that’s where the downside comes in – he just hasn’t been able to consistently prevent runs from season to season. A lot of relievers can’t do that. It’s why elite closers get paid a lot of money and just about every other reliever doesn’t. The guys who show that they can do it every year are the guys teams have faith in and are willing to write big checks to for multiple years. There just aren’t that many guys out there who fit that profile.
