The Cincinnati Reds offseason focus: The bullpen or the offense?

No real free agents have signed yet but the Cincinnati Reds have already told the public that they aren’t going to be raising payroll for 2026 from where it was in 2025. Not exactly the best way to kick off the offseason for a team that barely finished over the .500 mark even though they did make the playoffs in a year where you were either real good or mediocre to terrible.

Depending on who you ask and where you look you will get a different answer on how much money the Reds actually have to spend if they keep the payroll the same. Just yesterday ESPN’s Jeff Passan noted that the perfect move for the Reds would be to sign Kyle Schwarber and that they have the money for it (while also noting that they probably won’t do it because “they are the Reds”). But Charlie Goldsmith of Fox19 says that the team will have about $15-20M to spend. That surely isn’t enough to sign Schwarber, and seems a bit lower than what others have estimated should be available based on public knowledge of 2026 payroll commitments and the payroll “staying the same”.

That brings us around to where the Reds should focus their money, regardless of how much little is there. Assuming there are no trades the two biggest things the team needs is to add some offense and to replace guys in the bullpen. If Goldsmith is right about how much money is available to spend it seems like there’s nowhere near enough to even do one of those things, much less both.

The bullpen lost closer Emilio Pagan. They are also losing Scott Barlow, Brent Suter, and whatever part of Nick Martinez you want to attribute to the bullpen. Pagan performed very well, while the other three were about league average at preventing runs. On top of just that, though, all four guys were healthy all season long. That has plenty of value on it’s own because it means you don’t have to replace them with guys from Triple-A who probably aren’t as good (or they would be in the big leagues already).

That leaves Tony Santillan (2.44 ERA, 73.2 innings) and  Graham Ashcraft (3.99 ERA, 65.1 innings) as the only returning relievers who threw 40 innings last year. Lyon Richardson  (4.54 ERA, 37.2 innings) is the only other returning reliever who threw more than 25 innings.

There are some internal options for the Reds to add some arms. Connor Phillips threw exactly 25.0 innings last year for Cincinnati (2.88 ERA). Luis Mey and Zach Maxwell both found some success, but were inconsistent. They also have Keegan Thompson, who they signed last week after he spent the entire 2025 season in Triple-A.

No one in that group should be counted on to be as good as the group that hit free agency. The Reds were built on pitching in 2025 – they had the best ERA+ in Major League Baseball (ERA+ is the team ERA after it’s been adjusted for the ballparks they pitched in throughout the year). A lot of that came from a very good rotation, but the bullpen held their own, too. Finding a way to bring in a few guys who are at least average is going to be necessary.

At the same time, the offense needs a jolt. Maybe you can get some of that from Sal Stewart, who joined the team in September after crushing the ball in Double-A and Triple-A during the first five months of the season. And maybe you get some improvements from whoever is replacing Santiago Espinal on the roster. Perhaps Matt McLain’s shoulder injury is recovered even more and his bat improves some. But even if all of those things happen, the offense would still likely be below-average without adding a starting caliber player who is an above-average hitter.

While guys do sign short term deals looking for a bounce back type of year and sometimes they do indeed bounce back, that’s not exactly a good plan. Unfortunately that seems to have been the Reds plan for the most part for the last decade. Of course when they’ve tried to go bigger than that, they’ve mostly been unsuccessful with the likes of Mike Moustakas, Jeimer Candelario, and to a lesser extent Nick Castellanos who was around for two seasons and was bad in one of them.

The thing is, though, that to get a quality bat in free agency that you should have confidence in performing well – it’s going to cost you what Goldsmith says is the entirety of they money the club has available.

There’s always the trade market, but if you do make some trades it could open up other areas that need fixing if you are trading from the big league roster. The farm system isn’t as deep as it once was, but the top 10 is still of quality and could bring back quality if Cincinnati’s front office does want to go that route.

If you are reading this, then you’ve probably got a familiar feeling. The Reds have several spots on the roster that require upgrades and they don’t seem like they have anywhere near the amount of money to make that happen. It’s likely going to require plenty of luck, some smart decisions,  and the threading of a needle to get the job done in the way that Cincinnati feels like they plan to go about their offseason.