Cincinnati Reds pick up pitching depth, sign Taylor Floyd

The Cincinnati Reds have added a little bit of pitching depth, signing right-handed pitcher Taylor Floyd. The now former Seattle Mariners minor league pitcher signed a minor league deal with Cincinnati this week.

In 2025 Taylor Floyd pitched in 48 games out of the bullpen and threw 57.2 innings for Double-A Arkansas. This was his only season with Seattle, having pitched previously with the Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers farm systems. With Arkansas in 2025 he posted a 4.53 ERA, which was a bump up from where it was in Double-A Wichita in 2024 where his ERA was 4.04.

Floyd isn’t a hard thrower, working in the 88-90 MPH range with his fastball. But he’s got a good slider and change up to work with and gets plenty of swings and misses with his secondary stuff. After having some big concerns with control in the first few seasons of the minor leagues he’s really cut down on the walks over the last three years and had his best walk rate ever in 2025. If he can find a little extra on his fastball he could become an interesting guy in the minors to keep an eye on next year.

Last season saw his hit rate jump up, and his home run rate also jumped up. His strikeout rate also jumped up – at least in comparison to 2024. Earlier in his career he was a big groundball rate guy, but over the last three years he’s merely been a little bit above-average at generating grounders.

You can see the career stats for Taylor Floyd here.

Cincinnati’s depth in the minor leagues took a pretty big hit in free agency earlier this month. 20 players left the organization – mostly from the Double-A and Triple-A teams. Of those 20 players that elected free agency, 15 of them were pitchers. Tejay Antone re-signed with the team already, but that still leaves a whole lot of roster spots that the team is going to have to fill out.

Taylor Floyd

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