Earlier this month Tejay Antone was one of 20 minor league players for the Cincinnati Reds who reached free agency. The right-handed reliever missed most of the 2025 season as he worked his way back from a third Tommy John surgery, but was able to get on the mound for Dayton, Chattanooga, and Louisville for 15 appearances from mid-August through the end of the minor league season in late September. Antone, though, is no longer a free agent. He is back with the Reds for 2026 according to a post he shared on Instagram. Mark Sheldon of Reds.com is reporting that it’s a minor league deal and while the sides have agreed, the contract has not officially been signed yet.
In 2025 the rehab appearances in Dayton went quite well for Tejay Antone. He pitched in five games, threw 6.1 innings, allowed one run, walked two batters, and had eight strikeouts. His first rehab outing with Double-A Chattanooga went well, too, as he threw a shutout inning of work.
Things took a turn in the wrong direction after that. His next three outings with the Lookouts saw him give up 10 runs while recording just two outs in each game and saw him walk more batters (four) than he struck out (three). Cincinnati moved him up to Triple-A despite those struggles, and in his first two outings with the Bats he gave up two runs in each game while striking out just one of the 14 hitters that he faced. In three of the final four games of the year he threw a shutout inning. But in the other outing he allowed two runs in 0.2 innings.
The sample size was small for Antone on what was basically a 5-week rehab stint for him coming back from a third Tommy John surgery and having not pitched in a game since April of 2024, and only having thrown 13.1 total innings since 2021. With that said, he struggled.
The numbers are what they are. But the context is important, too.
But what did the stuff look like for Tejay Antone in 2025? We only have pitch tracking data from his appearances in Louisville, but he averaged 94.5 on his 4-seamer and 93.1 on his sinker. This season he also added a new pitch – a cutter in the low 90’s.
When Antone was at his best his fastball was about 2.5 MPH faster than it was this season, and he wasn’t throwing a sinker at all (though he threw it a lot in the minor leagues before he got to the big leagues). He’s still throwing plenty hard enough, though, and topped out around 97 MPH in 2025. His curveball doesn’t seem like it’s quite where it was before this last surgery. The slider is a bit closer, in my eyes at least, to where it was before this last arm issue.
There’s probably not much risk at all for the Reds to bring Tejay Antone back. That is especially true if he is coming back on a minor league deal. Given what he’s done in the past, if he can get even sort of close to that, there’s plenty of upside in play. Perhaps with a non-rehabbing offseason ahead of him he can return in February and be a bit sharper, a bit stronger, a bit more prepared. And if things don’t work out, little is lost.
