Reds Beat: How Reds Are Playing The Long, Boring and Smart Game This Offseason, And Why It Could Pay Off In 2026

CINCINNATI — Like it or not, the Reds are pushing forward with an offseason strategy of tweaking a roster that made the playoffs in 2025.

They are not going to spend tens of millions or commit hundreds of millions on bolstering a lineup that was in desperate need of more power last season. This may be a boring and somewhat unsatisfying process for many fans who went into the offseason with dreams of adding one more power bat to the lineup. But the Reds’ front office can’t act like fans. And to their credit, they haven’t been.

We were reminded Thursday night, as Kyle Tucker signed a four-year, $240 million contract with the Dodgers, this is not Hollywood. The Reds aren’t about to pretend it is. This is Reds Country where the big offseason celebration is RedsFest at the newly-renovated Cincinnati Convention Center this Friday and Saturday.

The Reds’ move Thursday? Two of them actually. Sign righty reliever Pierce Johnson for one-year at $6.5 million and traded away Gavin Lux and his $5.525 million salary to Tampa Bay in a three-way trade with the Los Angeles Angels and received what they think will be another valuable piece of the bullpen in lefty Brock Burke for $2.325 million in 2026.

Johnson, 34, was 3-3 with a 3.05 ERA in 65 appearances with the Braves this past season. He retired 26 consecutive batters over a span of nine outings from April 19 to May 10, the longest-such streak by any Major League reliever in 2025. Burke, 29, posted a 7-1 record with a 3.36 ERA in a career-high 69 appearances in 2025. His 69 outings were the second-most by an Angels left-hander in a season in team history, while his seven wins ranked second among all Major League left-handed relievers in 2025.

These are the moves of a team that is fine-tuning a roster they believe can make the jump from playoff qualifier in 2025 to a more serious contender this season. It’s also the kind of moves that bottom-feeding payroll teams make. That’s not being harsh. It’s reality. The Reds have added two outfielders, three relievers, brought back their free agent closer from a year ago, and traded away a high-priced utility player making over $5 million. That’s not adding Kyle Schwarber but in many ways, for a team like the Reds who just can’t realistically afford to expand their payroll like drunken sailors, those are the kind of moves that could make a difference in August, September and October.

The buzzword around baseball right now is – broken. The sport that encourages the Dodgers to add $2.3 billion in financial contracts over the last three offseasons and allows the Athletics and Rays to play in substandard minor league facilities is just out of whack. The job of Krall and Meador is to ignore the noise and not worry about what they don’t have but, instead, complement a playoff roster from a year ago.

There’s plenty of room for cynicism in a world where the Reds haven’t won a playoff game in 14 seasons and haven’t won a playoff series in 31. Krall and the Castellini family have been criticized this winter for not adding more position players than JJ Bleday and Dane Myers. Might there be more to come in terms of position player adds before spring training?

“I would hope so,” Krall said. “Over the last few weeks, we signed, JJ Bleday, we were looking at the roster, and we just looked at ‘Okay, obviously we’ve been trying to add some position players and get our position player group better,” Krall said. “But we felt this way to add a left hand reliever to continue to solidify our bullpen with where Gavin was, and adding some of the guys we did, and even guys like Sal Stewart that came up at the end of the year, trying to figure out best way for everybody to play. We felt it was probably best to to see if we can move Gavin for something else that could help our team. And that’s what we did.”

“We’re just still looking to add to our position player group if we can figure out how to use that money and get someone else. But we felt this was a good move for us, just adding a left hand reliever.”

The Dodgers have eight contracts worth over $100 million and total payroll commitment of $2.1 BILLION. For the Reds, that number is around $173 million. The Dodgers have a massive $300 million annual TV rights deal ($8.35 billion over 25 years) that powers their baseball engine. That’s just the simple math.

The strategy that Nick Krall, President of baseball operations, and general manager Brad Meador are pursuing is one of throwing their top homegrown talent on the field and hoping they can produce. After missing out on Schwarber, they made a conscious decision to upgrade and deepen their bullpen.

They brought back top closer Emilio Pagan on a two-year, $20 million deal, with a player opt-out after this season. They added lefties Caleb Ferguson earlier in the offseason and brought aboard Pierce Johnson and Brock Burke Thursday.

They already have Connor Phillips, Tony Santillan, Luis Mey, Chase Petty, Zach Maxwell and Graham Ashcraft.

This supplements a starting rotation of Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Andrew Abbott and Brady Singer with a fifth spot up for grabs among Rhett Lowder, Chase Burns and Brandon Williamson. The Reds have a ton of quality arms they think will suit them well when they run up against the likes of the loaded Dodgers, Cubs, Brewers, Phillies and Padres.

Maybe it will. Maybe it’s Pollyanna. But the Reds do have a strategy. Krall and Meador are living in the real world of Major League Baseball where payrolls at the top are obviously completely out of whack. You can argue until you’re Dodger Blue in the face about Reds owner Bob Castellini not spending his money to try and win. But he does not have an endless revenue stream like the big boppers at the top. Adding to that is the fact that his TV revenue is in flux with the financial mess that is Main Street Sports Group (a.k.a FanDuel Sports Network) and its bankruptcy that has put payments to clubs in flux.

The image of the Reds is still suffering from Bob’s son Phil suggesting a franchise location move to compete and uttering that infamous question “where you gonna go?” Fans – as we saw Wednesday night at Xavier – still haven’t forgotten.

But Krall and Meador aren’t caught up in the drama. They are doing whatever they can within the tight budget constraints to build a winner. In Cincinnati, that means maximizing the window of the team’s youngest and best talent. We’ve already seen what happens down the street when you have a franchise quarterback and two All-Pro caliber receivers and fall flat on your face. Fans fear the Bengals are wasting the open window time.

Krall is going to lean on not only Elly De La Cruz but Noelvi Marte, Sal Stewart, Matt McLain, TJ Friedl, Spencer Steer and Tyler Stephenson. That’s the play right now. Lean on what you already have and hope they get better and produce more power, because buying the power is just not in their price range.

That’s the long game. Some fans may scoff and snicker at it but that’s the reality, and the Reds are making the best of a broken system.