Cincinnati Reds signing Kyle Schwarber would be a perfect move – Redleg Nation

Jeff Passan hasn’t made any big news yet this season, but that’s probably just due to the fact that not much has happened yet, unless we count the Cleveland gambling scandal. But earlier today he published an article on ESPN that took a look any team’s perfect trade for the 2026 season. For the Cincinnati Reds, he says signing Kyle Schwarber would be their perfect trade.

Like everyone else alive, Passan understands that the Reds offense just isn’t that good and adding a real threat to the lineup could potentially turn things around for a team currently built on pitching. He also notes the local connection to Schwarber.

In 2025 with the Philadelphia Phillies, he hit 56 home runs, along with 23 doubles and two triples. He’s hitting .240/.365/.563 with 108 walks, scoring 111 runs and driving in 132. His 150 OPS+ hasn’t been reached by a Cincinnati Reds hitter since Joey Votto’s 163 points in 2017. No one has really been close since.

Schwarber played in all 162 games in 2025. He has played at least 150 games in each of the past four seasons. And he’s hit 46 or more home runs in three of those four years. He hit just 38 in 2024. Schwarber has struggled to make contact and leads the league in strikeouts in both 2022 and 2023. In each of the past two years, he has struck out 197 batters. But when he makes contact, he makes it count in a big, big way. And he supplements that with lots of walks.

In Cincinnati, of course, it will come down to money. And that’s where Passan, like most of you, hit the pause button.

Even if Cincinnati has indicated it doesn’t plan to raise its payroll much above $116 million this year, there is room for a major turnaround. And the fact that the Reds have a glaring need for offense and that the best available free hitter grew up on the outskirts of town screams for the Reds to throw caution to the wind and strengthen a team with a lot of potential. Will they? Probably not. It’s the Reds. But it’s too obvious not to try to speak it into existence.

We still don’t know exactly how much wiggle room the Reds will have to work with in free agency. Although arbitrage figures come into play, the total difference is probably only a few million in one direction or the other. Non-tendering could also play a role, and that could be slightly more important. Or maybe it doesn’t matter at all.

As Passan says, it’s the Reds. So it probably won’t happen. It’s hard to even dream of it as realistic given that we don’t know exactly how much money the team’s commitments are for the 2026 roster and how much they’ll have to work with, even though we’re told payroll won’t increase from 2025 levels.