It was the starting pitching depth that carried the Reds to their first full-season playoff appearance in more than a decade. Their bats ranked 14th in runs per game, 19th in OPS and 24th in wRC+. Their gloves ranked 20th in fouls, DRS and FRV. Their bullpen ranked 14th in ERA, but 27th in xERA and 27th in SIERA. Still, the Reds finished 83-79, edging the Mets for the NL’s final Wild Card spot. How did they do it? Andrew Abbott, Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Brady singer, Nick Martinez, Zack LittellAnd Chase Burns had a lot to do with it. Those seven arms combined to start 152 of Cincinnati’s 162 games and pitched to a 3.69 ERA (84 ERA-) in 832 innings. Their combined 16.4 FanGraphs WAR and 8.64 Win Probability Added as starters helped the Reds finish with the second-best rotation fWAR and third-best WPA in the sport.
Martinez and Littell are set to hit free agency, but Greene, Lodolo, Abbott, Singer and Burns are set to return. Three promising arms who missed 2024 with injuries – Rhett lower, Brandon WilliamsonAnd Julian Aguiar – should also factor into the mix, as should top prospects Chase Petty. That’s a lot of names for one rotation.
Still, president of baseball operations Nick Krall doesn’t seem too eager to trade from that area of strength. “I wouldn’t say no” he told reporters (including Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer), when asked about the possibility of trading a starter this winter. “But if you trade pitchers, you have to go [back]fill them somehow. We all know how it works: if you run out of innings at some point in the season, guys get injured and things happen.”
The POBO’s comments touch on an important point. The 2025 Reds succeeded not only because their starting pitchers were excellent, but also because their staff was so deep. Giving away too much of that depth could leave the team in trouble next season if injuries occur. Greene, Abbott, Lodolo and Singer are presumably locked for 2026. Meanwhile, Burns, Lowder, Williamson, Aguiar and Petty all have minor league options; Assuming one of them wins the final rotation spot out of spring training, the other four (if healthy) could be waiting in the wings at Triple-A. Excluding openers, the Reds used ten different starting pitchers in 2025. They’ll need more than five to get through another season.
This is especially true for this group of poor people. Singer has proven to be a sustainable workhorse in recent years. But no one else on Cincinnati’s staff has ever made 30 starts in a season. Abbott qualified for the ERA title for the first time in 2025, but Greene and Lodolo have yet to accomplish that feat. Burns, Lowder, Williamson, Aguiar and Petty have started a total of 49 games in their young careers, and 26 of those have been Williamson’s. As general manager Brad Meador said, the Reds are “I’ll have to manage the innings of a handful of those guys.”
Krall also acknowledged that trading on his Major League pitching depth may not be the easiest way to improve other parts of the roster.
“It’s very hard to say we’re going to trade a pitcher — and I’m not sure you’re going to trade a pitcher for fouls,” he explained. “You could trade the pitcher for a prospect and then have to sign the foul.”
[Related: Cincinnati Reds Offseason Outlook, for MLBTR Front Office subscribers]
None of this is to say the Reds won’t ultimately trade a starter. It’s just not a given. Asked about the possibility of dealing Greene, an All-Star, with an incredibly team-friendly contract (he’s guaranteed just $42 million over the next three years), Krall could have closed the line of questioning. Instead he replied: “I don’t want to speculate at this point on anyone who will or will not be traded.” The Reds aren’t actively buying their young starters, but it doesn’t sound like anyone is untouchable either. After all, if anyone were untouchable, you’d think it would be Greene.
That said, for the same reasons as the Reds wouldn’t If you want to trade Greene, he would yield a nice return in a deal. All of Cincinnati’s starters are cost-controlled, with Singer, Lodolo and Williamson still in their arbitration years, and Abbott, Burns, Lowder, Aguiar and Petty not yet arbitration eligible. Still, Greene is both a proven ace and a young player with high potential, and he is under team control through the 2030 season. That’s a valuable player.
If the Reds want to shave payroll, trading Singer would be their best course of action; He is expected to make $11.9 million in his final year of arbitration eligibility. If they’re trying to bring back an MLB-ready position player without significantly weakening their 2026 rotation, it’s Petty, still a top player, who makes the most sense to move. However, if the goal is simply to find the best possible return, it is Greene who would have such a package.
Nothing Krall said suggests Greene is in the area. But he had the chance to say Greene was off limits, and he didn’t take it. Instead, POBO simply said he did not want to speculate on trade candidates because he had not done so “I have not had any discussions with other clubs.” Of course, Krall also said that when a team trades a pitcher, they have to fill his spot somehow. Obviously, Greene wouldn’t be easy to replace. So a trade still seems unlikely, but perhaps it’s a little closer to a real possibility than Reds fans might want to believe.
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