Cincinnati Reds non-tender five, including Curt Casali, Archie Bradley

At Wednesday’s deadline for MLB clubs to tender contracts to their non-guaranteed dollar roster players, the Cincinnati Reds pulled no punches.

They non-tendered Archie Bradley, Brian Goodwin, Curt Casali, Kyle Farmer, and RJ Alaniz.

It’s hard to wrap your head around this in any way other than saying money, money, money to yourself.

Bradley, of course, had another rock-solid year split between Arizona and the Reds, and Cincinnati gave up Stuart Fairchild and Josh VanMeter to get him just months ago. He was due to make somewhere in the range of $6 million this year as a proven bullpen arm, but now won’t.

Casali, meanwhile, had Tyler Stephenson breathing down his neck on the catching pecking order, but was only expected to make some $1.5-2 million in 2021 after a very productive year in 2020.

Farmer was hardly going to make over league minimum, and we already discussed Goodwin earlier today.

Frankly, I’m disinclined to break these moves down any further at the moment. In cutting ties with players who, on the whole, were collectively worth the total of $12ish million for the upcoming season, the Reds have shed even more money after letting both Trevor Bauer and Anthony DeSclafani walk. There are whispers that they’re pursuing top-tier shortstop options, and hopefully this freed-up money will be put to use there.

Frankly, I’m a bit shocked.

I suppose it’s worth noting that they did not non-tender Michael Lorenzen, Amir Garrett, Tyler Mahle, or Jesse Winker all of whom were ‘eligible’ to be non-tendered like the rest of the group. So, there’s that going for them, which is nice.

** UPDATE **

It appears Farmer has been brought back on a 1-year deal already. Considering he wasn’t yet supposed to even be arb-eligible, I’m confused as to why this entire multi-transaction process was needed to keep him around in the first place, but whatever.

Perhaps in the weird way in which service time was calculated in the truncated season he had actually qualified as a Super-Two player? Interesting, either way.