Cincinnati Reds release 48 minor leaguers, including Gavin LaValley, Miles Gordon

We have known for over a week that the Cincinnati Reds would be releasing a slew of minor leaguers, something that we’ve seen in waves across Major League Baseball of late. Those names became public today courtesy of Baseball America, and it was revealed the Reds officially cut ties with 48 former farmhands.

Notable among them are former 4th round picks Gavin LaValley, the burly Oklahoman who once socked 18 homers between Daytona and Pensacola back in 2017, as well as Miles Gordon, the Canadian CF who showed ample promise with Rookie League Billings in 2017 with a .919 OPS. Like so many of the other players announced, though, both failed to impress enough as they began their climbs through the minors, and subsequently fell down the pecking order.

Other names of note include:

• Cash Case, who picked up a cool over-slot $1,000,000 bonus after being drafted in the 4th round in 2017, which persuaded him to turn pro instead of attend Notre Dame
• Jose Lopez, the righty with 37 games of experience pitching at AAA who at one point climbed his way onto the Reds 40-man roster
• Randy Ventura, who the Reds picked up via trade with Atlanta back in 2017 for international cap space
• Cristian Olivo, who the Reds signed for a million bucks as a 15 year old international free agent back in 2015
• Todd Buns, who is a player I completely fabricated, was never a Red, and was not recently released by the Reds
• Fraudy Rodriguez, whose first name is Fraudy
• Jake Paulson, who I did not realized stood 6’7” - that’s tall

In all, it’s an alarming number at first glance, though it’s absolutely worth emphasizing that many, if not all of these players would have been cuts at the end of spring training had there ever actually been a spring training that lasted long enough for there to be cuts. Aside from that, some of the guys who got pink slip’d were set to be minor league free agents at season’s end anyway, and since there’s not going to be a minor league season this year anyway, well...

Well.

The Reds have committed to paying their $400 weekly stipend to the rest of the minor leaguers remaining in the system through September 7th, the date that would have originally served as the end of the 2020 minor league season had it materialized.

The Red Reporter Farmers Only Bureau is currently assessing how today’s moves impact the future value of their nickname projections, and will report back accordingly.