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The Cincinnati Reds are in the midst of a three-headed conundrum, as you well know.
On the one front, they’re up against the concept of a market economy in the midst of an oligarchy, trying to determine whether they’d like to influence the supply side or the demand side. They have good players that teams that choose to be good might want, and those players cost money - money the Reds refuse to admit to, or use. Since they don’t appear interested in participating in the game of trying to win baseball games, their focus has instead turned to saving cash, cash that will only come if they deal away their established players. That’s got the likes of pitchers Sonny Gray, Luis Castillo, and Tyler Mahle being circled by the sharks of the league as they eye-up which players the Reds have right now who are both a) making money and b) worth every penny.
On the second front, they’re up against the Players Union. There’s a lockout going on at the moment, though it’s been so quiet in the week since it began that it feels like more of a winter break than an active locking-out. Still, there’s the chance the MLBPA sneaks in a salary floor in their talks with MLB about the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, one of many caveats that could change how the Reds try to be as cheap as possible going forward.
On the third front, the Reds are in the unique position to need to be incredibly cheap this spring immediately in the wake of being incredibly cheap this winter, should the cards fall in their wallet’s favor. Dumping salary - likely from their vaunted starting rotation - would be, in part, due to their uber-talented pitching prospects on the cusp of the big leagues, but promoting them for Opening Day might end up limiting them to just six years of team control (instead of seven) and the cash-infusion of Super Two status. And since Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo are poised to be future stars, the earlier they put on their impressive displays, the more expensive their time in a Reds uniform would be (assuming the next CBA still lets teams be this dastardly).
With that in mind, today we’ll take a quick exploration into how the Reds could help patch that problem - namely, by plugging in some cheap, veteran pitching fungible enough to get passed by somewhere in the vicinity of 12-16 days after Opening Day when Greene and Lodolo are miraculously better pitchers than they were when camp breaks in Goodyear, Arizona.
Brett Anderson - LHP
This Anderson you’ll recall, surely. The Oklahoma product has long been a foe of the Reds, and you’ll likely remember him for his time wearing a Milwaukee Brewers cap. He was originally drafted and developed by the Arizona Diamondbacks before they dealt him away, and once threw 33.1 IP for the Toronto Blue Jays in his time there as he bounced around the league, with the 2022 season set to be his age-34 campaign.
He’s the owner of a career 102 ERA+ and 2.54 K/BB, and in 82 games since the start of the 2018 season, he’s pitched to sturdy 1.31 WHIP, a number right in-line with his career 1.33 WHIP. Reasonable, yet unspectacular, and that’s precisely the kind of pitcher that the Reds could get for cheap with the kind of short-term commitment that would let them move on from him quickly, too.
Chase Anderson - RHP
This Anderson you’ll recall, surely, too. The Oklahoma product has long been a foe of the Reds, and you’ll likely remember him for his time wearing a Milwaukee Brewers cap. He was originally drafted and developed by the Arizona Diamondbacks before they dealt him away, and once threw 33.2 IP for the Toronto Blue Jays in his time there as he bounced around the league, with the 2022 season set to be his age-34 campaign.
He’s the owner of a career 100 ERA+ and 2.55 K/BB, and in 86 games since the start of the 2018 season, he’s pitched to a sturdy 1.29 WHIP, a number right in-line with his career 1.29 WHIP. Reasonable, yet unspectacular, and that’s precisely the kind of pitcher that the Reds could get for cheap with the kind of short-term commitment that would let them move on from him quickly, too.
Tyler Anderson - LHP
This Anderson you’ll recall from his time in the NL Central, too, though since he’s only entering his age-32 season, he’s wrecking the perfect symmetry of this idiotic post. His Oregon roots also throw a wrench in this otherwise haphazardly crafted blog, though he did pitch for AA Tulsa in 2014, making his connection to the Oklahoma Anderson’s slightly more concrete.
He’s the owner of a career 100 ERA+ and 2.90 K/BB, and in 81 games since the start of the 2018 season, he’s pitched to a sturdy 1.32 WHIP, a number right in-line with his career 1.31 WHIP. Reasonable, yet unspectacular, and that’s precisely the kind of pitcher that the Reds could get for cheap with the kind of short-term commitment that would let them move on from him quickly, too.