Last night Nick Krall, the Cincinnati Reds President of Baseball Operations, noted that the team is basically finished adding pieces to the team outside of some minor league deals that would include spring training invites. This week the club has added a few of those, including bringing back a former Reds reliever Ian Gibaut. Cincinnati also signed left-handed reliever Joe La Sorsa to a minor league split contract according to Ari Alexander of KPRC2 in Houston. The Reds are reportedly bringing in right-handed reliever Albert Abreu, too, according to Robert Murray of Fansided. All three of those deals got an invite to big league camp. Those three pitchers would push the non-roster invite list among pitchers to 10.
Ian Gibaut is coming back to try and win a job in the spring. He has been with the Reds since they picked him up off of waivers in July of 2022 from the Los Angeles Dodgers. That first half-season saw him throw 34.2 innings for the Reds with a 4.67 ERA. He broke through in 2023 where he threw 75.2 innings of 3.33 ERA (140 ERA+, which means his ERA was 40% better than the league average when adjusting for the ballparks pitched in). Last year was pretty much lost to injury and he only pitched in two games for Cincinnati in the final week of the season.
Joe La Sorsa has been in the big leagues in each of the last two seasons. In 2023 he pitched for the Tampa Bay Rays before being placed on waivers and picked up by the Washington Nationals that June. He remained with the Nationals for the next year and a half. The lefty has thrown 50.1 innings at the big league level and has a 4.47 ERA to go along with 14 walks and 42 strikeouts. You can see his career stats here.
Albert Abreu did not pitch in the big leagues in 2024, instead pitching in Japan where he threw 49.0 innings in 52 games with a 2.39 ERA with 20 walks (three intentional) and 33 strikeouts. For context, the league average ERA in the league last season was 3.04, so that ERA is good but not exactly as good as you may have initially thought. From 2020-2023 he pitched in the big leagues for the New York Yankees, Texas Rangers, and Kansas City Royals. In that time he threw 135.2 innings with a 4.58 ERA to go with 136 strikeouts and 78 walks. You can see his career stats here.
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