The winter meetings begin next week and that’s usually when we start to see more free agent signings take place. It’s also where we begin to hear about a whole heck of a lot of rumors. That’s naturally going to be the case given that all 30 front offices are in one spot and while technology today makes it far easier to have continuous conversations, being in the same place seems to get the ball rolling a bit quicker.
Cincinnati hasn’t been shy this offseason. They are bringing back Nick Martinez after they made the qualifying offer and he accepted. And they also traded Jonathan India to Kansas City for starting pitcher Brady Singer.
Still, there are two rumors that may not quite be rumors but may also have some legs to them. The first one involves former Reds outfielder/designated hitter Jesse Winker. Cincinnati traded Winker in the middle of spring training in 2022 to Seattle and he’s not quite been the same hitter ever since as he’s battled some injuries that may have changed a little bit of the hitter that he was.
Mark Healey of Gotham Baseball (and former of The Associated Press) reported that he’s heard that Winker and the Reds may be close to a deal. Cincinnati is looking to add an outfielder and Winker is sort of an outfielder. But what he’s more known for is his bat.
In 2024 he played with both the Washington Nationals and the New York Mets. Between the two stops in the National League he hit .253/.360/.405 with 14 home runs in 145 games. Incredibly he also stole 14 bases after entering the season with three of them in his career.
Since leaving Cincinnati, Winker’s power has taken a step or two back, as has his average. He still gets on base often, though, thanks to a good walk rate. That would certainly help a Reds lineup that had a .305 on-base percentage in 2024 (Arizona led the league at .337, while only the White Sox were below the .300 mark – and they were at .278!!!).
To this point, though, it seems that Healey is the only person reporting this. That doesn’t necessarily make it untrue, and given that he covers the Mets and that’s where Winker finished up his 2024 campaign he may have some more insight into it than outsiders would, but the fact that no one else seems to be hearing it or reporting it gives one a bit of hesitation about if the report has actual legs to it.
Similarly, Jon Morosi of MLB Network tweeted “The Cubs and Reds are among the viable candidates to acquire White Sox ace Garrett Crochet.”
The White Sox are in “sell mode”, so trying to move Crochet would make sense if your boss is telling you to move guys. But Morosi’s tweet feels more to me like he’s suggesting the Reds and Cubs have the kinds of players the White Sox would be looking for more so than the Cubs and Reds have had good talks with Chicago about Crochet. Perhaps I’m reading that wrong, but the working of his tweet seems like it would be different than “they’re viable candidates” if there were some real trade talks going on there.
With that said, Crochet would be an interesting acquisition. While Morosi said he was the White Sox ace, he’s not an ace by any traditional standard. But he is a good pitcher. In his first year as a starting pitcher he made 32 starts, made the All-Star team, and posted a 3.58 ERA in 146.0 innings while walking just 33 batters and striking out 209. He would bolster just about any rotation that he would be a part of.
The lefty wouldn’t likely come cheaply, though. He’s not a free agent until after the 2026 season and he’s arbitration eligible for the second time this offseason. MLB Trade Rumors projects him to make $2,900,000 this season. Even Cincinnati’s front office would have a tough time saying that they couldn’t find the money for that deal.
The bigger questions would be about what it would take to acquire him, and would that upgrade be worth it when you already have a rotation of Hunter Greene, Nick Martinez, Brady Singer, and a pick-two of Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Rhett Lowder, and Graham Ashcraft, with prospects like Chase Petty and Chase Burns possibly ready to help at some point later in 2025 as well?
The post Reds Notebook: Jesse Winker reunion? Trade with the White Sox? appeared first on Redleg Nation.