Some added depth never hurt, right?
The Cincinnati Reds added another pair of infielders to the fold on Friday by agreeing to minor league deals with both Tony Kemp and Mike Ford, both of whom spent time in the American League West during the 2023 season (Kemp with Oakland, and Ford with Seattle).
MLB Network insider Jon Heyman had the news.
Tony Kemp to Reds. Minors deal with MLB camp invite.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) February 23, 2024
Mike Ford to the Reds on a minor league deal. $1.3M salary in majors, and another 125K in incentives. Spring training and other opts outs included.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) February 23, 2024
Another pair of infielders! Why not?!
Jokes aside, these are perfectly fine depth pieces, even if the two of them are just about as different kinds of infielders as you could imagine.
Kemp, a 2B by trade during his college years at Vanderbilt (with Derek Johnson, Sonny Gray, and Curt Casali), quickly adapted to play LF a lot once being drafted in the 5th round of the 2013 draft by the Houston Astros. He’s spent time in the big leagues in each of the last 8 seasons, and twice in the last trio of years he’s walked more times than he’s struck out. That said, he’s just a career .352 slugger with 35 homers to his name in over 2200 career PA at the big league level, as clearly getting on base and being versatile are his biggest calling cards.
Ford, on the other hand, is a 1B/DH only with a pile of swing-and-miss in his game that comes with prodigious power. Of the 328 MLB players who had at least 250 PA last year, his .245 ISO ranked 25th (with guys like Ronald Acuña, Jr. 23rd and Juan Soto 28th). He swatted 16 homers in just 251 PA with his home park being the cavern in Seattle, and back in 2019 he burst onto the scene with the Yankees by posting an impressive .909 OPS (137 OPS+) with 12 dingers in 50 games. In between those years, though, it was tough as heck for him – just a 61 OPS+ in 305 PA as he bounced from the Yankees to the Giants, Braves, Angels, and Mariners.
While Kemp and Ford are far from redundant, they do share one unique quality in that they both bat lefthanded and both have reverse platoon splits over the course of their careers. For whatever reason, they’ve both fared poorly against RHP relative to their performance against southpaws, so they don’t even profile as 26th men as platoon partners for any of the struggling rookies (or second year players).
You could probably do a heck of a lot worse if Kemp, Ford, and Josh Harrison were parked on your AAA roster. We know how many injuries the Reds dealt with both in the infield and outfield last year, as well as how many PA went to the likes of Jason Vosler, Henry Ramos, Matt Reynolds, Hunter Renfroe, Wil Myers, and TJ Hopkins (among others). These are low-cost ways of building in that kind of depth for this upcoming season, as well as adding yet another Vandy Boy to the transaction ledger while DJ is on the coaching staff.