Nick Martinez has until Tuesday afternoon at 4pm ET to officially accept or decline the Cincinnati Reds qualifying offer. Francys Romero is reporting that Martinez is going to accept the Reds offer.
It’s not often that a player does accept a qualifying offer, but most of the time the players who are offered them aren’t in their mid-30’s, either. Martinez is now 34-years-old, but he’s also coming off of his best season. He went 10-7 with a career best 3.10 ERA. The right-hander spent time between the Reds bullpen and the rotation, making 16 starts and another 26 relief appearances. He still had a career high 142.1 innings, a career higher 116 strikeouts, and a career low 18 walks. His 1.03 WHIP was also a career best.
Cincinnati will likely be happy to have him back – if they weren’t, they likely wouldn’t have risked making the qualifying offer. That’s a good chunk of change for the organization who didn’t seem to be projecting a ton of spending this offseason earlier this week.
If indeed the report from Romero is correct and Martinez accepts, that would push the payroll for 2025 to around the $90,000,000 mark if the team doesn’t add/subtract players and those still around get their estimated arbitration numbers. How much that would leave for other additions is unknown, but it would put the payroll at roughly the same number it was in 2024.
If Martinez is coming back, one wonders if that changes anything with regards to the trade talks the club has had with the Kansas City Royals about a Brady Singer for Jonathan India swap. Singer would still be a quality addition to the rotation, but were those talks more of a potential insurance policy for Martinez not returning and the Reds needing to fill the rotation with someone they could foresee as a reliable innings eater who could provide some quality innings along the way?
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