Earlier today the Cincinnati Reds agreed to contracts for the 2025 season with eight players who were arbitration eligible had they not agreed to new deals with the club. While MLB Trade Rumors does a fantastic job at estimating what players will get in arbitration, that does leave us with a bit of a guessing game on team payroll until it’s all settled. For a team who plays on the cheap like Cincinnati, being off by a little bit on all of the eligible players could be a few million dollars difference, and for the Reds, that matters as their front office operates with little wiggle room.
Pitchers Brady Singer, Alexis Diaz, Nick Lodolo and Sam Moll all agreed to deals with the Reds for 2025. They were joined this afternoon by position players Tyler Stephenson, Jose Trevino, Gavin Lux, and Jake Fraley as Cincinnati was able to ink them to new deals as well. None of these deals were for more than one season and they don’t alter anything about when any of these guys will reach free agency. All this does is avoid the two sides having to go argue to arbiters about which side is presenting the correct salary request for the player later on this spring. Sometimes those can get contentious, even if everyone understands “it’s just business” – it can still feel personal when your team is saying you aren’t valuable and don’t deserve this much because of XYZ.
Here is what everyone agreed to today:
- Brady Singer – $8,750,000
- Tyler Stephenson – $4,925,000
- Alexis Diaz – $4,500,000
- Jose Trevino – $3,425,000
- Gavin Lux – $3,325,000
- Jake Fraley – $3,125,000
- Nick Lodolo – $1,975,000
- Sam Moll – $1,007,500
Having those numbers gives us a really good idea of how much payroll will be. If the team doesn’t add any further players to guaranteed contracts or trade anyone away with a guaranteed contract, that would put the team at $96,185,833 for the full 26-man roster.
Nick Krall noted earlier this week that there was a little money left, but not much. Given that he spoke about using the saved money from the traded draft pick on the big league payroll (which moves about $2,600,000 from one line in the ledger to the other), it feels like there really isn’t much left at all. If the club is going to make any further moves they are going to be small signings or if it’s a trade it will have to be for someone making little money or involve the Reds sending someone the other direction to balance out the dollars.
An earlier version of this article did not include the contract information of Tyler Stephenson, but he signed a deal shortly after it was published and has been updated to reflect that.
Contract details provided by Ari Alexander of KPRC2, Jon Heyman of the New York Post, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, Mark Sheldon of Reds.com, and Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
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