There’s some good news and perhaps some bad news depending on how you want to look at things. ESPN released their first “power rankings” for the 2025 MLB season. The bad news is that the Cincinnati Reds rank 19th on the list and that’s only good enough to be ahead of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cardinals among teams within the National League Central. The good news could be that Buster Olney wrote that Cincinnati is a strong candidate to be a sleeper team to succeed.
You can take that statement as a bit of a two-fold kind of thing. To be a sleeper team means that not many are expecting much from you. That’s not great because it means that you aren’t all that good. But on the flip side, among the teams that do fall into that category that’s the team that seems to have enough of something in order to actually be good if things can go right. In Olney’s case he mentions the depth in the rotation, the young players, and new manager Terry Francona taking over as reasons that it could happen for Cincinnati.
Cincinnati has made a few moves this offseason to add new players who weren’t with the club in 2024. Brady Singer is joining the rotation after being acquired from Kansas City in a trade that sent infielder Jonathan India to join the Royals. Last month the Reds acquired Jose Trevino from the New York Yankees to be their backup catcher to Tyler Stephenson and shipped out reliever Fernando Cruz and minor leaguer Joey Wiemer to the American League East’s defending champs.
They have also picked up reliever Roansy Contreras off of waivers from the Texas Rangers to add some bullpen depth and picked up potential utility player Cooper Bowman from the Athletics in the Rule 5 draft. Neither player can be sent to the minor leagues, though, so they’ll have to both make the club in spring training.
The Reds are likely to make more moves between now and the start of spring training. The question is more about whether any of those moves will move the needle at all or just be things like minor league signings with invites to spring training. Cincinnati probably needs a move or two that “move the needle” if they are going to move from a “sleeper team” to an actual “contender” – at least on paper.
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