BREAKING NEWS: Reds All-Star had finally Retire From Professional Baseball After…..

Choo played 16 years in the big leagues with the Texas Rangers, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds and Seattle Mariners. He debuted with Seattle in 2005 and is another frustrating example for Mariners fans of giving up on a guy too early.

He then went to Cleveland became a very productive player, hitting 20 homers and bringing in 86 runs in 2009 and going 22/90 in 2010. He spent one year (2013) with the Reds, hitting .285 and posting a .423 on-base percentage. Finally, he ended his major league career with the Rangers, making the All-Star Game in 2018 when he finished with 21 homers and 62 RBI.

For his major league career, he ends with a .275 average and a .377 on-base percentage. He hit 218 career home runs and drove in 782.

On the international front, in addition to playing in the KBO, he also represented South Korea at the 2009 World Baseball Classic. He was named the MVP of the U-18 Baseball World Cup for South Korea, which helped jumpstart his professional career in the states.

The headline can be viewed as slightly misleading given that the Cincinnati Reds have gone out and acquired some pitching, signing free agent relievers Nick Martinez and Emilio Pagan in the last month. The plan is to even give Martinez an opportunity to start some games for the club if he can show up in the spring and pitch well, and the club needs him to step into that role. But even with that, and with a bunch of young starting pitchers, the club has still been looking to add what’s being described as top of the line starting pitching.

We know that’s not going to come in free agency because the Reds simply don’t seem willing to even think about competing for the cost on that front. But they have reportedly been making calls about trades to acquire starting pitchers. One of those pitchers was Tyler Glasnow, but Tampa Bay traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers this week contingent that he signed an extension with them. And he did just that, getting $90,000,000 from 2025-2027, with the 2028 season being a team option at $30,000,000 or a player option at $20,000,000. That does not include the $25,000,000 that he’s owed in 2024.

It seems very unlikely that if Tampa Bay approached the Reds with a similar scenario that they would have been willing to match that kind of extension for Glasnow. Say what you will about it being good, bad, smart, stupid, whatever – that’s what it took to acquire a high-upside, “top of the line” starter, on top of trading away two quality players with big league time under their belts in Ryan Pepiot and Jonny Deluca.

The biggest starting pitcher name on the trade market is probably still Dylan Cease of the Chicago White Sox. Cincinnati’s been linked to trade rumors involving him this offseason. He has two years of team control left, and two years ago was the runner up in the American League Cy Young voting. Corbin Burnes has reportedly been floated out there, but the 3-time All-Star isn’t likely to be traded within the division (something you often hear about but makes no sense – if the trade makes your team better, who cares, and if it doesn’t make your team better then why are you making the move in the first place?). The Reds have also shown some interest in Cleveland starter Shane Bieber.

Free agent pitchers who project more as #4 types than top of the rotation types have been coming off of the board this week, leaving fewer options to simply add some depth and innings. Cincinnati may not have really been in that market after signing Nick Martinez and having Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Andrew Abbott, Brandon Williamson, Graham Ashcraft, and Connor Phillips to lean on as starting options.

So where could the Reds turn if not to Chicago for Dylan Cease or to Milwaukee for Corbin Burnes? Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic noted that some teams think that Houston could be open to trading Framber Valdez. The 30-year-old left-handed starter is under team control for 2024 and 2025. He’s thrown 399.1 innings over the last two seasons, and over the last three seasons his ERA is 3.13 in 534.0 innings pitched. He is arbitration eligible and MLB Trade Rumors projects that he will make $12,100,000 in 2024. In 2025 he would almost assuredly get a raise, too.

While much of the league seems to be waiting to see where Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell sign before taking a deep dive into the trade market, there is likely more than a few starters out there who will be traded that haven’t really been talked about in the public space yet. There are several quality starters out there who have been rumored to be available, but until the two big free agent starters sign, we may have to wait to see what happens with the trade market as teams will wait and hope the teams that lose out will hit the phones to talk trades and drive up the price.

Cincinnati has entered spring training, multiple times in the last decade, with a far worse outlook on their rotation than they are sitting at right now. That can always change – injuries even before guys show up to spring training can and do happen because players aren’t just shutting it down before Februrary – and trades can also take place, but while it would be a good thing to see the club acquire a guy with top-end starting abilities, things certainly have been worse and in recent memory (they’ve been better, too).