The Reds signing of The Sensational Star Pitcher With The Braves shows their bullpen is still in flux As The Season Near
An old friend was signed to a big league deal on Friday.
The Cincinnati Reds bullpen managed to eek out a 4.11 ERA over the course of the 2023 regular season, a mark that landed them middle of the pack among all MLB clubs (16th). Despite the roughly league-average results, though, many of the advanced metrics were much more sour on them.
Their 4.45 SIERA, for instance, was third worst in all of baseball, while their .280 BABIP was the fourth lowest. Despite the cozy confines of GABP, their 10.1% HR/FB rate was the second best in the entire game, and that came despite a 41.0% fly-ball rate that was the second highest in all of baseball.
In other words, a lot of metrics think the Cincinnati bullpen got a little lucky last year. The Reds front office wasn’t immune to that skepticism, either, and dove headfirst into free agency to address those issue. Back came Buck Farmer, while each of Emilio Pagan, Nick Martinez, and Brent Suter were signed to fortify the group’s outlook for the upcoming campaign.
The Reds signed lefty Justin Wilson to a guaranteed big league deal yesterday, per FanSided’s Robert Murray, and that shows just how in-flux the team’s bullpen situation still is today.
Wilson, a lefty, returns to the Reds after a lost 2022 season due to Tommy John surgery and a 2023 season spent mostly rehabbing within the Milwaukee system. You may recall that the now 36 year old Wilson looked pretty solid for the Reds in 2021-2022 in limited action prior to that elbow injury, though he was banged up for a lot of the time before that, too.
The thing about the Reds signing Wilson, a lefty, is that Suter, Alex Young, and Big Time 2023 Trade Deadline Addition Sam Moll™ are also lefties, and that’s a lot of lefties for an eight-man bullpen. As it turns out, Young has suffered a setback and will miss the start of the season, as Charlie Goldsmith of The Enquirer relayed, while Moll – who still has an option remaining – has been banged up and has yet to feature in Cactus League play with a shoulder issue.
Goldsmith also noted that Martinez, who’s in the mix as both a starter and reliever, is dealing with some pain in his side and is questionable to be ready to start the season on time. This all comes as Ian Gibaut, who was second on the team with 71 appearances last year, sits sidelined with a bad forearm, too.
It’s not exactly the rock-solid answer to the bullpen problems the Reds had hoped to see with just under two weeks until the regular season begins. In fact, it’s a group that’s perhaps in more flux now than it was this time last year when the group barely carried any expectations.
