Why Nick Lodolo might become Cincinnati Reds' biggest addition of winter | Press Box Wag
It’s beginning to look a lot like the Cincinnati Reds might get priced out of that frontline, veteran innings-eater on their wish list this winter.
Everywhere you go in the seller’s market for pitching this winter, prices have been driven up by big contracts and bigger asks (looking at you, Chicago White Sox with your dangling Dylan Cease).
All of which might make the Reds’ biggest addition to the starting rotation since the end of last season . . . Nick Lodolo?
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If it seems like you’ve heard that before, it’s only because that was the most common refrain during the summer when the Reds failed to add a starting pitcher to a first-place team at the trade deadline that injured starters Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo would return and provide the needed boost down the stretch.
Greene returned, with mixed results; Lodolo suffered a setback with the stress fracture in his leg during rehab and didn’t pitch a big-league inning after May 6.
“Sitting there watching last year, it’s not fun at all,” said Lodolo, who was recently cleared medically to keep throwing and strengthening as he eyes a mid-January arrival in Arizona to start preparing early for a season of high expectations.
“It was fun watching them do their thing, but I want to be a part of it,” he said. “And I know when I’m healthy what I can do and how much I can contribute to us winning and getting to where we want to go.”
As hard as Greene throws (100-plus) and as much as he gets paid (six-year deal, $53 million), some in the organization like Lodolo as a bigger impact pitcher if healthy.
The 6-foot-6 left-hander with the impressive 19-start debut in 2022 had a 3.44 career ERA and 11.8 strikeouts per nine innings through his first three starts of 2023 before struggling and eventually landing on the IL.
“By the time I get to spring training, I’ll be full-go and ready,” he said.
Team president Nick Krall still hopes to add a veteran starter to a very, very young mix of starting pitchers — the signing of swingman Nick Martinez four weeks ago providing the team’s only guy in the spring starting mix with even one full, active season on a big-league roster.
Krall left the winter meetings earlier this month saying the team could afford the luxury of patience after having added free agent reliever Emilio Pagán and Martinez at that point.
How much he can afford in his remaining budget after subsequently adding $45 million infielder Jeimer Candelario — or in player capital within his comfort zone for a possible trade — has only become a growing question since then.
Since the winter meetings, one potential trade target — Tyler Glasnow — was traded from the Tampa Bay Rays to the Los Angeles Dodgers (and extended for more than $136 million). And another, second-tier free agent, former Red Wade Miley, returned to the Brewers for $8.5 million.
“I don’t know if we’re done,” Lodolo said. “But any way we can get better, I’m here for it. We saw last year how close we were. Add a few more pieces like we did — I don’t know if we need to get more; that’s not up to me. But it’s never going to hurt to get more to keep making us better in whatever way that is.”
Lodolo, a rare two-time first-round draft pick (41st by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of high school; seventh by the Reds in 2019 out of TCU), might have to be an outsized part of that “way.”
To that end, he said he’s healthy enough to expect a typical offseason and spring buildup to be that guy again in the opening rotation.
“I’ll be ready for it,” he said.
$ilver Bell$
A half-dozen of the youngest Reds don’t need any visions of sugar plums to dream on as they wait for arbitration paydays to start making fair wages in baseball’s crazy Monopoly-money economy.
One of the new provisions in baseball’s collective bargaining agreement benefitted the Reds roster like few others in the game — providing six Reds players a total of $2,143,712 in performance bonuses from MLB’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool.
Only the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers had more players earn bonuses.
It’s a league-created pool that provides bonuses to eligible players based on postseason awards finishes and rankings according to a Joint WAR formula negotiated between MLB and the union.
Bottom line: Five Reds making the league-minimum ($720,000) and TJ Friedl ($722,500) earned bonuses that amounted to increases over their salaries from 36.1 percent (Spencer Steer) to 81.8 percent (Matt McLain).
Friedl earned the 20th-highest bonus from the pool at $576,075. Steer just made the 101-player bonus list at No. 97 ($260,125).
In between four Reds players who debuted 2023 also made the list: 33, Matt McLain ($445,873); 73, Andrew Abbott ($299,869); 75, Will Benson ($292,393); and 89, Elly De La Cruz ($269,377).
McLain’s bonus almost doubled his prorated big-league salary of $545,040.
Now, about next year, Mr. Castellini . . .
The Big Number: 8
That’s the record number of teams that paid MLB's luxury tax this season for exceeding payroll limits, two more than any previous season. This year's list was headed by the New York Mets, who got billed a whopping $101 million for the excesses lavished on their fourth-place team.
The Reds (check notes) were not among the eight teams.
Oh, Holy Crap
The stars are brightly shining in Hollywood, to the tune of record paydays for free agents that probably say a lot more about the financial state of the game — and its future — than all the recent hand-wringing over regional sports network bankruptcies and the tectonics of TV revenues.
Fans and rivals of the Los Angeles Dodgers barely had time to pick their chins off the floor from the heavily-deferred $700 million stunner for Shohei Ohtani before the Dodgers closed a 12-year deal with Yoshinobu Yamamoto for a free-agent-pitcher-record $325 million.
Counting Yamamoto’s ($50.6 million) posting fee and the nine-figure contract extension they gave pitcher Tyler Glasnow after trading for him, the Dodgers have committed more than $1.2 billion this winter to the acquisitions and control of five players for a total of 19 years.
That’s more than the combined salaries for all five 26-man rosters in the National League Central last season — plus all five in the American League Central, plus both teams that played in the World Series. Plus the New York Yankees.
With $100 million to spare.
Call it a Dodger Blue Christmas for everyone in baseball.
In fact, according to sources, some MLB insiders believe the Dodgers have a chance to win a playoff series next season.
Bells Will Be Ringing, Reds Running
The cumulative impact of tweaks to last season’s new MLB rules might prove an advantage to the young and wild-running Reds.
Specifically, the reduction from 20 seconds to 18 seconds on the pitch timer with men on base should benefit the team that stole 14 percent more bases than anyone else in the majors last year (190 to Arizona’s 166) — and attempted 13 percent more than anyone else (238 to Kansas City’s 210).
A pitcher who warms up before an inning must face at least one batter under another new rule (24 times last season that pitcher was removed).
That could be another slight advantage for a team that deploys platoons as extremely as the Reds do (almost to the degree of hockey line shifts).
Mound visits have been reduced from five to four per game as well. That one might not be quite the edge for a team with such young pitchers.
Feliz Navidad
The three biggest gifts the Reds have received so far this holiday season after wishing on a 2024 playoff berth:
1. The Chicago Freaking Cubs with their 3 million annual attendance and top-four annual MLB revenue have spent exactly zero dollars on free agents this winter after missing the playoffs by one game in 2023.
2. The NL Central defending-champion Milwaukee Brewers are cutting and selling. Goodbye, Corbin Burnes, Willy Adames?
3. The big-brain (just ask them) St. Louis Cardinals talked with great bluster at the end of their last-place season about the three big starting pitchers they planned to add this winter. Aside from former Reds favorite Sonny Gray (three years, $75 million), the big adds, at least so far, are one-year dice roles in Kyle Gibson ($12 million) and Lance Lynn ($11 million).
They said it
"They are just one SP away from me making them favorites in the NL Central for 2024. Let's Go!"
*MLB analyst and former Reds general manager Jim Bowden in a tweet or "X" post (or whatever they're calling it now) after the Reds signed Candelario.
Did You Know?
The seven-year World Series appearance drought for the combined NL and AL Centrals is the longest for either of those divisions in the 30-year, division-series era.
No single division has had a longer drought since the six-division realignment.*
Teams from each of the four other divisions have won the World Series since the last time a Central team made it — in 2016 when the Cubs beat Cleveland in an all-Central series.
*-The AL West didn’t put a team in the World Series after realignment until 2002 (mostly because Derek Jeter's Yankees won six of the first eight AL pennants under the new format), which would have meant an eight-year drought for that division if not for the 1994-95 labor stoppage that wiped out the 1994 postseason.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How Nick Lodolo might complete Cincinnati Reds offseason wish list
