This morning Kiley McDaniel and Jeff Passan had their list of the top candidates to be traded at the trade deadline this season over at ESPN. There were five Cincinnati Reds on the list, which you can see in full right here. The list is ordered, but not by the order in which the player is likely to be traded, but by “total trade value with rest-of-season value as a tiebreaker”.
The list itself is 100 players deep. No Cincinnati players are ranked in the top 44, but after that the five Reds players are grouped pretty closely to each other. Nathaniel Lowe comes in at the #45 spot. Eugenio Suarez and Brady Singer are both also in the top 50. Brock Burke finds himself in the top 60, and then Caleb Ferguson rounds out the Reds group at #65.
The trade deadline is August 3rd, so there’s a whole lot of time for all of this to change. Players can go on hot streaks, cold streaks, get injured, etc. But teams can also improve and decide to go in another direction in terms of trading away versus acquiring players, too. Even if it isn’t a specific team in question that changes their approach, another team doing so can change the market as their needs or what they make available adds to or shrinks the available market for players.
What this list does seem to suggest, though, is that Cincinnati doesn’t exactly look like they’ll be moving any marquee players that should garner a big return. Nathaniel Lowe is a solid DH on a 1-year deal who doesn’t play against left-handed pitching. Eugenio Suarez has been injured this season so he’s still only had 166 at-bats, but even in those he hasn’t exactly performed well. Like Lowe he’s on a 1-year deal.
The pitching is what it is, too. Brady Singer is on his final year of his contract, isn’t performing well on the season, and even when he is at his best, he’s not the type of guy teams are fighting over on the trade market as he’s more likely to wind up in the bullpen for a playoff team than a guy they want taking the ball to start game one or two of a playoff series.
Brock Burke has a shiny 2.83 ERA, but he’s walked 23 batters in 35.0 innings and is more of a middle relief profile guy than a playoff back-end of the bullpen type. Caleb Ferguson has missed much of the season so far, but he is back and healthy, and so far he’s pitched well. But like Burke, he’s more of your middle reliever kind of guy for playoff caliber teams. Those types just don’t get bigger returns in trades.
Cincinnati could potentially move all of those guys. The moves would certainly shed some salary that may be used for the team in 2027 when most of the guys that are still around will be due arbitration raises. But what isn’t likely to happen is that those trade provide a large boost to either the current big league team or to the farm system in the short term.
Sometimes you get a long-term boost, though. When the Reds traded Tyler Naquin to the New York Mets in July of 2022 they got back Hector Rodriguez and Jose Acuna. Those guys are still 22 and 23-years-old. Rodriguez has turned himself into one of Cincinnati’s top 10 prospects and is hitting quite well in Triple-A currently. Acuna, a right-handed starting pitcher is having a quality season in Double-A Chattanooga where he has a 3.72 ERA in 72.2 innings with 29 walks and 76 strikeouts.