Photo: Doug Gray
A day after pitching in a spring training game against the Texas Rangers where he threw a shutout inning of relief, Tejay Antone was sent back to minor league camp in another day of roster cuts that has been trimming the number of relievers with the big league club. Sunday was the third day in a row in which the Cincinnati Reds made a round of cuts that involved just one player and that player happened to be a relief pitcher. In the previous two days the team sent Yunior Marte and Lyon Richardson back to the minors. Cincinnati is down to 39 players in camp, with two of those set to begin the season on the injured list.
This year Tejay Antone is trying to return to the Major Leagues after having a third Tommy John surgery. If he can do that he would be just the third player to ever do that as far as we’re aware. Only Jonny Venters and Jason Isringhausen have done so previously.
Antone returned to the mound late in 2025 in the minor leagues with the Reds, essentially as a part of his rehab process after his third surgery. He was a free agent after the year was over, but he quickly re-signed with Cincinnati to stay in the organization and the team gave him an invite to big league camp as a part of that deal.
The spring started out well for Antone as he made three straight outings without giving up a run, allowing just one total hit, and he walked just one batters while striking out three. But on March 9th against the Athletics he ran into troubles as he allowed three runs in 0.2 innings on two walks and two hits. Three days later he was back on the mound and gave up two more runs in an inning of work against the Dodgers while giving up three hits and a walk. On Saturday he was back out there and had a shutout inning against Texas in the first game of the spring in which he didn’t record a strikeout.
Overall he pitched in six games and allowed five runs on seven hits and four walks in 5.2 innings while striking out seven batters. That’s good for a 7.94 ERA in his limited number of outings. This spring his velocity was down a bit from where he was when he first came up, but he was still throwing 93-95 MPH. He also made some changes to arsenal by adding a cutter and changing how both of his breaking balls move a little bit when compared to what they looked like in the past.
For now he’ll be back in the minor leagues trying to find a little more consistency with his stuff and his control and be looking for an opportunity to get back to Cincinnati if and when the chance shows itself. You can see Antone’s career stats here.