The Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates teamed up on Wednesday evening to make a trade. Heading to join Cincinnati is right-handed reliever Kyle Nicolas. The Reds are sending infielder/outfielder Tyler Callihan to the Pirates in exchange for the pitcher.
Kyle Nicolas is a 27-year-old righty who has been in the big leagues in parts of the last three seasons with the Pirates. He only pitched in four games in 2023, but has pitched in 51 and 31 in each of the last two years. In 2024 he posted a 3.95 ERA in 54.2 innings while walking 31, hitting four, and striking out 55. Last season his ERA jumped up to 4.74 as he threw 38.0 innings with 18 walks and 34 strikeouts.
Nicolas doesn’t have two years of service time yet, so he won’t even be arbitration eligible until 2028 and not a free agent until after the 2030 season. He also has one option year remaining.
From a stuff perspective, Kyle Nicolas is throwing a 4-seam fastball, a 2-seam fastball, a curveball, a slider, and a change up. He used to be a starter, so he’s got plenty of offerings. With that said, both the 2-seam fastball and the change up are pitches he has only started throwing in the last year and both were pitches he rarely threw when he did use them. He’s been a fastball heavy reliever, throwing it more than 50% of the time since he debuted, but he has mixed in both the slider and curveball often. He throws hard, averaging over 97 MPH in each of the last two seasons, and he topped out at 100.9 MPH in Triple-A and 100.8 MPH in the big leagues (which came against the Reds last September). In his career at the big league level it’s been the slider that’s been the problem for him with the Pitch Value of it being well below-average for his career according to Fangraphs.
He’s had reverse splits for his career. Lefties have hit .191/.343/.305 against him in 175 plate appearances, while righties have hit .281/.352/.394 against him in 261 plate appearances. The sample size on both is small, but he walks left-handed hitters far more often, but also strikes them out more often. The big thing is that he’s kept the ball in the park against both groups of hitters and he’s been good at that in Pittsburgh and on the road.
Nicolas will come join the Reds in camp in Arizona in the next few days (the Pirates are in Florida so he will likely get a day or three to get to Phoenix) and join the battle for a spot in the bullpen. It will be interesting to see how things play out and if the Reds try to make any changes in how he pitches to take more advantage of his curveball and fastball and lessen the slider usage, or if perhaps they have seen something about his slider they want to tweak and try to improve. His control isn’t all that good, but he’s in a range where his walks are harmful but not to the level where you can’t use him, either.
You can see the career stats for Kyle Nicolas here.
Tyler Callihan’s time with the Reds is now over. After debuting on the final day of April last season it wasn’t a week later that he had a gruesome injury in Atlanta that broke his arm in several places in a collision with the wall in foul territory. He would undergo surgery and then miss the remainder of the season. He returned this spring healthy and ready to go. Callihan was competing for a spot on the bench where his ability to play both the infield and outfield perhaps had him a leg up on some others and perhaps that’s also what drew the Pirates to be interested in the left-handed hitter. This spring he played in seven games with Cincinnati and went 2-9 with a double and a home run.