Free agency technically began last week, but not entirely. Players who were free agents after the 2024 season are not allowed to negotiate with teams they didn’t end the year with until five days after the World Series ends. That means that players can’t look for deals on the open market until this week.

The Cincinnati Reds have never really been a player in the free agency market. When they “go big” it’s just “big for the Reds”. There was a big deal made about how much the team spent in free agency last year and the cumulative total for the entirety of all of the contracts they signed was like half the value of a single “big” contract teams at the top of the market spent a decade ago. So don’t expect Cincinnati to be spending money near the top of the market – it’s not going to happen.

The real question is, can they or will they try to spend in the middle tier of the market? We may get an indication on that by late Monday afternoon. If the Reds extend a qualifying offer to Nick Martinez, then it signals that they at least have $21,000,000 in their budget for 2025’s payroll because even if they don’t believe he would take it, there’s a chance he would and they’d have to come up with the money for it.

Last week, Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall told Mark Sheldon of Reds.com that the team still didn’t know the budget and they were “working through it”. That’s probably not ideal, but the team – and many others around the league – are sort of in a wait-and-see mode with regards to knowing if they will be getting money from what is now known as FanDuel Sports Network (formerly Bally Sports) or if they will have to take their television broadcasts elsewhere with unknown payments. While the parent company is in bankruptcy proceedings, the Reds are not involved as they are part owners of FanDuel Sports Network Ohio as a part of their most recent television contract with what was at the time Fox Sports Ohio (then sold to Bally).

Over the weekend, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com looked at the Top 25 free agents this offseason and tried to predict which teams were the best fit to sign that player. Juan Soto was atop the list and as I’m sure you’re unsurprised to read – the Reds were not a fit there.

There were two players, though, that seemed like a fit for Cincinnati. The first guy was former Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber. He’s coming off of Tommy John surgery and isn’t expected to return until at least the middle of 2025. Back in 2023 he threw 128.0 innings with a 3.80 ERA for Cleveland. The year before that he threw 200.0 innings with a 2.88 ERA. But in 2024 he made just two starts.

The other guy that was a potential fit for Cincinnati was not in the top 25, but among the “best of the rest” group. It was another pitcher – Luis Severino. This will be his second consecutive year as a free agent. Last season he signed with the Mets on a 1-year deal and then went out and threw 182.0 innings of 3.91 ERA baseball.

MLB Trade Rumors has an updated list of all of the players that are free agents this offseason in case you wanted to look around and see what all was available out there.