The Cincinnati Reds likely strategy as the trade deadline approaches
How will they tweak this roster for a playoff push?
Before ever writing a word in this post, I spent a solid fifteen minutes searching through both our Getty photo archive and that of USA Today.
I was on the hunt for a pretty specific picture, to be clear - one featuring a pair of teammates, both of whom have put up pretty good offensive numbers so far in 2025. Surely they’d scored on the same homer and there would be a good high-five at the plate pic, or maybe I could find one of them spittin’ sunflower seeds while sitting next to one another on the bench.
There isn’t one of the two of them, however. The Cincinnati Reds are precisely halfway through their 2025 season, and there’s not a single picture of these guys together despite both having spent time mashing right in the heart of the Reds order.
So, here are pictures of them both individually.
That’s Austin Hays. You may remember him socking some homers for the Reds, something he hasn’t done since May 16th. He’s not done anything at all for the Reds since May 28th, his last game in the bigs before being sidelined (again).
This guy? He’s Noelvi Marte. You may recall him from such things as Once Suspended for 80-games and Posted a Solid .857 OPS Before Getting Hurt in ‘25. He last played for the Reds on May 4th as an oblique injury became his latest setback.
To the best of my knowledge, these two would-be cogs in the 2025 Cincinnati Reds lineup have played together in the same game just 9 times so far this season. Their injuries have both overlapped and dovetailed, and they last showed up in the same lineup back on April 28th.
You aren’t going to really want to hear it, but I’m going to say it anyway - as the Trade Deadline approaches and the Reds begin to assess their options as an over-.500 club chasing a playoff spot, they’re going to treat getting these two guys back and healthy as something that’s as good as a trade.
Gone is Jeimer Candelario, for one. That’s a guy in the 3B/1B mix who was positively awful, and the Reds - even with Marte’s numbers baked in - boast a league-worst 56 wRC+ from their collective 3Bs this year. Getting Marte back will render Santiago Espinal back down the ladder for that positional pecking order, and the Reds will have addressed one of their most glaring weaknesses.
Hays, meanwhile, has hit quite well in the 31 games in which he’s played this year. He’s got experience in both corner OF positions in his career, and he’s pretty consistently done something over the course of his 8 years in the bigs that the Reds could desperately use down the stretch - hit left-handed pitching.
Adding Marte and Hays won’t just upgrade the team’s depth, it’ll add a pair of bats who, in theory, will help add right-handed thump to a roster that owns just a 73 wRC+ against southpaws - a mark that’s just 25th overall this year.
We’ve not truly seen this Reds lineup with both in there, and giving a chance for their bets to pay off is something the Reds front office is likely to let play out. They aren’t going to chase a 3B upgrade on the trade market until they let Marte get another chance to show his early-2025 numbers are the true him. Similarly, they had to have loved what they saw from Hays early on after bringing him in on a free agent deal, and he’s a guy with ‘playoff experience’ who they hoped would bring precisely that to table back when they signed him.
That’s it. Barring something going catastrophically haywire in the next three weeks, that’s the team’s trade deadline strategy on the offensive side of the ball. It’s not splashy. It’s not super sexy. It is, though, better than nothing, and it’s almost certain to be how they handle the situation - that’s just what the Reds do.
How they choose to sort out their pitching options remains to be seen, however.
It’s hard to fathom them moving on from a guy like Nick Martinez, who manager Terry Francona has long lauded as a consumate pro. He’s pitched in the rotation and on short rest as a reliever, doing so willingly in a way few others would. He’s also a looming free agent on what remains of a $21.05 million salary, and the Reds moving him for something tangible if they think a healthy rotation featuring Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Brady Singer, Chase Burns, Wade Miley, and Chase Petty is good enough to make the playoffs.
The price for that versatility will be made clear with the Reds decision there, as will whether they seek additional upgrades for a bullpen that needs reinforcement (especially if Martinez gets dealt instead of used in relief more often).
Still, that’s a strategy for a 42-39 club that exudes a pretty clear message: get everyone back, and keep getting better.
That’s been the Reds mantra throughout the latest edition of their deep, dark, decades-long rebuild, and I don’t expect it to change radically this year, either. We just once again will be asked to be patient and find out if it’s good enough, which would therefore make it be better than it’s ever been to date.