here was Red Reporter\u2019s first stab at how the 26-man roster would look<\/a> when regular season ball commences just five weeks from now. Since then, though, we\u2019ve obviously seen some major news, deals, etc. that will impact how this entire thing shakes out.<\/p>\nThere will surely be many, many more twists and turns between now and Opening Day, but here\u2019s our second guess at what the roster will look like when it gets here.<\/p>\n
Notes: Wednesday\u2019s news that Hunter Greene is dealing with concerning stiffness in his surgically repaired elbow sent shockwaves through Reds camp, through Red Reporter Headquarters, and through the entire baseball world. Now, there\u2019s still plenty of optimism that Greene\u2019s MRI and second opinion will show that he only needs weeks – not months – on the shelf, something this club has dealt with in every season of his career to this point, but regardless of the severity the odds of him being ready for Opening Day seem incredibly long.<\/p>\n
So, that makes both Burns and Lowder – both of whom have looked great in camp – near locks for the starting rotation come Opening Day.<\/p>\n
Notes: Wednesday evening\u2019s trade of Tyler Callihan to Pittsburgh for reliever Kyle Nicolas throws an interesting wrench into this mix, though Nicolas still has an option remaining. I do believe he\u2019ll be very much in the running for a spot on the OD roster, though, with Moll the likeliest to miss out if that\u2019s the case – and Moll is out of options, so he\u2019d need to clear waivers to stick around the organization at all.<\/p>\n
The other wild card here is Brandon Williamson. Even though he\u2019s been used as a starter in 118 of his 121 career games since turning pro, the innings management the Reds will employ with both Burns and Lowder in the rotation over the course of the year means they could well choose to carry a long man in the bullpen to mitigate that a bit, and Williamson – who\u2019ll be on an innings limit of his own after missing 2025 recovering from Tommy John surgery – could well profile as that guy for a time to begin the year.<\/p>\n
For now, though Moll holds onto the job thanks to his lack of options giving him that administrative edge.<\/p>\n
Notes: The lone change here is moving Bleday onto the OD roster and dropping Will Benson, who has an option remaining, off of it. The reality here is that Bleday, Benson, and Lowe are battling for two spots on the roster, and only Bleday and Benson have the ability to be optioned to AAA and kept within the organization. So, I think that gives Lowe the inside track to making the OD bench since the Reds would prefer he stay in the org for long term depth purposes and keeping Bleday and Benson over him would send him back to the free agent market.<\/p>\n
If Lowe doesn\u2019t hit over the first few weeks of the season that would become moot with a DFA and promotion of Benson back to the active roster in a LHH role, with where Spencer Steer plays being tweaked to more 1B\/DH duties than LF duties in that alignment. Again, the OD roster is not always a reflection of where the roster will be in June, for example, and this series of decisions positions the Reds for the best combination of good enough on Opening Day and maintaining the most depth for the 162 game long haul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cincinnati Reds will open their 2026 season on March 26th in Great American Ball Park with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,535,50,29088,4259,4,536],"class_list":{"0":"post-608128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-cincinnati-reds-roster","12":"tag-cincinnatireds","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-reds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116177845938324093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}