{"id":677743,"date":"2026-04-17T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677743\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:28:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:28:43","slug":"reds-offseason-addition-forcing-the-reds-into-a-tough-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677743\/","title":{"rendered":"Reds Offseason Addition Forcing the Reds Into a Tough Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Reds signed outfielder JJ Bleday to a one-year, $1.4 million deal in the offseason. While he performed well in Spring Training, the Reds opted to go with Will Benson and Nathaniel Lowe over Bleday, since Bleday still had options remaining. <\/p>\n<p>There were a number of factors as to why Bleday chose Cincinnati in the offseason. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it was a bunch of variables,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/jj-bleday-reds-contract\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bleday told MLB.com&#8217;s Mark Sheldon<\/a>. &#8220;One of the main ones was a winning atmosphere, a winning culture. They made the playoffs last year. \u2026 It\u2019s close to home where I grew up in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously, they\u2019re just not going to hand you a spot. &#8220;You\u2019ve got to work for it, got to earn it. That was still enough for me to hear them out and want to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bleday is Trying to Force the Reds&#8217; Hand <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds signed outfielder JJ Bleday to a one-year, $1.4 million deal in the offseason. While he performed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,535,50,4259,4,536],"class_list":{"0":"post-677743","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-cincinnatireds","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-reds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116420996598238758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677743","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=677743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}