“They said they were going to go out and spend this offseason and they did,” said Anthony DeSclafani, who has been with the club since 2015. “I was here during the tear-down, played a lot of losing baseball. It brings a lot of excitement.”
The Reds signed Mike Moustakas and Nick Castellanos to $64 million deals, gave Shogo Akiyama $21 million and inked Wade Miley for $15 million. Joey Votto said he was “shocked” and “pleasantly surprised” as he watched his team’s offseason activity.
The Reds made some impactful moves last winter, too, trading for Sonny Gray, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Matt Kemp and Tanner Roark prior to the season, then acquiring Trevor Bauer before the Trade Deadline. Those moves didn’t translate into a winning season, but they did serve as a signal that the Reds were looking at the present and not just the future.
“Last offseason, a lot of what we did allowed us to be able to do that this offseason,” assistant GM Sam Grossman said. “We didn’t know how the winter was going to go, but we identified some players. We wanted to bring in impact bats and impact talent, but more importantly, people that had come from winning environments that we knew were great teammates and were going to be a part of the culture we’re trying to build.
The NL Central will surely be a competitive division in 2020, but the Reds -- who lost at least 94 games in each season from 2015-18 -- believe they will be in the mix.
“We’ve come in here with an expectation that anything short of a World Series is not going to cut it,” DeSclafani said. “That’s the vibe we’re getting around here and that’s what we need. It’s kind of refreshing and it’s going to make coming to the ballpark every day a lot more fun.”