The Cincinnati Reds made two transactions today and both were related to transactions they made a little over a week ago. Lyon Richardson and Keegan Thompson were both designated for assignment and taken off of the 40-man roster with new acquisitions made in late December to bring in outfielders JJ Bleday and Dane Myers. Today the club announced that Richardson had cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A and that Thompson was claimed by the Colorado Rockies.
Starting with Keegan Thompson, he and his contract are now in the hands of the forever starved for pitching Rockies. The right-handed reliever spent all of 2025 in Triple-A with the Chicago Cubs organization, but he signed a big league split contract with the Reds back in November that lowered his salary if he wound up in the minor leagues during the year. The guarantee of salary for if he wound up in the minor leagues was quite high for minor league salary sake, but that also made it more likely that he could remain in the organization if the team did have to send him to the minor leagues as he’s out of options and would have to go through waivers. That plan didn’t exactly work, though, as he didn’t clear waivers.
As for Lyon Richardson, he will remain in the organization. Players who have not been outrighted previously can’t refuse the outright to the minor leagues and become free agents and this was the first time that Richardson had been outrighted.
In 2025 Richardson was quite good early on. Over his first 20 outings with the Reds he had a 1.85 ERA in 24.1 innings, walked eight batters (and three of those were intentionally) while giving up just one home run and striking out 20 batters. But in his 21st outing of the year he gave up three runs in 0.2 innings and things went south after that. During his final 14 outings with Cincinnati during the year he allowed 14 earned runs in 13.1 innings while walking 13 batters and striking out just 10. After a tough run in July he was optioned to the minor leagues early in August and only made one appearance after August 2nd when he allowed three runs in an inning of work against Toronto on September 3rd.
You can see the career stats for Lyon Richardson here.
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