Late on Monday night Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about the Cincinnati Reds and Kyle Schwarber. Sort of. The title was a bit misleading, saying “Nick Krall, Cincinnati Reds make pitch, wait on Kyle Schwarber’s call” but within the text of the article there was nothing at all to indicate that the team had talked to him with Terry Francona refusing to say if he had spoken to him and president of baseball operations Nick Krall simply telling him that he was not going to talk about any offers he might have made. 12 hours after that was published word came out that Schwarber was going back to the Philadelphia Phillies on a 5-year deal for $150,000,000.
In the story from ESPN’s Jeff Passan he talked about the interest from teams outside of Philadelphia, including from the Reds but notes that they weren’t able to pay him enough.
Update at 3:15pm ET
Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic is reporting that the Reds offered Schwarber a 5-year deal for $125,000,000 “with room to grow”, but what “room to grow” means was not specified.
Original article continues below
“Cincinnati, the dark horse because of its need for a power bat and its appeal to Schwarber — who grew up about 30 minutes outside of the city — did not meet the financial demands others were willing to.”
The Reds were said to be serious about signing Kyle Schwarber. Or so that’s what some stories were telling us. But if they weren’t willing to pay him what just about everyone knew he was going to get were they actually serious or were they just hoping to get a big hometown discount?
Around the same time that the piece from the Cincinnati Enquirer came out, another piece was written by Brian McTaggart of MLB.com about another player that the Reds were interested in, only this time it was a trade target. And it’s about as opposite of a player as Kyle Schwarber as you can get. Outfielder Jake Meyers is reportedly being shopped around by Houston. He’s coming off of his best season in the big leagues where he hit .292/.354/.373 with three home runs. Meyers is also an outstanding defensive center fielders. And he’s projected to make about 1/10th of what Schwarber makes in a season. The 29-year-old Meyers is under contract for the next two seasons if he remains in the big leagues.
Perhaps the Reds were having the idea that they could add both Schwarber and Meyers – it’s not as if they would be fighting for playing time with each other. But there’s just such a huge swing in the types of players they are and what they would bring to the team both in terms of on field performance and just the general reaction from the fanbase that it feels like being promised a nice, fancy dinner for your birthday and then the family winds up taking you go Charles Entertainment Cheese for chicken tenders.
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