Payroll squeeze leaves reunion with key Reds reliever on life support

Chicago Cubs v Cincinnati Reds | Jeff Dean/GettyImagesThere’s a version of the Cincinnati Reds’ offseason where Emilio Pagán’s ninth-inning scowl is back under the lights at Great American Ball Park ready to “run it back.” That version, however, runs headlong into a spreadsheet.

When a front office starts its winter with fixed dollars and multiple holes, the bullpen luxury item — yes, even the closer who just stabilized high-leverage chaos, gets pushed to the back of the cart. The romance of a reunion collides with arithmetic.

And the arithmetic isn’t subtle. Pagán just authored the kind of walk-year that gets agents paid: back-to-back seasons north of a 20% K-BB rate, a punch-out rate around…