The moves made by the Cincinnati Reds last offseason saw them jettison the likes of Tucker Barnhart, Wade Miley, Sonny Gray, Eugenio Suarez, and Jesse Winker from their roster, players whose contracts dictated they would make somewhere in the range of $44 to 45 million during the 2022 season. Trading them, of course, meant it would not be the Cincinnati Reds doing the paying there.
As we address just what the Reds did in the run-up to yesterday’s trade deadline, we’ll start where that payroll cull left off. The deals that moved Luis Castillo, Tyler Mahle, Tommy Pham, and Brandon Drury in the last week all included the Reds shaving off the pro-rated 2022 season salaries of each, savings roughly in the range of $6 to 6.