Taking stock of the Reds' bullpen as Alexis Díaz heads to the IL
As much as Alexis Díaz struggled in spring training this year, he was actually even worse in the spring of 2024.
“He always starts off a little slow in spring,” Johnson said last season. “In the years we’ve had him, it’s always looked like that.”
The difference between 2024 and previous years was that his spring training struggles spilled into the start of the regular season. Last April was the worst month of his big league career as Díaz blew his first save opportunity of the year and never seemed to have his feet under him. It felt like Díaz was playing catch up until June, but he was pretty good after that.
The Reds aren’t risking a similar slow start from him in 2025. Díaz will start the year on the injured list with inflammation of his left hamstring, according to Trent Rosecrans.
Díaz tweaked his hamstring early in camp and didn’t make his Cactus League debut until March 9. He has only appeared in four spring training games this year after pitching in seven spring training games in 2024.
Díaz’s velocity has been up this spring, and he appeared to be healthy enough to pitch as he got into Cactus League action. But he missed out on the typical spring training ramp up period, and Francona told reporters that Díaz’s lead leg wasn’t where it needed to be. The Reds aren’t rushing Díaz back onto a big league mound.
In 2024, Sam Moll suffered a hiccup with a shoulder injury in spring training, started the year on the IL, quickly went on a rehab assignment and ended up back in the bullpen in mid-April. The same thing happened with Lucas Sims (back) in 2023 and 2022. What’s going on here with Díaz — going from spring training game action to the IL — isn’t unique.
The Reds are still able to have Díaz start the year on the IL and pitch on a rehab assignment like they’ve done with Moll and Sims.
During spring training this year, Díaz’s command has been a problem. He has always been an effectively wild pitcher whose biggest strength is his deception, but Terry Francona had made it clear this spring that he needed to see better strike throwing from Díaz.
Francona backed that up by having Díaz go to the IL instead of continuing to pitch. Now, Díaz won’t have to find his command while pitching in high-leverage innings, and the Reds won’t embarrass him by optioning him to Triple-A. Díaz was still very good over the final three-plus months of the 2024 season.
The Reds are playing it safe this year with Díaz, who didn’t have a full spring training to get ready, by having him start the year on the IL. They’re doing the same thing with Spencer Steer and Andrew Abbott, who both could have been on the Opening Day roster (in a limited capacity) but instead will start the year on the IL.
With Díaz now on the IL, the Reds will have their first new closer since Hunter Strickland was the Reds’ ninth inning guy in the summer of 2022.
Since the Reds have invested in the bullpen in each of the last two offseasons, they’re in a better spot without Díaz than they’d have been in in 2024 or 2023 when the Reds would have started those seasons with Lucas Sims and Buck Farmer pitching the ninth inning.
It’s tough to really pin down Francona’s true philosophy at the closer spot because for almost his entire career in Cleveland, he had a great closer. Two-time All-Star Chris Perez passed the torch to Rolaids Relief award winner John Axford, who passed the torch to one of the best closers of the mid-2010s and a consistent All-Star snub in Cody Allen, who passed the baton to three-time All-Star Brad Hand, who passed the baton to three-time All-Star Emmanuel Clase.
In Boston, Francona had Rolaids Relief award winner Keith Foulke and six-time All-Star Jonathan Pappelbon.
Pretty much any manager in baseball will put a proven closer like that in a consistent role pitching in the ninth inning. It only gets tricky when you don’t have that guy to call upon.
That’s where the Reds find themselves now.
I’ll group the potential options for the short-term at closer into a few tiers.
The favorites: Tony Santillan, Emilio Pagán and Taylor Rogers
Last season, 22 pitchers had 20-plus saves. Fourteen of those pitchers ranked in the top-10% in MLB in fastball velocity, and most of those exceptions were multi-time All-Star closers in the latter stages of their careers whose production has dropped off.
A conversation that I had last year reinforced to me the impact that velocity makes in high-leverage innings. Santillan is the power pitcher of this group.
He was also the primary setup man behind Díaz to wrap up last season. Santillan also has closing experience from early in the 2022 season when he beat out a young Díaz to be the closer.
Earlier this spring, I wrote in-depth about Santillan here. Aside from Díaz’s, Santillan’s ceiling is as high as anybody in the bullpen’s.
Pagán didn’t look like himself for a lot of the 2024 season because he had sports hernia surgery in the offseason and didn’t prepare for the season with his typical training progression. He has looked like himself in spring training this year. The Reds’ investment in him before the 2024 season ($8 million per season) shows the organization’s belief in his fastball-splinter combination.
Even though Pagán doesn’t throw especially hard, his pitches have a lot of movement and he throws a lot of strikes. The key for him this year is the consistency that he lacked in 2024, and the signs that he showed in the spring made Pagán looking again like a quality bullpen piece. He has the highest floor of all of the pitchers in the Reds’ bullpen this year, and the moment certainly wouldn’t be too big for him in the ninth inning.
Rogers, who posted a 2.40 ERA last year while mostly pitching in lower-leverage situations, was a full-time closer as recently as 2022. Since 2019, he has more saves (81) than all but three left-handed relievers in MLB (Josh Hader, Aroldis Chapman and Will Smith). Left-handed closers aren’t particularly common, but Rogers was a solid ninth inning piece when he has been at his best.
Unlike most late-inning relievers, Rogers barely gets any swing and miss and ranks in the bottom-percentile in MLB in getting hitters to chase. He fills up the zone, forces ground balls and limits hard contact.
Maybe the season starts off with a committee approach where Francona plays the matchups and chooses between these three pitchers for the ninth inning. All three of these pitchers provide very different looks.
If one of these guys really pops in the ninth inning, then the Reds will have to have the conversation about whether or not Díaz will go right back into the closer role when he returns from the IL. But that’s a conversation for another day, after we learn what the 2025 Reds have in the bullpen.
The wild card: Graham Ashcraft
It’s unlikely that Ashcraft, who has been a starter for his entire big league career, goes right into the closer role in April. But pitches like Ashcraft’s are the types of weapons that make a pitcher a standout reliever. His cutter is a lot like the cutters of Clase and All-Star Camilo Doval.
Ashcraft has the demeanor to be a closer. If he takes to the bullpen well, which is impossible to project right now, then he could force his way into the closer conversation. There’s a world where Ashcraft is the Reds’ closer in the second half of this season.
The role players: Scott Barlow, Sam Moll, Brent Suter and Ian Gibaut
Scott Barlow has a lot of experience as a closer, but he was released by the Guardians’ last September to cap off an inconsistent 2024 season. The Reds are paying him middle reliever money at $2.5 million. Barlow gives the bullpen a different look with a big sweeping slider-breaking ball combination that he uses to fuel a strong strikeout rate, but it would be a big leap to throw him right back into the closer role. His durability will be a bigger asset.
Sam Moll has been one of the best left-handed specialists in MLB over the last two years, but his struggles vs. right-handed hitters make it tough to automatically lock him in for the ninth inning.
Brent Suter is the perfect long reliever who has been good in his role.
Ian Gibaut was the Reds’ top setup reliever at the end of the 2023 season, which was the last time he was healthy. But he might not have made the team without Díaz’s injury.