When the Cincinnati Reds made a qualifying offer to Nick Martinez this past week it seemed that the consensus was that he was likely to decline it as he would get more money overall by signing a free agent deal, even if it wasn’t going to be for as much money per season as the qualifying offer would give him. Jon Heyman of the New York Post, though, is reporting this morning that Martinez is expected to accept the Reds offer that would pay him $21,050,000 for the 2025 season.
Now, “expected to” doesn’t always mean that it happens. But let’s assume that it does happen for a second. What that does is give Cincinnati a quality starting pitcher to add (back) to their rotation. Martinez had the best season of his career in 2024, posting an ERA of 3.10 and throwing 142.1 innings. Those were both career bests. So was his strikeout-to-walk ratio, which was the best ever in a season by a Reds pitcher with at least 130.0 innings pitched.
What it also does is add to the payroll. While $21,050,000 is not at all a big contract in today’s game – that’s the AVERAGE pay for a single season of the top 125 paid players in the game – it’s not a small amount of salary, either. The Reds payroll for 2025 is unknown. And it isn’t just unknown to you and I, but to the club itself. It seems that they just don’t know what they want/are able to spend based on how they run things. That’s tied up in the fact that they don’t know what’s going to happen with their television contract because of the ongoing issues with Diamond Sports Group – the parent company of what was Bally Sports and now FanDuel Sports Network.
