A new lefty outfielder!
The Cincinnati Reds have signed a former 4th overall draft pick, a player who once ranked as high as the #20 overall prospect according to MLB.com!
In their seemingly neverending search for corner outfield upgrades, the Reds landed on former Oakland Athletic JJ Bleday, who reportedly signed a major league deal with the club on Saturday morning. MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon relayed the news, noting that the team’s 40-man roster is currently full so a corresponding roster move will be forthcoming.
As recently as 2024, Bleday was a legitimate bat who’d fit well in any lineup in the game. He hit .243/.324/.437 with 20 homers in 642 PA that year for Oakland, a season-long effort that was valued at 3.2 fWAR/2.1 bWAR. The discrepancy there is pretty much an indictment of how his defense in CF was valued, something that Oakland/Sacramento clearly had serious opinions about as they effectively began to phase him out of CF and into a corner spot just last year.
As his defense was moved down the spectrum last year, so, too, tailed off his offensive value. He hit just .212/.294/.404 with 14 homers in 344 PA last year in his new home park, and even was optioned back to AAA for a time. The lack of results paired with his service time reaching arbitration status meant he was non-tendered this offseason instead of taking down an estimated salary of $2.2 million, though he now comes with a trio of years of team control for the Reds (should they choose to keep him on the roster that long).
The upside with Bleday is clear. There are ample reasons why he was drafted so highly, rated so highly, and even once traded straight up for fellow highly regarded pitcher AJ Puk in the deal that swapped the two southpaws between Miami and Oakland. There’s also a chance that last season was a bit of bad luck for Bleday, whose BABIP tanked to just .251 (after it was .279 during his breakout 2024 season).
What’s clear, though, is that this is a reclamation project that the Reds are willing to take on, one that doesn’t even seem to fit the roster perfectly at the moment. Bleday’s a lefty who has hit RHP better than LHP for his career (with 2025 the lone exception), and that overlaps a ton with the likes of Will Benson and Gavin Lux. Ideally if the Reds were going the cheap route for platoon options in the outfield, adding a righty who smashes LHP to complement those two is what they should have been after, though there’s a caveat here that Bleday still has an option remaining.
This isn’t the kind of signing that would, in theory, prevent the Reds from still pursuing a larger upgrade to both the outfield and the offense, but it does further muddy a roster that’s running out of places to stash these kinds of upside plays. Perhaps it’s an indication that there’s a future trade in the works to help thin out that glut – Lux is slated to make about $5 million in 2026 after a lackluster 2025 – or maybe it’s just the Reds getting what they can while it’s out there cheaply.
Whatever the reasons, it’s another Vanderbilt connection with the Reds that’s gone down since Derek Johnson – former Vandy pitching coach and recruiter – has been on Cincinnati’s staff. Sonny Gray! Caleb Cotham! Curt Casali! Sal Stewart was a Vandy commit! Carson Fulmer! Tony Kemp! Nick Christiani! Drew Hayes!
Category: General Sports
