Nick Martinez was a starting pitcher for the 2025 Cincinnati Reds right up until he wasn’t. He’d start on Tuesday. He’d then start on Friday. Then, he’d take two weeks off and be a reliever every other day, sometimes for two, three innings at a time.
Martinez, who finalized a one-year deal with the Tampa Bay Rays yesterday, was precisely the kind of malleable arm that made juggling the rest of the Reds rotation easy. After all, getting more than five arms to be ready only once every fifth day requires a kind of mathematic precision with roster planning and scheduling, and having someone who can do it on their own abbreviated schedule served as a major Band-Aid for manager Terry Francona and head pitching monk Derek Johnson along the way.
So, how will the Reds navigate that issue in 2026?
Complicating the process will be the inevitable innings limits on just about every single candidate for the job. Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson, and Julian Aguiar are each coming off almost completely lost 2025 seasons, and none of them is going to be tasked with getting 30 starts and 180 innings even if they simply refuse to allow hits and runs all year. Chase Burns, meanwhile, threw just 109.1 IP across four levels in 2026 after throwing just 100.0 at Wake Forest the year before, and the Reds clearly operated with innings limits in mind for him last year as they used him in the bullpen down the stretch to keep him available.
Four arms who will need some form of kid gloves all year, and four arms you’d love to still have ready and able for a playoff run come September. How, though, do you use them enough from April through August to get them to that point, though?
Will the Reds send Burns, perhaps, to the bullpen to begin the year, as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon opined in his first stab at the Opening Day roster? Would the Reds consider piggy-backing two of these guys from the start?
Is it possible they’d be willing to, say, put Rhett Lowder in the rotation and tell him he’s got 15 starts and they’re shutting him down in July? Might they drag their feet on getting Williamson and Aguiar going in the minors, as both are coming off Tommy John surgeries?
Would they even consider going to a six-man rotation at any given point, or would that throw off the regularity enjoyed by the rest of the starters?
All of this, of course, assumes the health and progress of each of the four arms who are ‘known’ quantities in the rotation in Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, and Brady Singer. The best case scenario, obviously, is the four names I talked about earlier only having one opening in the rotation available to them. Complications will surely arise, though, and the Reds have enviable depth to be able to address them when they do…provided they can find a way to keep that many talented, deserving arms ready and able to go at any point this season.
It’s almost enough to make you wish Martinez was still around.
What say you?