3:10pm: It’s a one-year contract, according to Gordon Wittenmyer of The Cincinnati Enquirer.
3:01pm: The Reds agreed to a deal with lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. The signing is still pending a physical.
Ferguson adds a needed left-handed option to Terry Francona’s bullpen. The Reds bought out Brent Suter at the beginning of the offseason. That left them with Sam Moll as their only lefty reliever. He had been up-and-down from Triple-A this year and gave up 16 runs across 18 1/3 MLB innings. Moll gets a decent number of whiffs and ground-balls and was a solid middle reliever between 2022-24, but the Reds couldn’t enter the season relying on him as their best option.
The 29-year-old Ferguson is coming off a solid season split between the Pirates and Mariners. He made a career-high 70 appearances and posted a 3.58 earned run average through 65 1/3 innings. He recorded 14 holds while relinquishing five leads. Ferguson got a lot of weak contact, but he benefitted from an unsustainably low home run rate and batting average on balls in play. That will probably tick back up in 2026, though it’s possible he compensates by missing more bats than he did this past season.
Ferguson is coming off an 18.9% strikeout rate that is by far the worst mark of his career. He had punched out at least a quarter of opposing hitters in each of his first six seasons. That’d be greater cause for concern if it were accompanied by a drop in his raw stuff. Ferguson’s 94 MPH average fastball speed was in line with that of prior years. He cut back on the four-seam fastball to more frequently use a sinker against left-handed batters. The result, as one might expect, was a drop in whiffs but a spike in ground-balls. Ferguson also did a much better job throwing strikes against southpaws, whom he held to a .184/.261/.204 line with zero home runs in 115 plate appearances.
More to come.
