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The Cincinnati Reds made the right decision when they chose Nate Low.
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You are locked on red, you're daily Cincinnati Reds podcasts, part of the Lockdown podcast
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network, your team every day.
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I'm Jeff Cart and this Lockdown Reds special video.
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We're going to call it the Lockdown Reds lineup show is all about Nate Low because the
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Cincinnati Reds got an awesome player in Nate Low, the kind of guy who got the back of
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a baseball card that you can trust.
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He does have a nice career at a rough 2025, but he presents a clear weapon for this bench
2:05
because there's really three things that I look at when I look at Nate Low's career coming
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here in to Cincinnati.
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Firstly, he's an op-o taco artist.
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Secondly, he's an on-base specialist and that all ends up being a bench, that extraordinaire.
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We're talking about a guy that when he is going, he is hitting the ball too left field.
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He is hitting the ball to center field and left field specifically because when you
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look at his career, he actually doesn't pull the ball very much.
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He's a lefty that pushes it into left field when everything is going correctly.
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I'll be interested to see how teams shift him because I don't necessarily think he's
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going to get that traditional lefty shift.
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There might be some teams that shift him more like a right-hander whenever he's at the
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I think that he is a guy that the Reds can rely on in multiple different ways because
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his power is to left field.
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While last year we did see a bit of a drop off, I don't get to that later on in this show,
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we still see a guy that can provide a lot of value for the Reds off the bench playing first
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base for a guy that you can bring into a game in a key pinch.
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Think about these past couple of years.
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The Reds have had some interesting guys coming off of the bench, usually they're glove
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Now, the thing you'll lose, and we're going to call them Nate Low, by the way, but Nate
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Low's glove isn't horrible, but his bat is important.
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There's not been a lot of guys here recently that the Reds have had the luxury of keeping
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on the bench because their bat is good.
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They've had to use their glove in certain situations to think about Santiago Espanol.
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Now, I know Santiago Espanol played a lot last year, but I don't think he should have.
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And I pretty sure you agree with me on that.
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There was some sort of intangible quality or whatever it might be that he was just a
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magnet for Terry Francois to put in the lineup.
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But he is ideally a bench player, more so gloves suited than bat.
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Nate Low is the opposite.
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And by the way, we're going to call him Nate Low on the podcast.
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I don't necessarily know if that's what he wants to be called.
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I haven't asked him, but I know plenty of Nathan's and I know plenty of Nate's and I don't
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know any Nathanials.
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I know a couple of Nate's and Nathan's that when they were in trouble, they were called
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Nathaniel, but that was when they were in trouble.
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So we're going to call him Nate Low because right now he's not in trouble.
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Now, if he has a struggle of a game, we'll call him Nathaniel, but yeah, as far as lockdown
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Reds is concerned, he is Nate Low.
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And he's a guy that his career has been about getting on base.
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In fact, over the last couple of years, he is usually in the top percentage of guys
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when it comes to walk percentage in 2024, he was in the top 3% of major league hitters
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with a 12.6% walk rate for reference league averages 8.4%.
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In 2023, it was even higher at 12.8%.
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Last year, it dipped a little bit to 10.2, but you still like to see that.
5:06
Now, his strikeout rate did go up a little bit, but again, we'll talk about that in just
5:10
a little bit when it pertains to his 2025, but this is a guy that throughout his career
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has walked a ton, gotten on base a lot, and really been an asset to his team, albeit mostly
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that's been the Texas Rangers, but there has been some time with Boston last season.
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As you see in this nice little picture right here, this is actually a picture of him looking
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at a ball that he pulled.
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He doesn't do that very often.
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Most of the time, he's hitting it the other way, as we've talked about.
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But I really have been excited to see that the Reds were able to get Nate Low, and in
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case you're unfamiliar, the deal that the Reds got him on was a minor league deal with
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a spring training in fight.
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Yeah, we're talking about a dude that's going to be making major league minimum for the
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Reds, and he could be having some very important at bats along the way.
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This is going to be an easy guy for me, like if there is a right-handed closer on the
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mound or something like that, and Nate Low is still sitting on your bench, you call
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Nate Low in the game, and you expect it a nice hit there from him.
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I don't know that I'm expecting home runs.
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We're not talking about a guy that has gone crazy in his career with home run power, but
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he's just been a good, solid piece of hitting dude.
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I mean, when it comes to his best season for the long ball, that was back in 2022, with
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the Texas Rangers when he hit 27 bombs.
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Since then, 2023, he had 17 bombs.
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In 2024, he had 16 bombs, and last year between the Nationals and the Red Sox, he had 18
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He's going to be a guy that hits a ton of home runs for you, but he's going to hit
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enough, and he's going to get on base a lot.
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Last season, even when he struggled, he got on base at 307 clip, the year before that
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361, the year before that 360, his career on base percentage is 347.
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I think that he's going to tick a little bit closer to his career numbers than what we
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saw from him and what you can see from him in his 2025, because after he left Washington,
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he finished the year with the Red Sox, only played 34 games with him, but he did a mass
7:16
119 played appearances, and in that time, he slashed 280, 370, or 20.
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So things were working out there for him toward the end of the season, and I think we're
7:28
going to see a lot more of good night low than what the Nationals saw from him early
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I mentioned early on the year, 119 games for the Nationals, 490 played appearances.
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Slashline was a meager 216, 292, 370.
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So we're going to see a lot better from that.
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I would expect when it comes to night low in 2026.
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Nate Lowe was available to the Cincinnati Reds for a minor league deal.
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So initially, there's two thoughts with this.
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Number one, Nick Crawl's living right, man.
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He got himself a heck of a deal.
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But why is a guy who's played some pretty good baseball for his career available for nothing?
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I mean, not nothing.
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He's getting better at minimum, which is a little over a million dollars.
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I would love a million dollars.
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But I mean, as guys like him go, that is more luck than I would have thought the reds
12:03
could have with a guy like this because in seven seasons, like I mentioned, his last
12:07
sign is 264-347 or 24.
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Pretty solid hitter.
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And quite frankly, had he not had such a down year in 2025, I think he would have been
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getting a multi-year contract and probably been priced out of the reds range.
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That is why he was here, because 2025 was a rough season for him.
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Overall, even though I told you that once he got the boss, then things started to turn
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around for him a little bit, even after the turnaround, his entire season in 153 games
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and 609 played appearances, he slashed 228-307-381.
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That's not who he is.
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That's not who his career has been, but it was such a down year that people started to
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look a little bit deeper.
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And when you look a little bit deeper at what happened in 2025, it's not as if he was
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Nate Low had a bottom 30% tile in average exit velocity, so he wasn't hitting the ball
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His barrels, his hard hit percentage, all of it was below average.
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There's a lot of blue on his stat cast page.
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We talk about this a lot every day, as we'll know, that when it comes to stat cast, there's
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blue and there's red and you want to be red.
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As it is, with most things in baseball, you want to be a red, you don't want to be blue.
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That's the cubs and the brewers.
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But when it comes to stat cast, you want to be red.
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And really the only thing that was red for him was the fact that he didn't chase bad
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pitches and then he walked a good amount.
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He also has a pretty decent bat speed.
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So you like to see that there might just be a little bit of a little bit of loopiness
13:45
And so hopefully the reds can kind of shore that up a little bit.
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But ultimately, it felt like there wasn't a lot on his profile that said he was getting
13:55
So I think that's why a lot of teams were blocking at the idea of adding him to the roster.
14:01
But for me, I think that this is a clear bounce back candidate.
14:04
We were talking about a dude who for the prior two seasons before 2025 had an on base percentage
14:11
of 360 or better for two seasons in a row.
14:15
So yeah, he had a rough season last year, but I think that we will see a bounce back
14:20
in a big way for the reds.
14:21
And we're not talking about a guy that has to give them 600 played appearances.
14:25
Like, think about last season, and I mentioned Santiago Espanol just a minute ago, do you
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realize how much he played for the reds?
14:33
Now I know that there's a bit of an irony here because I'm sort of bashing on Santiago
14:38
Espanol a bit and he somehow made the Dodgers opening day roster.
14:42
Don't know how that happened.
14:44
Again, there's some undefinedable quality the Santiago Espanol has that seems to
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endear him to people.
14:49
But last year, Santiago Espanol got 328 played appearances.
14:56
If those simply go to Nate Low, the reds have a massive upgrade here.
15:01
We've talked about this a little bit and that, you know, Gavin Lux's played appearances
15:05
are now going to go to a Eugenio Suarez.
15:08
And we're going to see Santiago Espanol taken up by some people.
15:11
Like, there's definitely a lot of one-for-one upgrades that we are not counting on that we
15:19
are not, that's not the right way to say it, that we are not like assessing correctly.
15:25
And I think that people look at the reds lineup and still think that it lacks something.
15:29
And while it's not perfect, it is not a Dodgers lineup, it's not even a Yankees lineup.
15:34
It's a much better lineup than what it was last year.
15:36
The reds are giving significant playing time to guys who are significant upgrades over
15:43
guys who got significant playing time last year.
15:47
And Nate Low is going to be so keep it if you just give him 328 played appearances.
15:53
And you say, give me his career numbers for this season in 328 played appearances.
16:00
You're going to see probably somewhere around 12 to 15 home runs.
16:04
You're going to see an on-base percentage that is close to 35% of the time.
16:10
And you're going to see a slugging percentage of over 420, which last year would have
16:15
like been one of the best on the team.
16:18
I don't think we realize how rough the red slugging situation was last year.
16:25
Because if you look at this team and if you just go to a stats page and you sort it by
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slugging percentage, South Stewart and Miguel and Doohar are the top two.
16:35
And those guys played so little on this team that you got to do a little qualifier and
16:39
you say, okay, guys who played more, well, that's Austin Hayes or that's Noel V Marte.
16:45
Like you got to go down to LA De La Cruz at 699 played appearances.
16:49
This slugging percentage was 440 and there are only three other guys on the roster that
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had a slugging percentage above 400 past Ali.
16:58
So I think that Nate Low is a huge addition.
17:00
Are you hanging with Suarez as a huge addition?
17:02
This lineup is better.
17:04
And even though Nate Low was available because of such a rough 2025, dude's going to break
17:12
out in a big way bounce back.
17:14
Sorry, that is an actual distinction, right?
17:16
We've talked about that with Matt McLean.
17:18
Is it a bounce back or a breakout?
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It's probably a breakout from Matt McLean.
17:21
It's a bounce back season for Nate Low coming here in 2026 and I'm here for it.
17:26
We're going to talk so much more about Nate Low and the Reds roster and all this other
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stuff this week as we've got so much content for you leading up to opening day.
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And as we pass opening day all throughout the year, we're talking sense and
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add your head space about right here on Lockdown Red.
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So make sure that you subscribe so that we do miss any of it.
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through the end of the month of March.
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But then I'll do it for us here today.
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Steven, Steve will be back with me tomorrow as we continue to get you set for opening day
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right here on the Lockdown Reds podcast where we are Lockdown Reds every single day.
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