NO SURPRISES: Cincinnati Reds Opening Day Roster REVEALED-Reds READY to ROLL

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The Cincinnati Reds made the right decision when they chose Nate Low.

You are locked on red, you're daily Cincinnati Reds podcasts, part of the Lockdown podcast

network, your team every day.

What's up?

I'm Jeff Cart and this Lockdown Reds special video.

We're going to call it the Lockdown Reds lineup show is all about Nate Low because the

Cincinnati Reds got an awesome player in Nate Low, the kind of guy who got the back of

a baseball card that you can trust.

He does have a nice career at a rough 2025, but he presents a clear weapon for this bench

because there's really three things that I look at when I look at Nate Low's career coming

here in to Cincinnati.

Firstly, he's an op-o taco artist.

Secondly, he's an on-base specialist and that all ends up being a bench, that extraordinaire.

We're talking about a guy that when he is going, he is hitting the ball too left field.

He is hitting the ball to center field and left field specifically because when you

look at his career, he actually doesn't pull the ball very much.

He's a lefty that pushes it into left field when everything is going correctly.

I'll be interested to see how teams shift him because I don't necessarily think he's

going to get that traditional lefty shift.

There might be some teams that shift him more like a right-hander whenever he's at the

play.

I think that he is a guy that the Reds can rely on in multiple different ways because

his power is to left field.

While last year we did see a bit of a drop off, I don't get to that later on in this show,

we still see a guy that can provide a lot of value for the Reds off the bench playing first

base for a guy that you can bring into a game in a key pinch.

Think about these past couple of years.

The Reds have had some interesting guys coming off of the bench, usually they're glove

first.

Now, the thing you'll lose, and we're going to call them Nate Low, by the way, but Nate

Low's glove isn't horrible, but his bat is important.

There's not been a lot of guys here recently that the Reds have had the luxury of keeping

on the bench because their bat is good.

They've had to use their glove in certain situations to think about Santiago Espanol.

Now, I know Santiago Espanol played a lot last year, but I don't think he should have.

And I pretty sure you agree with me on that.

There was some sort of intangible quality or whatever it might be that he was just a

magnet for Terry Francois to put in the lineup.

But he is ideally a bench player, more so gloves suited than bat.

Nate Low is the opposite.

And by the way, we're going to call him Nate Low on the podcast.

I don't necessarily know if that's what he wants to be called.

I haven't asked him, but I know plenty of Nathan's and I know plenty of Nate's and I don't

know any Nathanials.

I know a couple of Nate's and Nathan's that when they were in trouble, they were called

Nathaniel, but that was when they were in trouble.

So we're going to call him Nate Low because right now he's not in trouble.

Now, if he has a struggle of a game, we'll call him Nathaniel, but yeah, as far as lockdown

Reds is concerned, he is Nate Low.

And he's a guy that his career has been about getting on base.

In fact, over the last couple of years, he is usually in the top percentage of guys

when it comes to walk percentage in 2024, he was in the top 3% of major league hitters

with a 12.6% walk rate for reference league averages 8.4%.

In 2023, it was even higher at 12.8%.

Last year, it dipped a little bit to 10.2, but you still like to see that.

Now, his strikeout rate did go up a little bit, but again, we'll talk about that in just

a little bit when it pertains to his 2025, but this is a guy that throughout his career

has walked a ton, gotten on base a lot, and really been an asset to his team, albeit mostly

that's been the Texas Rangers, but there has been some time with Boston last season.

As you see in this nice little picture right here, this is actually a picture of him looking

at a ball that he pulled.

He doesn't do that very often.

Most of the time, he's hitting it the other way, as we've talked about.

But I really have been excited to see that the Reds were able to get Nate Low, and in

case you're unfamiliar, the deal that the Reds got him on was a minor league deal with

a spring training in fight.

Yeah, we're talking about a dude that's going to be making major league minimum for the

Reds, and he could be having some very important at bats along the way.

This is going to be an easy guy for me, like if there is a right-handed closer on the

mound or something like that, and Nate Low is still sitting on your bench, you call

Nate Low in the game, and you expect it a nice hit there from him.

I don't know that I'm expecting home runs.

We're not talking about a guy that has gone crazy in his career with home run power, but

he's just been a good, solid piece of hitting dude.

I mean, when it comes to his best season for the long ball, that was back in 2022, with

the Texas Rangers when he hit 27 bombs.

Since then, 2023, he had 17 bombs.

In 2024, he had 16 bombs, and last year between the Nationals and the Red Sox, he had 18

bombs.

He's going to be a guy that hits a ton of home runs for you, but he's going to hit

enough, and he's going to get on base a lot.

Last season, even when he struggled, he got on base at 307 clip, the year before that

361, the year before that 360, his career on base percentage is 347.

I think that he's going to tick a little bit closer to his career numbers than what we

saw from him and what you can see from him in his 2025, because after he left Washington,

he finished the year with the Red Sox, only played 34 games with him, but he did a mass

119 played appearances, and in that time, he slashed 280, 370, or 20.

So things were working out there for him toward the end of the season, and I think we're

going to see a lot more of good night low than what the Nationals saw from him early

on in the year.

I mentioned early on the year, 119 games for the Nationals, 490 played appearances.

Slashline was a meager 216, 292, 370.

So we're going to see a lot better from that.

I would expect when it comes to night low in 2026.

So why was a guy like this available?

Well, that's simple.

2025 was a slog.

Break that down next.

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Nate Lowe was available to the Cincinnati Reds for a minor league deal.

So initially, there's two thoughts with this.

Number one, Nick Crawl's living right, man.

He got himself a heck of a deal.

Number two.

Why?

But why is a guy who's played some pretty good baseball for his career available for nothing?

I mean, not nothing.

He's getting better at minimum, which is a little over a million dollars.

I would love a million dollars.

But I mean, as guys like him go, that is more luck than I would have thought the reds

could have with a guy like this because in seven seasons, like I mentioned, his last

sign is 264-347 or 24.

Pretty solid hitter.

And quite frankly, had he not had such a down year in 2025, I think he would have been

getting a multi-year contract and probably been priced out of the reds range.

That is why he was here, because 2025 was a rough season for him.

Overall, even though I told you that once he got the boss, then things started to turn

around for him a little bit, even after the turnaround, his entire season in 153 games

and 609 played appearances, he slashed 228-307-381.

That's not who he is.

That's not who his career has been, but it was such a down year that people started to

look a little bit deeper.

And when you look a little bit deeper at what happened in 2025, it's not as if he was

getting unlucky.

Nate Low had a bottom 30% tile in average exit velocity, so he wasn't hitting the ball

very hard.

His barrels, his hard hit percentage, all of it was below average.

There's a lot of blue on his stat cast page.

We talk about this a lot every day, as we'll know, that when it comes to stat cast, there's

blue and there's red and you want to be red.

As it is, with most things in baseball, you want to be a red, you don't want to be blue.

That's the cubs and the brewers.

Don't be blue.

But when it comes to stat cast, you want to be red.

And really the only thing that was red for him was the fact that he didn't chase bad

pitches and then he walked a good amount.

He also has a pretty decent bat speed.

So you like to see that there might just be a little bit of a little bit of loopiness

in his swing.

And so hopefully the reds can kind of shore that up a little bit.

But ultimately, it felt like there wasn't a lot on his profile that said he was getting

cheated.

So I think that's why a lot of teams were blocking at the idea of adding him to the roster.

But for me, I think that this is a clear bounce back candidate.

We were talking about a dude who for the prior two seasons before 2025 had an on base percentage

of 360 or better for two seasons in a row.

So yeah, he had a rough season last year, but I think that we will see a bounce back

in a big way for the reds.

And we're not talking about a guy that has to give them 600 played appearances.

Like, think about last season, and I mentioned Santiago Espanol just a minute ago, do you

realize how much he played for the reds?

Now I know that there's a bit of an irony here because I'm sort of bashing on Santiago

Espanol a bit and he somehow made the Dodgers opening day roster.

Don't know how that happened.

Again, there's some undefinedable quality the Santiago Espanol has that seems to

endear him to people.

But last year, Santiago Espanol got 328 played appearances.

If those simply go to Nate Low, the reds have a massive upgrade here.

We've talked about this a little bit and that, you know, Gavin Lux's played appearances

are now going to go to a Eugenio Suarez.

And we're going to see Santiago Espanol taken up by some people.

Like, there's definitely a lot of one-for-one upgrades that we are not counting on that we

are not, that's not the right way to say it, that we are not like assessing correctly.

And I think that people look at the reds lineup and still think that it lacks something.

And while it's not perfect, it is not a Dodgers lineup, it's not even a Yankees lineup.

It's a much better lineup than what it was last year.

The reds are giving significant playing time to guys who are significant upgrades over

guys who got significant playing time last year.

And Nate Low is going to be so keep it if you just give him 328 played appearances.

And you say, give me his career numbers for this season in 328 played appearances.

You're going to see probably somewhere around 12 to 15 home runs.

You're going to see an on-base percentage that is close to 35% of the time.

And you're going to see a slugging percentage of over 420, which last year would have

like been one of the best on the team.

I don't think we realize how rough the red slugging situation was last year.

Because if you look at this team and if you just go to a stats page and you sort it by

slugging percentage, South Stewart and Miguel and Doohar are the top two.

And those guys played so little on this team that you got to do a little qualifier and

you say, okay, guys who played more, well, that's Austin Hayes or that's Noel V Marte.

Like you got to go down to LA De La Cruz at 699 played appearances.

This slugging percentage was 440 and there are only three other guys on the roster that

had a slugging percentage above 400 past Ali.

So I think that Nate Low is a huge addition.

Are you hanging with Suarez as a huge addition?

This lineup is better.

And even though Nate Low was available because of such a rough 2025, dude's going to break

out in a big way bounce back.

Sorry, that is an actual distinction, right?

We've talked about that with Matt McLean.

Is it a bounce back or a breakout?

It's probably a breakout from Matt McLean.

It's a bounce back season for Nate Low coming here in 2026 and I'm here for it.

We're going to talk so much more about Nate Low and the Reds roster and all this other

stuff this week as we've got so much content for you leading up to opening day.

And as we pass opening day all throughout the year, we're talking sense and

add your head space about right here on Lockdown Red.

So make sure that you subscribe so that we do miss any of it.

And if you want to get an ad free version of the show, check out the Lockdown Reds

every day or club over at Lockdownreds.supercast.com and use that promo code March for a free month

through the end of the month of March.

But then I'll do it for us here today.

Steven, Steve will be back with me tomorrow as we continue to get you set for opening day

right here on the Lockdown Reds podcast where we are Lockdown Reds every single day.

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