With the trade deadline past, the Cincinnati Reds are officially out of the market (and the Eugenio Suarez sweepstakes). Acquiring Pittsburgh Pirates third-baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes may have gotten the most attention from Reds fans, but the team also traded for pitcher Zack Littell from the Tampa Bay Rays.
Sending away Adam Serwinowski and Brian Van Belle from the farm league, they didn’t have to pay a high price tag for this new arm. What’s exciting isn’t Littell’s pitching, however, but how he will affect Cincinnati’s pitching staff as a whole.
Here’s a look at how Littell makes the Reds rotation a powerhouse, including his pitching and how he will affect both the rotation and the bullpen.
Littell boasts five pitches with a nice balance of speed and movement. His toolbox includes a slider, a splitter, a four-seam fastball, a sinker, and a sweeper.
According to Baseball Savant, Littell employs his slider the most at 30 percent with an average speed of 87.3 mph, after that comes the splitter at 27 percent (83.5 mph), the four-seam at 23 percent (92.1 mph), the sinker at 16 percent (91.4 mph), and the sweeper at four percent (79.8 mph).
While none of these pitches compares exceptionally against league average, they are stable enough to post a 3.58 ERA across his 22 games this season. That’s exactly what Cincinnati is hoping to establish with this addition: stability.
Since being acquired by the Rays in 2023, Littell has not posted an ERA above four. He’s also pitched the most in his career by far, eclipsing the 100-inning mark (for the first time in his career) in both seasons with the team.
All of this shows that when given the chance, Littell performs both steadily and effectively. These kinds of reliable numbers, if not ace material, could anchor an already stacked rotation.
Anchoring the rotation both metaphorically and literally, Littell is going to be the last pitcher in the rotation, replacing Nick Martinez (who will move to the bullpen). This will make the immediate rotation Andrew Abbott, Brady Singer, Chase Burns, Nick Lodolo, and finally Littell.
While still better than Martinez’s .461, Littell’s .358 pitching isn’t anything special in a vacuum, but it’ll be (theoretically) the floor of this group. For opposing teams, that means no matter where the rotation is at when the series starts, it will offer quality pitching each game.
Not only does the addition of Littell improve the current lineup, but it will improve even more when Hunter Greene makes his return. Currently recovering from injury down in Louisville, he should be taking the mound in Cincinnati before the summer’s end.
Greene is the certified ace of this team, and inserting him into the already-bolstered rotation will cap it off as the best it’s been all season. Likely replacing Burns or Singer (with them moving to the bullpen), it’ll round out the talent and give this team more bullpen help, which is desperately needed.
The current bullpen is struggling not only with holding games together but with literal stamina, as it seems like the same guys are being run out night after night. The addition of Martinez will certainly help, probably as a long reliever, but also to give pitchers like Scott Barlow and Tony Santillan more recovery time between outings.
This should (ideally) take stress off of Emilio Pagan, too, who’s worked his way into the closer role. While Pagan isn’t the caliber of closer this team has had in the past (Aroldis Chapman, Raisel Iglesias, Alexes Diaz), he’s been mostly solid, and the added support should only improve that.
This is a move that not only immediately shores up the starting rotation and bullpen, but also does so down the road. When Greene returns from injury, the bullpen should go from moderately improved to legitimately effective.
As this team looks to make a playoff push, with ownership that refuses to spend big, trades like these are how that has to happen. While Littell may not be the most exciting player in and of himself, when looking at how his presence will affect the entire pitching staff, it’s a very encouraging addition.
Along with the acquisition of Hayes, the addition of Littell shows this team is still very much alive as the postseason approaches. With a new starter and a reinforced bullpen, the Reds are showing the other teams in the NL Wild-card chase that they mean business.
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