The trade deadline came and went at 4pm today. And then Major League Baseball writers everywhere began sharing news of the most insane trades. The latest trade announcement, at 4:16pm was from Mark Sheldon of Reds.com who announced that Scooter Gennett has been traded from the Cincinnati Reds to the San Francisco Giants.
An impending free agent, Scooter Gennett missed most of the season with a groin injury suffered late in spring training. He’s been back with Cincinnati for three weeks now, and is hitting .212/.232/.258 on the season through 20 games played. In 2018 he was an All-Star. In 2017 he was even better at the plate, though in 140 fewer plate appearances. He’s owed, roughly $3,250,000 the rest of the season.
Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer just tweeted that the Reds will be getting a player to be named later in the deal.
#Reds will get a player to be named later https://t.co/1pG5o77jP2
— Bobby Nightengale (@nightengalejr) July 31, 2019
Perhaps the player to be named will come shortly. With the deadline being so close, it’s possible that they agreed to the deal simply to get the paperwork filed in time. But in some cases a trade with a player to be named later comes with conditions where there are two groups of players that a team will be able to choose from in the future depending on how the acquired player performs.
Scooter Gennett wasn’t in Cincinnati very long. But his two-and-a-half years were outstanding for the Reds. It’s likely that he’ll be in the record books for the franchise forever. His 4-home run game will likely never be topped in franchise history. His personality and play made him an absolute fan favorite in all of redleg nation.
As for what this means moving forward, if I had to guess, I’d bet we see a lot more of Josh VanMeter at second base. You will probably get some mixing in of Jose Peraza and Derek Dietrich there, too. At this point in time, though, it seems clear which of those three players should be playing the most. That could change in the future, but right now VanMeter is clearly the best of the bunch.