A little more than three weeks ago we looked at what the arbitration raises could wind up costing the Cincinnati Reds in 2026. As things sit today there are still 13 players on the 40-man roster who will be arbitration eligible if they don’t sign a new contract with the team before their arbitration hearing in the spring. Among the players listed in that article was Matt McLain. Usually players don’t become arbitration eligible until the 4th season, but a small percentage of players qualify early based on service time. McLain has two years and 140 days of service time. That is the exact number of days expected by MLB Trade Rumors to qualify a player as a Super 2 player and would make him eligible.
If the actual number comes in at two years and 141 days that is a big deal for Matt McLain. It’s a lesser of a big deal for the Reds, though not exactly nothing, either. If McLain falls one day shy of qualifying as a Super 2 player then he will continue to be paid the league minimum in 2026, which will be just over $750,000. But if he does qualify as a Super 2 then his projected arbitration number is $2,600,000. That’s nearly four times the pay for McLain and something he would certainly enjoy.
For the Reds the difference isn’t quite two million dollars. When the budget is expected to be over $100,000,000 that’s not all that much of a difference. But Cincinnati isn’t exactly known for being big spenders, so having an extra two million to hand out to someone else in free agency or to pay someone acquired in a trade could make a difference. It could, in theory at least, give the front office the smallest amount of wiggle room to make a deal that perhaps they otherwise couldn’t.
Left-handed pitcher Brandon Williamson is also right there at the edge of the “will he, won’t he” qualify number. He is sitting at two years and 139 days of service time. If he winds up qualifying his raise is projected to be minimal – just $800,000 in salary for 2026, which is about $50,000 over the league minimum. That’s not nothing, but it’s also essentially a rounding error for the budget of a Major League Baseball team.
Major League Baseball has not officially announced the amount of service time that will qualify players for Super 2 status yet. We’re going to have to wait a few more weeks for that to come out, but it could play a small role in how the Reds go about their offseason.
My first thought is Matt McLain could well be traded, as was Jon India for similar reasons ie cost vs production, even if selling low. Escalating his cost after his most recent year may have pushed his ‘gets traded timeline’ up considerably.
Shoulda sent him down.
Absolutely. But not for salary manipulation. He was terrible for 5 out of 6 months of the season. If you’re 5 foot 6 inches tall and you don’t hit homers (Jose altuve) you best be getting on base and creating havoc.
Matt won’t have a very long career if he doesn’t develop some better plate discipline – and fast. There is only 1 short player I’ve seen stand so far away from the plate and succeed. Matt has way too much trouble with the outer half of the plate to stand so far away. He needs to watch some video of the Brewers players.
10000%
I think this is bad business by the Reds. I get that you aren’t trying to game the system by starting him out in AAA for this reason as an example, but last year he really could used at least a couple of weeks in AAA to get his head straight, and I’m sure the $2 mill would come in handy.
Does this impact future arb years as well? If so, that makes this (in)decision worse.
I do think MM will bounce back, but the Reds need to treat this like a business and not worry about hurting players feelings. It’s doubtful they are going to be able to keep their stars anyway….
having your salary quadrupled for suc- … er, playing poorly sure is something. Looks like Matt McLain is the latest Red to fall up!
Counterpoint: Making league minimum while playing at an All-Star level (like he did in 2023) sure is something.
I know some teams actually agree to pay the non – arb players more on occasion. I highly doubt the Reds do this, but I have heard of this happening with other teams.
It’s happened for the Reds. But usually, with the Reds and others, we’re talking about like $25-50,000 extra in a year over the minimum. While I’d happily take that extra money in my yearly salary, it’s not much of a needle mover when the base is $750,000 a year.
touche, doug.
Doubt the Reds are all that interested in rewarding him in 2026 for what he did in 89 games 3 years earlier. Making league minimum as a mid-season call-up, as a rookie, wasn’t a wow. Besides, he got a fat 4.6M signing bonus after the ’21 draft.
That’s not how arbitration works, though. The Reds don’t really get much of a say in how they reward him financially. Arbitration is decided based on each side submitting a number based on what they believe a player’s value is compared to what others have made at a similar point in their career. Then the arbiter decides which number is more “right”. They must choose one sides number. The two sides almost always submit numbers very close because it’s not really a mystery as to what the past says – they’ve all got the same information. Matt McLain is going to make something close to what MLBTR says. The Reds and McLain will both submit a number that’s probably going to be a few hundred thousand apart if they reach that stage. If they reach a deal before arbitration expect it to be north of $2M for 2026.
So unless the Reds trade him or release him (this isn’t happening unless he gets into some legal troubles) and he qualifies as a Super 2 – he’s getting a raise to put him in the salary range of $2-3M for 2026.
This is 100% on the Reds organization. He should have absolutely been sent down somewhere around June. Stupid decisions cause expensive fixes. Sort of like Golf, make a bad shot, and it usually ends up forcing your next shot to be a bad shot just to fix the previous bad shot. Just bad management.
Y’all. Salary manipulation is bad. Early career players are grievously underpaid. Never begrudge the players money.
Ownership is rolling in it. $2M is nothing for them.
Comparing McLain to any recent Red other than Suarez is silly. Let the man finish his shoulder recovery.
Also, he was 3rd on the team in fWAR last year. The Reds have WAAAAAAAYY bigger fish to fry if they’re looking to get better.
“$2M is nothing for them”
How long have you been a Reds fan, lol.
4x his salary for playing that poorly. Obviously, baseball’s financial system is totally messed up. Don’t know about most of you, but I could live quite well on the league minimum. Regardless, maybe trading him is the right move. Maybe paying him and seeing if he can bounce back. I don’t think the odds are necessarily leaning toward ever matching his rookie year.
I mentioned this before just because MLB Trade Rumors says a player is going to get a salary does not mean it happens. Matter fact last season they overestimated salaries by quite to large chunk. If McLain is going to be Super 2 He probably gets 1.15 to 1.5 million. No way he gets 2.7 million after his stats were what they were. If Matty thinks he is worth that much after his terrible season they we could see an Arb Case on our hands this year.
I would be loads of money that McLain gets closer to their estimate than yours if he is a Super 2. It’s not about what he thinks he’s worth, it matters what players with his historical stats have gotten. And while you are certainly right that he wasn’t exactly good last year, last year isn’t all that matters. His 2023 season where he played at an All-Star level matters, too.
He had 15 homers and 50 RBI’s. Not many second basemen do better than that. He needs to get his batting average up which I think a shoulder more completely healed will help him do that.
It’s kind of hilarious actually to find out he barely made it after letting him play as much as they did without sending him down once or giving him more days off. For most teams $2 million is nothing but for the Reds………..haha I can hear it now, “We couldn’t sign this guy because….”
giving him more days off wouldn’t have mattered.
Guess you’re right. haha
We keep hearing the excuse about the shoulder recovery (from surgery in March of 2024). OK. Cool. If it’s true that his shoulder was still an issue, then playing him everyday in the bigs was inexcusable. Batting him #2 for so long while he consistently whiffed was … I don’t know, what’s the next level from inexcusable? It cost the Reds games. And btw, shoulder recovery doesn’t explain his inability to recognize strikes with the eyes.
A few counterpoints:
1. It’s not so much that the shoulder was an issue in that he was still hurt. It’s that for one reason or another, most guys take a longer period of time to “get back to normal” even if there’s not an injury. Whether that’s a strength issue related to the injury, whether it’s the mechanical side of things related to the shoulder. Whether it’s something else – there’s a long history of this happening.
2. The shoulder injury *could* explain some of that expanding of the zone “with his eyes”. When you aren’t hitting, you press. When you press you may expand the zone trying to just hit anything. Maybe you just expand more because you are doing a little more guessing. Given what we know about the shoulder injuries and how most guys don’t hit immediately when they come back from them for whatever reason, I don’t think it’s outrageous to suggest the lack of hits coming early could have led to his pressing, over compensating, expanding the zone, etc. just to try and do *something*. That problem of course then compounds on itself because even the best hitters alive suck at hitting non-strikes.
Excellent analysis. Very plausible, and even likely.
Having played and coached, I get all of that. My main point is this: if he had a bad shoulder, if he and the coaches and medical staff knew it, and if he clearly stunk because of it, then why was he continually in the lineup — and for the bulk of the season hitting in the #2 hole — and aggravating it rather than rehabbing somewhere?
He didn’t have a bad shoulder. He had a healthy shoulder that *probably* wasn’t quite at the same level as it was pre-surgery. That’s just how it works. It doesn’t mean it’s bad or that it’s still hurt. It also doesn’t mean that eventually his shoulder won’t return to where it was pre-surgery. The other options at second base weren’t exactly upgrades – Espinal isn’t as good of a fielder and was a worse hitter. Lux is a bad fielder. So that’s why McLain was in the lineup most of the time – he was simply a better option than anyone else on the team.
Where he hit in the lineup is an entirely different conversation.
Good point @Doug!
Very well could be.
A healthy shoulder for the population at-large is just one that isn’t hurt. For a guy trying to hit a 102-mph fastball, even the most minute change will modify that. I do think Mac’s pitch recognition problems need to be addressed somehow, but it’s possible he was trying to figure out how to get an advantage. Once pitchers know you are taking the first pitch, you just started the AB with an 0-1 count and are still in the on-deck circle.
Basically the physical can quickly become mental.
I still say Mclain likes to hit to the opposite field. If you look at Mclains spray chart for 2023 and 2025, his ground balls are mostly to the pull side, but the balls that get to the outfield shade to center-right. I think he does this by letting the ball travel quite far into the zone. To let the pitch travel and still get to it in time requires quick reaction…which a surgically repaired shoulder might take awhile to return to. Also, a whole year off would affect your timing etc. Then the mental stuff starts.
He’s my starter at 2nd base in 2026.
But on a very short leash.
Would rather see Bichette at 2nd or Stewart start there. McLain needs to have a huge spring to be named starter again. Even at the end of the season I just wasn’t impressed with his approach at the plate. Even his defense didn’t seem as strong this season based on my eye test.
Sal Stewart cannot play 2B in the ML’s.
That the Reds used him there in the minors so he could develop agility or whatever their idea was, or to get Collier some time-share at 3B, it has mislead fans to thinking it’s an option. And it now has a life of its own.
Just think of the reps he could have had at the position he is best suited for, 1B, if the club had not gone down this path.
Fortunately, Sal is quite young, very athletic for his body type, a quick study and absolutely driven to succeed. Otherwise, Reds player development would be wearing egg on their face even more than after promoting him to play 1B with a matter of, what, a weekend of training?
It reminds me of the Reds being the one and only club who thought Alfredo Rodriguez could hit.
Every report I’ve heard and read says Sal Stewart is not a second baseman. Everything I’ve seen says those reports are exactly correct.
He has 1B written all over him. He reminds me of a Sean Casey with more athletic ability.
The Reds could have used a Sean Casey last year.
Dave, Stewart is better there than India at the same age. India is adequate at second and so would be Sal.
He’s my starter at 2B…for the Louisville Bats
I mean that’s how the system operates but wow what a disappointment McLain was. Strikeout machine. Atrocious zone awareness. Major, major disappointment. I hope he figures out how to hit major league pitching to what he did in 2023. He won’t last long at the MLB level without a major off-season adjustment to his approach in the batters box. Shocked that he got all the starts he did given his overall offensive ineptitude. Took strike after strike to get in a hole then swung at every low and away pitch. Pitchers absolutely know how to exploit this. And a .193 away average and a .550 ops is garbage.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to us or the Reds. After all, 2 years and 139 or 140 days will be the highest Super Two cutoff in thirteen years.
One note to those who have brought up the service time issue as it relates to McLain, optional assignments don’t affect service time unless a player spends 20 or more days in the minor leagues within a given season. So, McLain could have been sent to the minors for 19 days without burning an option or impacting his service time. I think this course of action may have served the Reds and McLain well in 2025.
This was a team coming out of ST believing they were a playoff team, and they are correct. It was also a team that believed McLain was a necessary piece, offensively and defensively. That didn’t work out as hoped. You have to know the further they got away from injury the Reds thought he would rebound but it just did not happen.vSo a playoff opportunity was worth 2 milliom to them.
The ’25 problem was created in ’24 when the talk most of the season was getting Matt ready for August and September rather than taking the longer proper rehab which would have translated to more ’25 success.
My recollection of McClain when he was drafted was that he was more of a glove guy with above average speed… not a ” big bat”guy. I feel like both 2023 and 2025 were both ” aberations”. He is probably somewhere in the middle offensively.
“Pay him…Pay that man his money.”
I watch that movie every few months. Excellent cast and movie.
It takes time to bounce back from shoulder surgery. Hopefully, Matt will show improvement in 2026. Either way, a couple of million dollars is not going to break the bank.
I think we would be wise to lower our expectations for McLain, at least for the moment. A lot of guys who splashed their first year or so and ended up being a version of Kolten Wong or Keston Hiura. I think the Reds owed themselves a chance to see which McLain is the real one. I don’t see how “off-season” is going to do anything for his game. No real games are played in January.
I’ve found that the MLB Trade Rumors guys are fairly good about arbitration estimates. However, I’m skeptical that there is a big data set on what Super-2 position players get paid, when they didn’t play at all two years before and posted poor numbers in the most recent year.
The minimum for next year is $780,000, and if he is a Super 2, then he will get paid what the Reds and he agree on. McLain’s bWAR last year was 0.0, and fWAR at 1.4, so we’re not talking about Ronald Acuna, Jr. He is fully aware that he underperformed last season. I therefore don’t see McLain really wanting to push the envelope by making an excess demand to be rejected or accepted by an arbitrator, so I expect that they will reach an agreement before arbitration.
The new CBA hopefully addresses younger player salaries but it likely won’t.
In many cases, Super 2 status was designed to help pay high performing players. It won’t in this case but that’s not entirely McLain’s fault. The shoulder has been a tough recovery. He never really got comfortable at the plate this past season.
I think all we can hope for is that he’s fully recover both his shoulder and his 2023 form so it makes the Super 2 status worth it.
But the other thing he needs to is not get ticked when the Reds lowball his arbitration number.