The Reds Need Brady Singer To Keep Pulling His Weight

When the Cincinnati Reds acquired Brady Singer ahead of the 2025 season, their hope was that he would be a guy who took the ball every fifth day and gave the club a shot to win. And he did exactly that.

Singer threw almost 170 innings across 32 starts and pitched to a 4.03 ERA with a 3.98 FIP and 110 ERA+. The starting rotation in Cincinnati had struggled to stay healthy for quite some time, which put them in dire need of someone like Singer. And luckily for the Reds, it worked out exactly as they had hoped.

Even with Singer’s success in 2025, most Reds fans had this dream in their mind of what the 2026 rotation could look like if fully healthy.

Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Chase Burns, and Rhett Lowder would have made one of the more exciting rotations in all of baseball. A rotation that would feature two former second overall draft picks as well as two former seventh overall draft picks.

There was a lot of potential for some juice there if the crew stayed healthy and the young guns continued to progress.

Well, that hasn’t really panned out.

Burns has been awesome and looks like one of the best young pitchers in the sport. But Lodolo and Lowder have really struggled when on the mound. Abbott has been a mixed bag, though he’s certainly having a down year compared to 2025. Greene just came back from injury after missing the first three months of the season.

That brings us back to a reliance on Singer.

Don’t get me wrong, health is incredibly important. Reds fans know it. Baseball fans know it. But Singer’s previous success wasn’t just being out there every fifth day; it was giving the team a real shot to win. And to begin 2026, that wasn’t happening.

Through June 1 of this season, Singer made 11 starts and pitched just 51 innings. In those 51 innings, the 29-year-old had a 6.18 ERA and had allowed 16 home runs while only striking out just over six batters per nine innings.

Singer has never been a huge strikeout guy, but his K/9 in 2025 was more than two batters better, as he was striking out 8.6 guys per nine innings.

The velo has been down a tick throughout this year. Further, in 2025, Singer’s slider had a run value of +8 according to Baseball Savant, while only being hit hard 35% of the time. In 2026, that run value is a flat zero, and the pitch is being hit hard over 41% of the time.

As I said, the velo is down a tick on his sinker and four-seamer (which he hardly throws anymore), but the lack of success came down to execution, not just power. Singer’s vertical and horizontal movement on his pitches is largely the same this season as it was last season.

So he needed to execute better? Well, he has.

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Since the calendar turned to June, Singer has been back to normal and maybe even a notch above, as he has posted a 2.79 ERA across seven starts. The K/9 has jumped from 6.35 prior to June 1 to 9.31 post-June 1. His groundball rate has jumped seven percent, and his home run-to-fly ball ratio has dropped by 13%.

In his seven starts in that time, Singer has allowed more than two earned runs just once. He has allowed one or zero earned runs four times.

He is on a great run. And with Abbott being in the midst of another poor stretch and Nick Lodolo going on the injured list with another blister issue, the Reds needed this jump from Singer tremendously.

Heading into the All-Star break, the Reds are 8.0 games back of the final Wild Card spot. They’ve got some ground to make up if they want to have any hope of contending, and not a lot of time to do it.

So, Singer continuing his success can help the Reds in two ways. He can either be a catalyst in a strong mid-summer surge that allows the team to contend for a playoff spot, or he can provide the club an impactful trade piece at a deadline that is expected to be a seller’s market.

Obviously, Reds fans are hoping for the former. But, at this point, the latter is probably the more likely outcome.

Regardless of which route the Reds take, if Singer can stay hot and continue to pitch a bit out of his norm, he can provide great value to his team and affect the outcome of their 2026 season.