What happens next now that the Reds have traded Luis Castillo

On Friday night, the Cincinnati Reds traded one of their best pitchers that has played in Great American Ball Park. Following the deal that sent ace Luis Castillo to the Seattle Mariners for four prospects, the reaction was more about relief that the uncertainty was over than about surprise.

“Obviously, I wanted to stay with this team, but it's how the business works,” Castillo said via interpreter Jorge Merlos.

“I think in some ways we were ready for it,” Reds manager David Bell said.

Now, the Reds have dealt Castillo and starting right fielder Tyler Naquin.

Brandon Drury, Tommy Pham, Tyler Mahle and Donovan Solano are among the large group of players the Reds could trade before the deadline on August 2.

Before the 2021 season, the Reds’ primary objective was cutting payroll. This year, after losing five of their best players in the offseason, the Reds opened this season with a 3-22 record and have been marked as sellers on the trade market ever since.

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Over the next three days, the Reds will continue to be active in trade talks.

“We are looking at this and everything we do, and how we can better ourselves for now and the long term,” Reds General Manager Nick Krall said. “That’s where we are.”

The deal was Krall’s second blockbuster trade since he became the front office’s lead decision maker in 2020. During Krall’s tenure, the Reds have restructured their front office, aligned the pro scouting staff’s vision with the amateur scouting staff’s vision and identified a specific type of player they’re looking to build around.

The Reds are prioritizing up-the-middle position players at catcher, shortstop and center field who have demonstrated a consistent approach at the plate and the ability to get on base, as well as starting pitchers who project to be able to strike out MLB hitters at a high rate.

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The Reds acquired four players who fit that skill set in this deal with the Mariners. Shortstops Noelvi Marte and Edwin Arroyo are now two of the top prospects in the Reds’ organization because of their impact bats and athletic ability. In addition to Levi Stoudt, a Double-A starter and a former third-round pick, the Reds acquired Andrew Moore, whose fastball has hit 102 mph.

It didn’t matter to Krall that the Reds already had three of their top prospects playing shortstop. Even though Elly De La Cruz, Jose Barrero and Matt McLain are all playing the position at different levels of the minor leagues, Marte and Arroyo are the types of prospects who can easily move around the infield or possibly be used to acquire a different type of player in a trade down the road.

“We’ve got guys that are premium athletes, potentially middle-of-the-order bats,” Krall said. “They can hit anywhere in the order. They are guys that we really, really like and we’ll have to figure that out as we move (them) through the levels.”

The Castillo deal marked the second time in the last seven years that the Reds have gone through a full rebuild. The last time, in the mid-2010s, the Reds hardly received any big league impact from the prospects they received by trading Johnny Cueto, Jay Bruce, Aroldis Chapman and Todd Frazier.

What steps have the Reds taken since then to get more valuable returns when they trade their best players?

“I think our scouts, our analytics staff, all the people in our room went through an extensive process, got background information on all those guys,” Krall said. “We’re just really excited to have every one of them and be able to add them to our group in our pipeline.”

Marte, the Mariners’ former top prospect, was hitting .275 with an .825 OPS as a 20-year-old shortstop in High-A. Arroyo, 18 years old and the Mariners’ No. 3 prospect, was hitting .316 in Low-A.

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They both fit the timeline of the strong farm system the Reds are building around. Around 2024, the Reds are hoping to pair both of them with De La Cruz, Barrero, McLain, Jonathan India and Tyler Stephenson as the core of the team. On the pitching side, the Reds have Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Graham Ashcraft, Brandon Williamson and a few other prospects competing for rotation spots.

In 2024, the Reds don’t have any guaranteed contracts on the books, so they’ll also be able to become more aggressive on the MLB free agent market.

During every Reds home game, they play a scoreboard advertisement highlighting the Reds’ farm system. The tagline is “focus on the farm system.”

“At the end of the day,” Krall said. “We had to make ourselves better for the long haul.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: What happens next after the Cincinnati Reds trade Luis Castillo