Josiah Gray wants to prove Reds wrong for trading him, and Reds already altered strategy

It’s the type of pitcher the Cincinnati Reds would love to add to their starting rotation during their current rebuild.

A consensus top-100 prospect before reaching the Majors. In the big leagues at 24 years old, the same age as rookies Nick Lodolo and Graham Ashcraft.

The Reds saw Josiah Gray’s potential when they faced him Friday at Great American Ball Park. Gray, who was traded from the Reds to the Los Angeles Dodgers a little more than three years ago, permitted two hits and one earned run across six innings while striking out nine.

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“I definitely had dreams and aspirations of a future in the Reds rotation, but obviously things didn’t work out that way,” Gray said Thursday. “I feel like it’s part of me to go out there, prove myself and that they shouldn’t have traded me. Obviously, it’s part of the business. I want to go out there and prove my stuff.”

The Reds were looking to climb out of their rebuild when they included Gray and infield prospect Jeter Downs in their seven-player trade with the Dodgers ahead of the 2019 season. The Reds wanted to free up $28 million from the final two years of Homer Bailey’s contract, and they received Alex Wood, Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp on one-year deals along with Kyle Farmer.

The trade didn’t work as planned. The Reds won 75 games and missed the playoffs. Wood was hurt for most of the 2019 season. Kemp was released after 20 games. Puig didn’t hit as well as expected at GABP and was flipped later that summer in the Trevor Bauer trade.

“There was a different position of trying to force your window open going into 2019 and trying to continue to better your club,” Reds General Manager Nick Krall said. “We need to make sure we’re letting things come to us and not trying to force decisions to make our big-league club better. That’s why sometimes it takes more patience to wait on the draft-and-develop guys."

Reds ownership mandated a lower player payroll this offseason, which led to the departures of several veteran players, but Krall immediately ruled out trading prospects to entice teams to pick up a pricier contract. They released Shogo Akiyama, who was owed $8 million, at the end of spring training.

“We have to be that team that consistently is producing players from out of our system for our team, not for other teams,” Krall said.

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The biggest contract the Reds traded was Eugenio Suárez, who was owed $35 million over three seasons. He was sent to Seattle with Jesse Winker for two pitching prospects, Brandon Williamson and Connor Phillips, outfielder Jake Fraley and pitcher Justin Dunn. Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners’ president of baseball operations, said the Mariners had been in talks regarding Winker since last October and the inclusion of Williamson is what helped complete the deal.

“We weren’t moving Suárez because we were dumping money, we were just moving Suárez and Winker because we liked the players we got back,” Krall said. “We liked all four of those players for different reasons.”

Gray was the No. 72 overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft out of Division-II Le Moyne College in New York. He was new to pitching, so he was viewed as a guy with a lot of untapped upside. Reds area scout Lee Seras helped him pitch in the Cape Cod League and saw a good number of his starts in his junior year.

In Gray’s lone season in the Reds’ organization, he pitched at rookie-level Greeneville in the city’s inaugural season as a Reds affiliate. The piggyback pitcher in his first few starts, designated to follow him, was Alexis Díaz.

“He had the greatest potential,” said Díaz, who has thrived in the Reds’ bullpen. “He was the best pitcher on that team in that year.”

Gray blossomed in 2019, his first year with the Dodgers and his first full professional season. He became one of the sport’s top pitching prospects when he struck out 147 batters in 130 innings, rising from Low-A to Double-A while posting a combined 2.28 ERA.

What was his reaction when the Reds traded him?

“I was shocked just because of how quick it was, getting traded six months after I got drafted,” said Gray, who was traded to the Washington Nationals last summer in a deal for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. “It was a little different. Kind of a welcome to the industry, you can get traded at any point, but I was honored to be included with the names that were included. Grateful for the Reds, but grateful for the opportunity that the Dodgers were giving me at the time.”

The success of the Reds’ rebuild will largely be determined by how well they develop their young pitchers.

Hunter Greene, Lodolo and Ashcraft could form the core of the rotation and they’re all younger than 25 years old. Díaz, Dunn, Tony Santillan and Vladimir Gutierrez are 25 or 26 years old, and could earn big roles on the pitching staff. They'll need their farm system to keep producing quality players.

The Reds knew the risk when they traded Gray as a young prospect, but that's not the type of trade they would do again at their current rebuilding stage.

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“We’ve had some good pitchers in our system – Josiah Gray is a good pitcher – but we need to make sure we’re keeping them,” Krall said. “We’ve had some good players that have come up to the big leagues this year. We’ve had some guys, Homer Bailey, Mike Leake, from before. I think we’ve been pretty much on par (with other teams).

“Do we need to develop more pitchers? Of course, we do. Do we need to do a better job of developing starting pitching? Yes, we do. It starts with bringing talent in, and then the development process of that talent.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Reds have new strategy since trading pitcher Josiah Gray