Reds may regret bringing Brady Singer back unless he fixes these issues

The Cincinnati Reds are going to need to make some moves this offseason to fill out the back of their starting rotation. They'll have some money coming off the books, but arbitration raises and the myriad of holes they need to fill will make it so that there won't be much to invest in the game's most expensive commodity: free-agent starting pitchers.

There has been some buzz that the Reds would extend the qualifying offer, thought to be around $23 million, to Singer this winter. However, Singer's struggles have made it so that they might not need to go that far in order to retain him, though they might need to tack on an additional year to the contract offer.

Singer's 5.67 ERA is the worst in baseball among starters with at least 154 innings pitched, so for a team that's sorely disappointed in 2026, like Cincinnati, it's questionable why they'd want to have him back. However, prior to this season, Singer had developed a reputation as a reliable innings eater. He might have been unspectacular, but he was steady and reliable... until now.

There are some distinct things that have changed, and it's reasonable to believe that if Singer can get those things back to where they were when he was successful, there's no reason to bet against a return to form.

Reds' coaching might be to blame for Brady Singer's downturn, but they could hold the keys to fixing him

The first thing that has stood out for Singer, as a Red versus Singer as a Royal, is how he's deployed his arsenal. There have been some real changes between his final year in Kansas City, 2024, and the past two seasons in the Queen City.

Singer has always been a sinker-slider guy as his bread and butter, but he does have a number of other offerings. There are a few changes we can see from 2024, when he posted a 3.71 ERA to 2025 and 2026. First, you can see that in 2024 he was almost evenly split between the sinker and the slider, while in 2026, he's diversified his offerings at the expense of his slider, while also throwing the sinker much more frequently.

The other difference is that his four-seamer, which was seldom used in 2024, has become a complete afterthought. In raw numbers, he threw 327 four-seam fastballs in 2024 versus just 54 this year. This is important for a couple of reasons.

The 30-year-old only dials up his heater at about 91 mph, and in this day and age, it would seem that virtually tabling it isn't a bad idea. However, Singer gets elite extension, coming in around seven feet and ranking in the 85th percentile this season.

That extension makes that middling velocity play up. On top of that, Singer has a pretty good spin rate on his fastball, coming in at 2,364 RPM, ranking 99th out of all qualified pitchers, including starters and relievers, in 2024. That helps with the pitch's carry, or rise, which is so important these days. The right-hander has been very good at throwing the fastball up in the zone when he uses it, and that's important.

At his velocity, going to this well too often would be a bad thing, but doing it enough so that it's a threat that the hitter needs to protect against is important. This way, he's able to change the hitter's eye level enough and keep him from sitting on the low part of the zone where those sinkers and sliders live. As it is now, opposing batters can simply spit on those pitches darting down and wait for Singer to make a mistake in the middle of the plate.

The next issue that needs to be corrected is Singer's arm angle. His arm has dropped from a 28-degree angle in 2024 to a 25-degree angle in 2025, and finally to a 23-degree angle in 2026. That flatter arm angle means less downward movement from the sinker and the slider, flattening those pitches out and making them more horizontal.

Not only does that make them easier to hit, but it makes them harder to locate them where he wants at the bottom of the zone. Unsurprisingly, Singer's ground ball rate has declined from 47.1% in 2024 to 41.4% this season. Grounders are important, especially in Great American Ball Park, and with fewer of them, we've seen Singer's HR/9 rise from 1.10 in his final year with the Royals to 1.83 today.

It would appear that these changes that have produced less-than-desirable outcomes are a byproduct of coaching, given that they started as soon as Singer arrived in Cincinnati. With him and so many other previously effective pitchers struggling, it might be time to take a long hard look at evaluating whether or not pitching coach Derek Johnson should have a future with the team.

More specifically, in Singer's case, taking advantage of a poor 2026 could allow the Reds to bring him back on the cheap, and if they can get him back to what was so successful for him in the past, he could end up being a steal and exactly what they need to stabilize the back end of the rotation.

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