After yet another season ending in 90-plus losses for the Cincinnati Reds, the front office spent the entire offseason making trades and signing players to hopefully avoid the same outcome during the 2019 season.
Apart from an almost complete overhaul of the coaching staff, the big roster moves all started when they made the decision to non-tender their long-time center fielder Billy Hamilton; which ended up being a controversial, yet necessary move.
After the decision to move on from Hamilton was made, the first Tanner-for-Tanner trade in MLB history went down when the Cincinnati Reds sent relief pitcher Tanner Rainey to the Washington Nationals in exchange for the veteran starter Tanner Roark in an effort to begin beefing up the starting rotation.