Coming out of a normal offseason, the Reds would be notable, but not unique. A team — with or without any expectations of reaching the postseason — adding actual, veteran major leaguers shouldn’t exactly be an anomaly.
The 2018-19 Major League Baseball offseason, though, was an excruciatingly boring slog at best, a sinister, collusion-filled precursor to labor strife at worst. Cincinnati trading for Yasiel Puig, Matt Kemp, Alex Wood and Tanner Roark, and signing free agent Sonny Gray, is somehow a weird thing. Most of the league spent the winter hell-bent on staying about the same, not wanting to take on too much of a financial obligation for too long a time.