Brady Singer’s latest outing gave the Reds a loud, ugly answer on a decision that had already sounded shaky.
There were rumors before the August 3 trade deadline that Cincinnati was thinking about extending a qualifying offer to the right-hander, and Thursday’s start against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Great American Ball Park made that idea look even worse. Singer was knocked around for seven runs on nine hits, couldn’t escape the fourth inning, walked four and didn’t strike out a batter. It was his worst start of the 2026 season.
The bigger concern is that this wasn’t just one bad afternoon. Singer has been sliding for a while now, going 1-3 over his last seven starts with a 9.17 ERA in that stretch. In those 34⅓ innings, he has issued 20 walks and allowed 50 hits.
That kind of run should slam the door on any qualifying offer talk. The estimated value of this year’s QO is $23 million, and that’s far too rich for a middle-of-the-rotation arm who is sitting on a 5.57 ERA.
The qualifying offer is not supposed to be a bargaining chip. It exists to protect a team if a player turns down a guaranteed one-year payday and chases something bigger in free agency.
The Reds have already benefited from that system before. In 2021, Cincinnati received compensation after Nick Castellanos left for a five-year, $100 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies, and that pick became Sal Stewart in the 2022 MLB Draft.
That’s how the mechanism is meant to work. A player can accept the one-year offer, like a record four players did last offseason, or reject it and test the market.
Sometimes, as with Nick Martinez in 2024-25, the offer can become part of a broader decision-making process. But using it simply to keep a player around at a fixed price is not the point.
If the Reds want to explore bringing Singer back on a new deal this offseason, that’s one thing. A qualifying offer is another. After the way his season has gone, and especially after this second-half collapse, Cincinnati shouldn’t be anywhere near that conversation.
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