The Reds have a rotation problem to solve this winter, and the answer may have just been handed to them by the Cubs.
Cincinnati needs starting pitching, but it also can’t afford to spend recklessly. Chase Burns, Andrew Abbott, and Nick Lodolo look like the only true locks for next year’s staff.
Hunter Greene’s torn UCL wipes out the 2027 season for him and leaves his future with the club in doubt, while Brady Singer may be too expensive to bring back even if the Reds want him. That leaves at least one opening that could be filled by a young arm such as Rhett Lowder or Brandon Williamson, along with the rest of the unproven group.
The other spot, though, calls for someone with more experience.
That’s where David Peterson comes in.
Peterson is now a free agent after finishing the year with the Cubs, and on the surface his 2026 line doesn’t jump off the page: a 4.79 ERA in 32 appearances, 23 of them starts, across 148⅓ innings. For a Reds team that already watched Abbott and Lodolo struggle with consistency in 2026, that kind of profile could look like more of the same.
But the full story is a lot more interesting than the season-long ERA suggests.
Peterson’s year split sharply on June 25, when the Mets traded the 31-year-old to Chicago. Before that, things in New York were rough. He made just eight starts and 16 total appearances for the Mets, logging a 6.09 ERA over 68 innings before getting bumped out of the rotation.
Once he got to Chicago, the Cubs seemed to unlock him almost immediately. In his first start for them on June 27 against the Milwaukee Brewers, Peterson threw 5⅔ innings of two-run ball and picked up the win.
His next outing was ugly - on July 3, the St. Louis Cardinals tagged him for 10 earned runs in 3⅔ innings - but that turned out to be the outlier, not the trend.
From there, Peterson settled in. He made 13 more starts for the Cubs and allowed two runs or fewer in 11 of them. Over 80⅓ innings with Chicago, he posted a 3.70 ERA, held opponents to a 31.6% hard-hit rate, and struck out 21.5% of batters, a basically league-average mark.
The real appeal is how he gets outs. Peterson leans on a heavy ground-ball profile, generating grounders at a 50.1% clip in 2026 and carrying a career ground-ball rate of 51.5%.
That matters anywhere, but it matters even more at Great American Ball Park, where mistakes tend to leave the yard. Statcast ranked GABP as the fourth-most homer-friendly park in 2026, and Peterson’s ability to keep the ball in the park stands out: he allowed 0.90 homers per nine innings this season and 0.91 for his career.
The price should be manageable, too. Peterson made $8.1 million last season, and because his year was uneven and the free-agent starter market is fairly deep, his next deal shouldn’t get out of hand. Spotrac projects him for one year and $10.1 million, though the Reds might be able to land him for less.
He’s not an ace, and nobody is pretending otherwise. But he looks like a dependable mid-rotation arm with traits that fit Cincinnati’s ballpark and roster needs.
For a team trying to balance need, fit, and cost, Peterson may be the cleanest solution on the market. And if the Cubs helped straighten him out along the way, that only makes him look even better for the Reds.
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