The Cincinnati Reds and free agent infielder Eugenio Suarez have come to terms on a 1 year, $15M contract the team announced Sunday. Should Suarez be traded by Cincinnati, he would receive a $500K trade bonus per terms of his new contract.
The deal, which will feature a mutual option for 2027, reunites Suarez with the team he spent 7 years with between 2015 and 2021. Across his 12 year big league career, Suarez has hit 325 home runs, with 189 of those coming as a member of the Reds organization.
Rumours of a potential reunion between the player and ball club had been circulating for much of the offseason. However, once Austin Hays signed a deal with the Chicago White Sox, Reds brass decided to move quickly to shore up their offence by getting a deal across the finish line.
Although he set a career high with 118 RBIs in 2025, Suárez hit just .189/.255/.428 with 13 home runs in 53 games after being traded to the Mariners at the MLB trade deadline last season. As a result, a long term deal never materialized for the 34 year old, leading to him inking a homecoming deal to return to the most hitter friendly ballpark in the majors.
Despite playing 3rd base for most of his career, Suarez is expected to slot in as the Reds everyday designated hitter in his return to the lineup. Ke’Bryan Hayes is believed to be the favourite to take reps at 3rd base, with rookie Sal Stewart believed to be the frontrunner for 1st base duties heading into spring training.
A native of Venezuela, Suarez is known around the league for his prodigious power, but also for his propensity to strike out at a high volume. The right handed slugger has led the league in strikeouts on 3 occasions, and finished 4th across the majors in K’s last season.
Nevertheless, he compensates this by bringing a 162 game average of 32 home runs over the course of his 12 year big league career, and rarely misses time due to injury. Since 2019, Suarez ranks 6th in Major League Baseball in terms of home runs with 227 during that span.
According to reports, the Mariners, Cubs, Red Sox, and Pirates were also linked to Suarez, but the veteran slugger opted for a 1 year bet on himself with a known quantity instead. He’ll add some much needed pop to a lineup that despite playing in the cozy confines of the Great American Ball Park, ranked 21st in the league in total home runs.
Photo: Hayden Schiff. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.