The Reds' Closer Job Is a Mess With Emilio Pagan Out: Chase the Saves Carefully

The Cincinnati Reds' ninth inning has been unsettled since closer Emilio Pagan went down with a hamstring injury, and the relievers auditioning for save chances have not seized the job cleanly. For fantasy managers chasing saves, a volatile bullpen is both a headache and an opportunity, and Cincinnati is one of the messier situations in baseball right now.

How the job opened

Pagan, signed to anchor the back end, suffered a hamstring injury that has kept him sidelined for an extended stretch this spring and early summer. With their established closer out, the Reds turned first to Tony Santillan, who had been excellent in a setup role previously but has struggled badly in the higher-leverage job, posting an ERA well above the league average as both his fastball and breaking ball have backed up.

The natural next option, Graham Ashcraft, has his own problem: a sprained elbow ligament that figures to keep him out for a meaningful period. That removes one of the more talented arms from the conversation and leaves the save chances scattered across a committee rather than concentrated in one reliable name.

The name to watch

Tejay Antone has emerged as the reliever forcing the Reds to reconsider their hierarchy. When healthy, Antone has always carried swing-and-miss stuff that plays in the ninth, and recent reporting suggests he is pitching his way toward the highest-leverage work. He is the most logical bet to accumulate saves if the committee consolidates, which makes him the priority add for managers who need the category.

The catch with Antone has always been availability; his career has been interrupted by injuries, so even as he climbs the depth chart, he carries the risk that comes with any arm that has a complicated medical history. That is the trade-off in this bullpen: the most talented option also carries the most uncertainty about staying on the mound.

When Pagan returns

The other variable is Pagan himself. When he is healthy and back on the roster, he is the favorite to reclaim the role, which means any saves accrued by the committee in the interim come with a built-in expiration date. Managers should treat the current Reds save chances as a short-term play rather than a season-long solution, and be ready to pivot when Pagan's return draws near.

That dynamic argues against burning major FAAB or a high waiver claim on any single Cincinnati reliever. The expected value of the job is real but capped, both by the committee structure now and by Pagan's eventual return later.

The Verdexed model take

The model frames the Reds' ninth inning as a low-confidence, high-variance saves source: meaningful opportunity, but spread across arms that have either struggled (Santillan), gotten hurt (Ashcraft), or carry durability risk (Antone). In that environment, the smart play is to target the reliever with the best stuff and the clearest path, accept that the role may change weekly, and avoid overpaying for a job that has no stable owner.

The broader lesson the model keeps surfacing in 2026 is bullpen volatility league-wide, with saves being recorded by a remarkable number of different pitchers a third of the way through the season. Cincinnati is a sharp example of why streaming and speculative adds, rather than season-long bets, are the right way to attack the category this year.

How to read the next two weeks

The tell over the next couple of weeks is who gets the call in the cleaner save situations, not who pitches the eighth. Watch the usage in one-run leads in the ninth, because that is where a manager signals trust. If Antone keeps drawing those chances and converting, the committee will narrow toward him regardless of what the depth charts say today.

The other thing to track is Pagan's rehab progress, because his return resets the entire picture. Any saves the committee banks now are borrowed time, so the right posture is to ride the hot hand while the window is open and avoid getting attached to a role that has a known expiration date. Saves are too scarce to ignore, but too volatile here to overpay for.

What to do in your league

If you need saves, add Tejay Antone as the best bet to inherit the bulk of the ninth-inning work, but keep your expectations and your bid modest given his injury history and Pagan's looming return. Do not chase Santillan's struggles, and recognize that Ashcraft is off the board until his elbow heals.

More broadly, treat the Reds as a stream rather than a solution. Hold Antone as long as he is getting the high-leverage call, but be ready to drop and pivot the moment Pagan is activated, because that is when this committee collapses back to a single name and the speculative window closes.

One last note for deeper formats: the holds category, where it exists, can turn this messy bullpen into a quiet asset. Setup men piling up appearances in a committee accrue holds even when the saves go elsewhere, so the same arms worth a speculative save add become useful in their own right. If your league counts holds, that softens the sting of betting on a job that may never fully consolidate behind one closer.

Stay nimble, keep some FAAB in reserve, and let the ninth-inning usage rather than the preseason depth chart tell you who to trust. In a bullpen this scrambled, the manager who reacts fastest to the save chances, not the one who guessed right in March, is the one who banks the category.