{"id":328359,"date":"2025-12-05T01:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T01:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/328359\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T01:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T01:01:07","slug":"emilio-pagan-said-it-was-easy-choice-to-re-sign-with-reds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/328359\/","title":{"rendered":"Emilio Pag\u00e1n said it was ‘easy choice’ to re-sign with Reds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emilio Pag\u00e1n<\/a> wanted to remain with the Cincinnati Reds<\/a>, even as he was exploring his options in free agency.<\/p>\n

However, Pag\u00e1n will be back with the club as its closer after finalizing a $20 million, two-year contract on Thursday. He has the right to opt out after the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

“It was a pretty easy choice to come back. I like everything that we’ve got going on here,” Pag\u00e1n said. “At the end of the day, I wasn’t going to make a decision based on who was giving me the most money. I wanted to go somewhere where I felt comfortable, where I felt like I had a chance to win games and be around a special group of people, and Cincinnati checks all three of those boxes.”<\/p>\n

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The 34-year-old right-hander became the Reds’ closer early last season and went 2-4 with a 2.88 ERA and a career-high 32 saves in 38 chances. He ranked second in the National League in saves and tied for fifth in the majors.<\/p>\n

Pag\u00e1n said the one area where he is looking to improve is using his split-finger fastball more. He felt like he established pretty good command of the pitch late last season.<\/p>\n

Pagan is primarily a four-seam fastball pitcher with the splitter and cutter used nearly equally as his secondary pitch.<\/p>\n

“There was times during the year where even though the results on it were good, the movement pattern on it was a little bit inconsistent. And so I finally felt like I got to a point where I know what the action on the pitch is going to be. And if you know which way the ball’s going to move, it’s a lot easier to throw it where you want to,” he said. “The splitter has, in my opinion, changed the way that I can attack both left-handed and right-handed hitters. And so for me, it’s just diving into being more consistent with that pitch.”<\/p>\n

Pag\u00e1n, who is 28-27 with a 3.66 ERA and 65 saves in nine major league seasons with Seattle, Oakland, Tampa Bay, San Diego, Minnesota and Cincinnati, will be one of the elder statesmen of a pitching staff that has a young starting rotation. Right-hander Hunter Greene<\/a> is the staff ace followed by the lefty duo of Andrew Abbott<\/a> and Nick Lodolo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cincinnati also has plenty of momentum this offseason after reaching the postseason in Terry Francona’s first year at the helm. The Reds finished 83-79 and beat out the New York Mets<\/a> for the National League’s final wild-card spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emilio Pag\u00e1n wanted to remain with the Cincinnati Reds, even as he was exploring his options in free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-328359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}