The Cincinnati Reds released right handed relief pitcher Ryan Mattheus on Sunday afternoon. The reliever have been pitching with the Triple-A Louisville Bats.
Ryan Mattheus was signed to a minor league contract before the 2016 season and given an invite to big league spring training. He struggled with the Reds in camp, posting an 8.44 ERA in 10.2 innings where he allowed 20 hits, three walks and had eight strikeouts. He was sent to minor league camp and was assigned to the Louisville Bats.
Once the season began for the Bats, things didn’t get much better than they had gone in spring training for Mattheus. In 7.0 innings pitched over the span of six appearances he posted a 6.43 ERA. He allowed eight hits and walked four batters to go along with six strikeouts before his release.
In the 2015 season the Reds picked Mattheus up from the Angles on waivers early in the season and the then 31-year-old was solid, but unspectacular for the big league club. In 55.0 innings he posted a 4.09 ERA with 17 walks and 35 strikeouts and allowed only three home runs for the season.
With all of the arms the team has been churning through the bullpen over the last week-and-a-half and he not being one of them, it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t have it in his contract that he were able to request a release by a certain date (or dates) if he weren’t in the big leagues. While he hasn’t performed well, he was roughly a league average pitcher in the big leagues last season and with the organization trying out several other players from Triple-A prior to giving him another shot it’s certainly a possibility that he requested a release seeing that the organization didn’t have plans for him and that he should try to latch on somewhere else.