Reds Designate Ron Marinaccio For Assignment

The Reds announced Monday that they’ve designated right-handed reliever Ron Marinaccio for assignment and selected the contract of lefty Kent Emanuel from Triple-A Louisville. Cincinnati also tabbed righty Zach McCambley as the 27th man for today’s doubleheader against the Cardinals.

Cincinnati was Marinaccio’s third team of the season. He opened the year in the Padres’ bullpen and briefly bounced to Pittsburgh via a trade sending international bonus space back to San Diego. The Reds then plucked him off waivers last week after the Pirates had also designated him for assignment.

Marinaccio, 31, has had a tough couple months but entered the year with a nice big league track record and pitched decently early in the season. From 2021-25, the righty gave the Yankees and Friars a combined 125 1/3 innings of 3.02 ERA ball with a big 28.3% strikeout rate and a 40.1% ground-ball rate that was only a couple points shy of average. Marinaccio’s 12.3% walk rate and penchant for plunking batters (3% in that time) highlighted his sub-par command, but he was nonetheless an effective middle reliever who picked up the occasional hold (14) or save (2) in leverage situations when called upon over those four seasons.

The 2026 season got out to a bit of a rocky start, but by late June, Marinaccio was sitting on a 3.72 ERA through 38 2/3 innings. His 20% strikeout rate had come down significantly, but he’d also slashed that previously problematic walk rate to just 7.5% and bumped his grounder rate to 46.9%. Marinaccio was rocked for five runs in a 1 2/3-inning appearance back on  June 27, however, and he seemingly hasn’t gotten back on track.

Over his past 19 innings, the former 19th-round pick has been shelled for 23 runs on 24 hits and 15 walks. Six of those knocks have left the yard. He’s only punched out 16 of the 100 opponents he’s faced in that time. That brutal stretch has ballooned his ERA from 3.72 all the way to 6.09.

It’s an ugly stretch of nearly seven weeks, but Marinaccio still has a career 3.98 ERA in 183 major league frames. He hasn’t experienced any kind of substantial velocity loss. He averaged 93.8 mph on his fastball with the Padres and 93.6 mph with the Reds.

It’s certainly feasible that another club will look at the right-hander’s broader track record and scoop him up on another waiver claim. Marinaccio is out of minor league options, so he’ll need to go straight into a new club’s major league bullpen, but it’s tough to add depth this time of year and relievers with Marinaccio’s track record aren’t frequently found on waivers in August. Marinaccio is controllable via arbitration for three additional seasons after this one. He’ll be owed a modest raise in his first trip through arbitration, but he’s not going to command a substantial raise as a middle reliever coming off an up-and-down season.

The 34-year-old Emanuel can now mark 2026 as his third big league season. He’s pitched briefly with the Astros and Marlins, tossing exactly 17 2/3 innings with each club (Houston in ’21, Miami in ’24). The 6’4″ UNC product has logged a 4.58 ERA, 16.7% strikeout rate, 7.3% walk rate and 55.5% ground-ball rate in that time.

The Reds just added Emanuel on a minor league deal earlier this month. He’d been pitching with the High Point Rockers of the independent Atlantic League prior and was with los Diablos Rojos del México in 2025. Emanuel, who’d allowed one run on two hits with eight strikeouts in six innings with Louisville, works off three-pitch mix fronted by an 89-90 mph sinker. He complements that grounder-heavy two-seamer with a slider in the upper 70s and a changeup in the low 80s.