GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Only four teams spent more in free agency this offseason than the Reds, who are hoping their investment of nearly $166 million will result in the club’s first winning season since 2013.

It will take months for Cincinnati to know if the moves paid off, but the reverberations have already been felt in Arizona, where Reds players have a different mindset heading into the season despite their 87-loss campaign a year ago.

“They said they were going to go out and spend this offseason and they did,” said Anthony DeSclafani, who has been with the club since 2015. “I was here during the tear-down, played a lot of losing baseball. It brings a lot of excitement.”

The Reds signed Mike Moustakas and Nick Castellanos to $64 million deals, gave Shogo Akiyama $21 million and inked Wade Miley for $15 million. Joey Votto said he was “shocked” and “pleasantly surprised” as he watched his team’s offseason activity.

The NL Central will surely be a competitive division in 2020, but the Reds -- who lost at least 94 games in each season from 2015-18 -- believe they will be in the mix.

“We’ve come in here with an expectation that anything short of a World Series is not going to cut it,” DeSclafani said. “That’s the vibe we’re getting around here and that’s what we need. It’s kind of refreshing and it’s going to make coming to the ballpark every day a lot more fun.”

The Reds made some impactful moves last winter, too, trading for Sonny Gray, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Matt Kemp and Tanner Roark prior to the season, then acquiring Trevor Bauer before the Trade Deadline. Those moves didn’t translate into a winning season, but they did serve as a signal that the Reds were looking at the present and not just the future.

“Last offseason, a lot of what we did allowed us to be able to do that this offseason,” assistant GM Sam Grossman said. “We didn’t know how the winter was going to go, but we identified some players. We wanted to bring in impact bats and impact talent, but more importantly, people that had come from winning environments that we knew were great teammates and were going to be a part of the culture we’re trying to build.

“You still have to go out there and win the games once the season starts, but it’s been pretty exciting so far.”

Spring in his step
Dallas Keuchel compared Spring Training to Groundhog Day, but after sitting out last spring, the left-hander is having the time of his life in camp this year, no matter how repetitive the days can be.

Last year’s frustrating free-agent experience is in the rear-view mirror for Keuchel, who signed a three-year, $55.5 million deal (plus a fourth-year option) with the White Sox on Dec. 30. But the 32-year-old seems to have an appreciation for his current situation, one he might not have had without the vexing winter he endured after the 2018 season.

“When I took the half-year off and didn’t settle for a deal, this go-round, I was more excited for Spring Training than I usually am,” Keuchel said. “It’s nice to be grounded in a spot for three or four years. I’m already having more fun than I usually do in Spring Training, which is a good sign.”

While Keuchel was part of the young core coming up together with the Astros, he’s now the wise old sage in Chicago’s clubhouse. The presence of Yoan Moncada, Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez and Tim Anderson has the White Sox excited for the possibilities this season, but Keuchel is equally enthusiastic about the young arms -- Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Reynaldo Lopez and eventually Michael Kopech -- that will join him in the starting rotation.

“That’s kind of the role I take, but at the same time, I expect myself to go out there and be All-Star caliber or Cy Young caliber every fifth day,” said Keuchel, the AL’s Cy Young Award winner in 2015. “That will never change, but I like that guys will come talk to me and ask me anything under the sun.

“You see what makes guys tick and what doesn’t, so when the season hits, I know how to talk to these guys if they run into some adversity. Or if they’re cruising, how to keep them on that cruise control instead of them getting veered off in the wrong direction. There’s more talent in the pitching staff here than I ever thought.”

Leading the way
In recent years, the Mariners clubhouse included the likes of Robinson Canó, Nelson Cruz and Félix Hernández, a group of perennial All-Stars whom Seattle’s young players could look to for guidance.

Hernández’s departure this winter leaves the Mariners void of such leadership, though manager Scott Servais has seen Kyle Seager step up in an effort to fill that space in a clubhouse loaded with inexperienced players.

“All of us, when we get to the big leagues, there is always a veteran or two that helps you along the way,” Servais said. “I think he wants to leave his mark in that regard, where players eventually say, ‘Kyle Seager told me this when I was a rookie’ maybe seven or eight years down the line when we’re at All-Star Games or whatever. He sees value in that.”

Seager, who is entering his 10th season with the Mariners, has tried to be a leader in recent years, taking cues from the veterans that helped him in his early years.

“We’ve always had big personalities and big presences in here, so when you lose guys like Félix, Robbie and Nellie, you do lose a little bit of that, for sure,” Seager said. “I want to be someone who can help the young guys when they need it, someone they can talk to. There are a lot of young guys in here with a lot of room for learning all around.”

Justus Sheffield, one of the prospects the Mariners acquired from the Yankees in the November 2018 James Paxton trade, learned a lot during his time in New York, but the Mariners’ current youth movement is allowing the team’s youngsters to blossom in their own way.

“I definitely appreciated my time with the Yankees, getting guidance from guys like CC [Sabathia], [Aaron] Judge, [Giancarlo] Stanton and [Brett] Gardner. Over here, it’s kind of like we’re creating our own culture, which is pretty cool.”

Seattle held a two-day Leadership Conference during the offseason, gathering 50 of the club’s young players in an effort to provide them with some of the tools necessary to be leaders. So while Seager, Tom Murphy, Marco Gonzales and Mallex Smith have emerged as clubhouse elders, Servais believes some of his rookies have the potential to become leaders before too long.

“I have a pretty good idea which ones will be those guys,” Servais said. “You hope that aligns with them being your better players; it always works best if your best players are your leaders. In a perfect world, you’d love to have five or six guys you can just turn the clubhouse over to and you focus on other areas, but we’re not there. We have to coach them up, not just in pitching and hitting, but all the other stuff.”