Baseball America ranked the Midseason Top 50 Prospects and the Cincinnati Reds landed just one player in the Top 50.
Right handed pitcher Robert Stephenson came in at #36 on the list. The write up for the Reds top prospect encapsulates his season, but misses some of the progress he’s made lately too.
At his best, Stephenson is unhittable and has three double-digit strikeout games. At his worst, he walks everyone
While that certainly could be true, it’s been more than half of the season ago since the second sentence could be true. I’d imagine he moves up over the course of the next half-season as long as he continues down the path he’s been on over the last six weeks where he’s walked just 17 batters in his last 48.1 innings pitched to go along with 60 strikeouts.
Jesse Winker dropped out of the Top 50. He was ranked as the 47th best prospect coming into the season but is now unranked in the Midseason Top 50. The staff touched on Winker in an article about players that entered and exited the list, but it’s for subscribers only.
Essentially though, they state that the lack of power output needs to change. He’s slugged .495 since June began, so it’s certainly moving in the right direction. As I’ve noted several times on this site, Pensacola’s not built for power output to right field at all. In fact it suppresses power in big ways.
Winker has shown significantly more power on the road than at home this year (.103 point slugging difference on the road). Even since June started and his power has stepped forward, his slugging on the road has been higher by 50 points.