It’s been a resurgence in 2016 for Aristides Aquino down in Daytona and the Tortugas outfielder has been recognized for his outstanding season today as he was named the Florida State League Player of the Year.
In 2015 the outfielder spent the year mostly in Dayton. He got out to a slow start in April and was hit by a pitch in the lower arm late in April that broke a bone and led to him missing over two months of the season. He would spend two weeks on rehab in Billings before returning to Dayton, but never really got things going at the plate. Despite hitting just .234/.281/.364 with the Dragons in 2015, and missing nearly half of the season, the Cincinnati Reds showed faith in the 22-year-old outfielder and promoted him to Daytona to start the 2016 year.
The Florida State League is a known as a very tough league to hit in and it’s probably the best pitchers league in baseball. April and May got out to a solid, but unspectacular start to the season for the outfielder known as The Punisher. Aristides Aquino hit .256/.322/.421 for the Tortguas in that stretch to start the season, good for a .743 OPS – a good bit better than the league average of .676.
It was the month of June where the Dominican Republic native really began to stand out from his Florida State League peers. In the 22 games he played in June, Aquino would hit .341/.375/.593, smacking four doubles, five triples and three home runs in the process. That was followed up by an even better July where he would go out and hit .300/.340/.667 thanks to seven more doubles, four more triples and six more home runs.
For his part in a bench clearing brawl, Aristides Aquino would serve a 7-game suspension that covered the last days of July and the first four days of August. When he returned it took his bat a little bit of time to get going again. In the 26 games since he returned his average has dropped some, but he’s smacked five more doubles, another triple and seven more home runs. With just a few games left in the season, Aquino is hitting .275/.329/.521 with 26 doubles, 12 triples and 22 home runs. He’s also got a career best 34 walks (previous career best is 24 back in 2012 when he was an 18-year-old playing in the Dominican Summer League).
He’s near the top of the leaderboards in the league in most offensive categories – leading the way in extra-base hits and triples, second in home runs, third in RBI, second in slugging and in OPS and fourth in runs scored. He is also leading the league, and all of minor league baseball in outfield assists, where he’s racked up an incredible 28 of them.