After last season Aristides Aquino didn’t find himself on all of the Cincinnati Reds prospect lists around baseball. On my list here he was rated as the #17 prospect after last season. Baseball America also had him in their Top 25. But Fangraphs didn’t have him in their Cincinnati Reds top 31 prospects. Here’s a part of what I wrote about Aquino last November:
In the final 36 games he significantly cut down on his strikeout rate, dropping it from 27.2% to 21.6%. His walk rate also improved from 5.7% to 12.2%. Those improvements also came with more power, as he slugged .535 down the stretch with 10 home runs, 5 doubles, and a triple. The overall production on the season was a bit better than the previous season, but he made real strides in the second half of the season with adjustments to his plate approach.
Biggest Strength: Power. He’s got plus power potential and it’s already an above-average skill he uses in games.
Biggest Weakness: Plate approach. While there were big strides made down the stretch this season, overall he’s going to have to show that over a longer stretch as it’s been something that’s plagued him for most of his career.
In 2018, like 2019, there was a mechanical adjustment that was made. But it was the one made this spring that’s allowed Aristides Aquino to really tap into the plus power potential he’s always had and turn his game power from above-average into a plus-plus skill.
Earlier this summer, Fangraphs, like everyone else, took their shot at updating their midseason prospect lists and once again they left Aristides Aquino off of the Cincinnati Reds list that featured 31 players that were ranked. At the time Aquino was a 25-year-old killing the ball in Triple-A, where everyone was tapping into newfound power thanks to the Major League baseball being used. Still, what Aquino was doing was unlike what 99% of the rest of Triple-A was doing. He also had missed nearly an entire month in the first half of the season with a shoulder injury.
Then Aristides Aquino burst onto the scene two weeks ago in the Major Leagues and all he’s done since then is hit nine home runs and set multiple Major League Baseball records for home runs along the way. That led to the crew at Fangraphs to reconsider their rankings and yesterday they updated their Cincinnati Reds rankings by adding Aquino to their list. He jumped from completely outside of the Top 30 up to their #7 Reds prospect. They graded him as a 45 FV (Future Value) prospect. That’s a fringe starting player profile. Your average Major League starter is a 50-grade player. Here’s a part of their write up that gets to their point:
We think there’s a chance Aquino performs the way Franmil Reyes has since his debut, big power and lower OBPs from a corner outfield spot. There’s a chance that’s a 50 FV type player but Aquino’s track record of fringe contact and plate discipline tempers our expectations about him sustaining that level of production.
Elite power makes up for a lot of other weaknesses in a players game, just ask Joey Gallo. As we sit in 2019, Aristides Aquino is showing off elite power. While the start-of-the-career home run records are great, if they happened in the middle of a career they would just be awesome and not really record breaking. But that’s not to say he’s not on an incredible run in 2019. He’s played in 91 games this season between Triple-A and the Major Leagues and he’s hit 37 home runs. That’s a 60 home run pace over a 600 plate appearance season. To say he’s showing off the kind of power you could have only dreamed about is an understatement.
It’s very unlikely that he’s going to keep up that kind of pace. The number of players in Major League Baseball history with that kind of power over more than one season can be counted on one hand. But Aristides Aquino doesn’t need to have 60 home runs to be valuable or to have his power help him hide some of his weaknesses in his game. His low-ish walk rate and his high strikeout rate does need help from the power, though. Just how much isn’t an exact number, but we’re probably talking about the need for him to hit 30-35+ home runs to be an above-average hitter in the long run. That doesn’t seem like an outlandish expectation.