The Cincinnati Reds have traded outfielder Darlin Guzman to the Toronto Blue Jays. This completes the trade between the two teams from January in which the Reds acquired reliever Héctor Pérez from Toronto for a player to be named later or cash considerations.
There wasn’t much playing time for Darlin Guzman this year with the Arizona Complex League Reds. He had only played in two of the six games on the season, going 1-5 with a strikeout. Back in 2019, though, he tore up the Dominican Summer League while playing with the Reds.
As an 18-year-old at the time he played in 47 games and hit .357/.394/.616 with 18 doubles, six triples, and six home runs. He also struck out 44 times and walked just 10 times in 198 trips to the plate. The power output was real. Despite his age, he hit the 7th longest home run in the farm system in 2019 at 454 feet. The strikeout-to-walk ratio isn’t where you want to see it, even for a younger player. But that power potential is real and while he’s a long way from the big leagues, there’s something there you can look at and see in the future.
As for Héctor Pérez, he has not pitched in the big leagues this season. The 25-year-old began the year with Louisville, but he struggled along the way as he allowed 10 earned runs in 10.2 innings with 11 walks and 10 strikeouts. He was demoted to Double-A Chattanooga and while there he’s performed better – posting a 0.77 ERA in 11.2 innings, but he’s still walking a lot of batters. He’s also striking out a lot, too – he has seven walks and 16 strikeouts this season with the Lookouts in his six games.
The 2021 MLB Draft News
The 2021 MLB Draft begins on Sunday. I’ve been trying to get as many draft scouting reports done as possible in the last few weeks. It hasn’t gone as well as I had originally hoped – but real life things came up that needed to be taken care of. You can read all of my reports here (we’re at 18 and counting).
Over at ESPN we got the final Top 200 prospect rankings from Kiley McDaniel earlier today. You need ESPN+ access to read the list, but if you’ve got it, here is the link.
Doug. Make a guess on who the reds select.
I’ll say hoglund at under value.
Doug, I hope your life interruptions ended favorably for you.
When looking at the drafts of major league professional sports, MLB must be the most challenging. It seems that in most other sports the first and second rounds yield players that can contribute to the professional team immediately, but in baseball it takes a college player a few years to reach the bigs if they ever do, and how many high school kids washout before they get to age 21. It seems, unless you are the Rays, the best way to build a team that wins consistently is to draft well and wise FA pick ups.
Drafting in baseball is unquestionably more difficult. The average #15 overall pick in the MLB Draft is a solid bench player or middle reliever.
Darn, I thought this meant we were getting some fantastic reliever back in trade for this prospect!
Makes perfect sense. Giving up a teenager with obvious power for another reliever who walks too many and is aging out. Why would we want young power prospects anyway. We have so many of them in them in our minor league system