Louisville won with the help of a pair of big league rehabbers going back-to-back while Ben Lively struck out 11 batters, Robbie Tenerowicz picked up another home run as his turn around in May continued for Chattanooga, Joe Boyle’s dominance continued on the mound in yet another Dayton Dragons win, and Michel Triana hit a walk-off home run for the Daytona Tortugas.
If you are interested in getting emailed every day during the season with additional game notes and a rundown on how the Cincinnati Reds Top 25 Prospects performed (along with other perks) you can sign up to support the site through Patreon and get all of that for a few bucks a month. If that’s something that sounds interesting you can get more information here.
The Louisville Bats won 6-1. Box Score
- Jose Barrero (rehab) went 1-5 with a home run (1).
- Jake Fraley (rehab) went 1-2 with 2 walks, a home run (1), and 2 runs.
- Cristian Santana went 0-2 with 2 walks, a run, and an RBI.
- Jake Bauers went 1-4 with an RBI.
- Juniel Querecuto went 3-4 with a double and 2 RBI.
- Ronnie Dawson went 2-4.
- Lorenzo Cedrola went 1-4 with a run.
- Ben Lively threw 6.0 shutout innings with 2 walks and 11 strikeouts.
- Kyle Dowdy threw a perfect inning.
- Fernando Cruz threw a shutout inning with a walk and a strikeout.
The Chattanooga Lookouts lost 7-2. Box Score
- Matt McLain went 1-3 with a steal (11).
- Isiah Gilliam went 1-3.
- TJ Hopkins went 1-3 with a run.
- Robbie Tenerowicz went 2-3 with a home run (5) and 2 RBI.
- Ivan Johnson went 1-3 with a double.
- Chuckie Robinson went 1-3 witha double.
- Leonardo Rivas went 1-1 with a walk.
- Matt Pidich threw 1.1 shutout innings with a walk and 2 strikeouts.
The Dayton Dragons won 10-1. Box Score
- Allan Cerda went 1-5 with a walk, double, and 2 RBI.
- Elly De La Cruz went 1-5 with a steal (11).
- Rece Hinds went 0-2 with 3 walks and a run.
- Austin Hendrick went 2-4 with a walk and 2 runs.
- Mat Nelson went 3-5 with 2 doubles, an RBI, and 3 runs.
- Justice Thompson went 2-5 with a steal, 2 runs, and 2 RBI.
- Garrett Wolforth went 2-4 with a walk, 2 doubles, a run, and 3 RBI.
- Nick Quintana went 3-5 with a double, steal, run, and 2 RBI.
- Joe Boyle threw 6.0 hitless innings with 3 walks and 8 strikeouts.
- Evan Kravetz allowed a run on 1 hit in 3.0 innings with 5 strikeouts.
The Daytona Tortugas won 5-4. Box Score
- Ruben Ibarra went 1-2 with 2 walks.
- Michel Triana went 1-4 with a walk-off home run (2).
- Blake Dunn went 2-2 with a walk, home run (2), and 2 runs.
- Steven Leyton went 1-1 with a run as a pinch-hitter.
- Ryan Cardona threw 3.0 shutout innings with 3 walks and 5 strikeouts.
- Dennis Boatman allowed a run in 2.0 innings with 2 walks and 2 strikeouts.
5/25 Game Preview
| Team | Record | Time (ET) | Probable | Box Score | Listen | Watch |
| Louisville | 15-27 | 11:05am | Wynne | Here | Here | Here |
| Chattanooga | 21-19 | 7:15pm | Salazar | Here | Here | Here |
| Dayton | 27-12 | 11:00am | Bonnin | Here | Here | Here |
| Daytona | 17-23 | 7:05pm | Rivera | Here | Here | N/A |
@mk – I hope you get to enjoy that Dayton team this year. That team is loaded.
Time to move Ben lively to the active roster. He can’t be worse than bad vlad. Another excellent outing by Boyle. Surely they move him up soon to Chattanooga -0.53 era. He isn’t going to develop much more in Dayton.
What happened to the first baseman for Dayton that was testing it up, I haven’t seen him lately- mcginty (sp?)
Alex McGarry—don’t know any updates though. Other than his OPS is listed as 1.184 in 28 games. I’d say (like you just did) that’s tearing it up!
So on Sunday during the broadcast of one of the games, Tom Nichols noted that he had asked about McGarry not playing and if he was injured and he said that the manager had told him that no, he was not injured. Given that we are now 5 days since he last played (he’s not in the lineup today, either)…. it certainly feels weird.
Abbott is going to the mound tonight. It’s interesting how the things will go for him in his 3rd start since was promoted to AA
Boyle must have crazy good stuff to miss bats at the rate he does, 6 hits in 33.2 IP with only 1 xBH and 51 Ks.
His fastball sits 94-97, touches higher, and it’s arguably his 3rd best pitch….. so yeah, he’s got crazy good stuff lol
I guess the challenge for him as he moves up against better competition would be controlling pitch counts, given his spotty command and lower percentage of balls in play.
Nice to see Reds making great selections of pitchers post-Round 1 in recent drafts, Bonnin, Roa, Abbott, Ashcraft, Boyle. It’s an impressive list. Plus they seem to have done their scouting homework when they acquired Williamson, Phillips, and Petty.
Yeah his stuff is crazy good. That 12-6 curveball is nasty. The only reason I think he hasn’t been promoted is that he was a reliever in college and they are turning him into a starter. So he’s building innings. He can keep working on walk rate in AA. The good thing is, 6 innings is the most I’ve seen from him that I remember, so maybe he’s almost built up enough for a promotion.
I feel like Mat Nelson is quietly having a good month of May. 12 games, 49 PA, 262/367/524. 11 Hits, 7 for extra bases. Only 5 BB / 14 K.
Same for Ruben Ibarra. He had an abysmal April, but in 10 games in May he has 7 BB, 7 K, and a 1.153 OPS.
Joe Boyle is really good. I have moved him up from my 10th rated prospect last November up into the top 5 (Along with Abbott, De La Cruz, McLain and Ashcraft). This assumes Greene, Lodolo and Barrero have graduated which they will by midseason if not already. Joe Boyle has the highest ceiling of any prospect in the system. To have him a lesser prospect than Williamson, Roa, Bonnin, Petty or Moreta makes no sense to me. I see him in national top 100 lists by year end and maybe by even by Mid-Season.
I have stated all along that given a full season to understand his movement and learning how to locate his pitches his BB% will drop. It was 11.6% the last two games and when combined with a 37.2% K% he has a 25.6 K%-BB% which is really good.
Other things to love about Boyle:
1. 47% of his Fly Balls are Infield Fly balls. This is outstanding and shows hitters are having problems squaring up on his pitches.
2. 48% GB%. Very good. What is even better it seems that most of these GB are weak contact. Based upon the number of FB that are IFFB this makes sense.
3. Hitters are hitting .058 vs. Boyle. Another sign of weak contact or no contact.
Is he ready to move up? I think so but I would like him to stay in Dayton 2 or 3 more starts and get more comfortable throwing strikes at this level.
My comp to Boyle is Randy Johnson. At the age of 23 Johnson was in AA and had 10.5 K/9 IP and 8.2 BB/9 IP. He was still learning to throw his slider for strikes but it was so good hitters had trouble making hard contact. Based on what has happened thus far hitters have even more trouble hitting Boyle. Does that make Boyle better than Randy Johnson? No. Does that mean there is potential to be better than Randy Johnson? Yes. And if you have potential to be better than a hall of fame pitcher you should without a doubt be one of the Reds best prospects.
Greene has definitely graduated. Barrero probably will. He seems almost ready to return, and Farmer seems like he needs IL’ed. Depending on how quickly he returns from injury, Lodolo might not. He didn’t spend that long on the active roster (15 days). So upon return he’d need 30 days active or 35.1 IP.
If Boyle turns into a Randy Johnson, then that’d be incredible. I agree that’d I think he needs to test his stuff against a bit more advanced hitters in AA probably sometime in June.
I am not sure how service time counts when on the DL. You are right that if it does not count towards elgibility then Lodolo may still be a prospect by mid-season. If you go by service time (Which ML baseball does and Doug usually does (exception Barrero)) then Greene and Barrero are not prospects even as of today. But if you go by IP or PA then they are currently prospects but should not be by the all-star break.
So time spent on the injured list at the MLB level does count for your service time, but it does not count for Rookie/Prospect status. So while Hunter Greene has been racking up days and is no longer a prospect, Nick Lodolo is currently not racking up those same days because his time on the injured list doesn’t count in this instance.
With Barrero, things get a bit weird. Service time for rookie/prospect status is 45 active days on a big league roster, but that doesn’t include days in September. However, they decided that including September of 2020 in that shouldn’t count, so now games on the roster in 2020 do count. That led to a bunch of confusion with the whole “is Jose Barrero a ‘prospect’ or isn’t he”? It seems that some places knew about this change and others didn’t. I didn’t find out about it until after my list had already come out. Here’s the fun part: If we include his September 2020 time, he has exactly 45 days on an active roster (non-September, but including 2020’s September).
It seems to me that last winter when all these experts were ranking players they had De La Cruz in the top 100 (and deservedly so) because of his extreme exit velocity. They did this in spite of his high K%. They also ignored the small sample size. I agreed with them and I had him in my top 5 both at year end and at Mid-Season 2021.
What they didn’t do was look at what Boyle has done. They let the BB% determine their evaluation and ignored that his BB% went down as the season progressed in Daytona. They ignored was a K% of 49% and that only 5% of the batters he faced hit a FB that left the infield.
I will be happy to read about how Joe Boyle is a national top 50 prospect this winter.
There’s a big difference between a teenager who had a low walk rate in his first full season and what Joe Boyle’s walk rate as a pitcher was. The number of low-walk teenagers in their first full season who figured out how to work the zone/see the ball better/walk more is a pretty large list. The number of pitchers who walked guys at the rate Boyle has who figured out how to not walk too many guys to stick around can be counted on the fingers of one of my hands.
Is it possible that Boyle can make it that we need two hands to count the number of guys to do it? Yeah. But it’s far more likely that a low-walk teenager figures it out.
Looking at the stats Boyle wasn’t that good. Heck as a freshman he pitched 2 innings in 8 appearances. Less than a third of an inning per appearance. But he is dominating High A. Only reason I can think he is still in Dayton is due to his few innings pitched in the past.
Louisville is currently getting hammered 19-0. I think their game review section will be real short tomorrow morning.
The 1st baseman for Omaha should be up with the Royals soon.
I think it’s time that we release Farmer, Godley, Howard and Zimmer and replace them with Fisher, Garcia, Nutof and Pinto. I hope the organization is a little more aggressive in promoting players than in the past. Louisville has not been competitive for a while and Chattanooga and Dayton are doing pretty well so far this season. There should be a lot of holes to fill with the Reds next year and we need to see the better players closer to joining the Reds in the next couple of years.
And it’s only the 3rd quarter.