The Cincinnati Reds had quite a showing in the Midwest League postseason awards. The All-Star team, Top MLB Prospect, and MVP were voted on by the managers around the league. Cincinnati prospects Elly De La Cruz and Christian Encarnacion-Strand took both of the top honors from the managers. Both players, as you would expect, also earned All-Star honors in the league with De La Cruz getting the nod at shortstop and Encarnacion-Strand at third base. You can see the entire High-A honors and awards here.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand named MVP
Prior to being acquired at the trade deadline from the Minnesota Twins, Christian Encarnacion-Strand had spent much of his season playing for High-A Cedar Rapids in the Midwest League. Two weeks prior to the trade deadline he was moved up to Double-A Wichita, but the first part of his season with the Kernels was more than enough to get him voted as the Most Valuable Player in the league.
In his 74 games played in the league the third baseman went off at the plate. He hit .296/.370/.599 with 23 doubles, 3 triples, 20 home runs, scored 52 runs, and had 68 runs batted in. He also stole 7 bases in 8 attempts before moving up to Double-A.
Elly De La Cruz named Top MLB Prospect
You could certainly make the argument that Elly De La Cruz put up better numbers than Christian Encarnacion-Strand did while in the Midwest League. He played in 73 games with the Dayton Dragons before he was promoted to Double-A Chattanooga. In his 306 plate appearances he had 14 doubles, 6 triples, 20 home runs, and hit .303/.360/.609. He also did so while stealing 28 bases in 32 attempts and playing shortstop.
But De La Cruz wasn’t voted as the league MVP. What he did get voted in the top spot for was the top prospect for Major League Baseball within the league. That’s not a huge surprise given that he’s one of the top prospects in all of minor league baseball.
Elly De La Cruz was the first Dayton Dragons player to be considered as the top MLB prospect in the league since the Dragons first season of existence. Back in 2000 Austin Kearns shared the honor with some guy named Albert Pujols. I wonder what ever happened to him.
Elly should have won both of these awards.
Surprised to read the Reds signed Nich Howard again, Is third time the charm.
I’m not convinced that’s not an error. The date on that transaction is 2 weeks from now.
Man, that guy got rocked by Elly’s third homer in the video..
Gotta pay attention….. but yeah. He woke back up a second after that clip ends, so that’s good.