After missing the 2020 season, Allan Cerda had a bit of a breakout year in 2021. He posted an .884 OPS between his stops in both Single-A Daytona and High-A Dayton while playing a quality center field.
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With just 21 games in Dayton to end the 2021 season, the Cincinnati Reds sent Cerda back to Dayton to begin the 2022 campaign. He got out to a slow start, hitting just .179 with 16 strikeouts in the first 10 games of the year. In the final eight games of April he got things going in the right direction as he walked more than he struck out and hit .304/.543/.652.
For as well as he ended April, he got out to a poor start in May. Over the first eight games of the month he went 1-28. But over the next month he would hit .301/.425/.710 as he busted out of that slump in a big way, picking up 18 extra-base hits and 19 walks in a 27-game stretch. A slump followed, though, as Cerda went 0-for-the-next-week, going 0-22. He would homer on June 25th to get out of the slump and then go 2-3 with a double and a walk the next day.
Cincinnati would then promote him up to Double-A where he joined the Chattanooga Lookouts. His first week in Double-A went as well as it could. Cerda went 7-21 (.333) with nearly as many walks as strikeouts, and slugged .857. But he went into a four week long slump after that, going 6-68 (.088) through the end of July. August began with a 5-game stretch where he went 9-16 with eight walks, but another long slump followed as he went 19-102 (.186) the rest of the season.
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Allan Cerda Scouting Report
Position: Outfield | B/T: R/R
Height: 6′ 3″ | Weight: 203 lbs | Acquired: International Free Agent (2017)
Born: November 24, 1999
Hitting | A below-average tool.
Power | Above-average game power with plus raw power.
Speed | He’s an above-average runner.
Defense | He’s an above-average defender.
Arm | He has an above-average to plus arm.
Allan Cerda is a prospect at the extremes. On one side it’s very easy to watch him stand out in the outfield where he can and does make highlight reel plays with his glove and his arm, while also showing light tower power. On the other side of things he’s a player who struggles to make contact – even in the zone – and that limits so much of what he’s able to do at the plate.
During the 2022 season, Cerda hit .219 in Dayton and just .198 in Chattanooga. Interestingly his strikeout rate in High-A with Dayton was 37% but dropped to 30% in Double-A with Chattanooga. More contact didn’t lead to a better average or more power – both of which were worse in Double-A. His walk rate was over 16% at both stops. This is both good and bad. It’s good that it shows that Cerda is not only willing to take a walk, but that he understands the strikezone. But it’s bad that it means there’s a real problem with making contact on pitches he should be making contact on (ones within the strikezone).
Defensively Cerda can play a quality center field, though he’s not as fast as he used to be as he’s filled out his frame (many places still list him at 170 lbs, but he’s now over 200). He’s got more than enough arm to move to right field full time if needed.
There’s plenty of upside for Cerda thanks to his power and defense, but for that upside to play he’s going to have to make more contact and do more with the contact that he does make. He’s still young enough to make adjustments to his swing and get things moving in the right direction, but that’s something that is going to have to happen. Without it he might be able to carve out a bench role, but his lack of contact could make that difficult as while he’s got some speed, he’s not a good baserunner (he’s been caught stealing 16 times in 30 career stolen base attempts), which would realistically leave him as a guy who could only be relied upon as a good defender who in very limited circumstances could be called upon to try and hit a home run off of the bench.
Video
Allan Cerda Spray Chart
Interesting Stat on Allan Cerda
His splits in 2022 were drastic. Against lefties he hit just .129/.284/.302 with a 39% strikeout rate. When facing righties he hit .240/.389/.500 with a 31% strikeout rate.
If he can find a way to hit in the 240ish range, all his other tools, which seem to be pretty great, would be really great. The fact that he still rocked a 360 OBP while sporting a 208 average in 2022 is pretty impressive.
I watched him do that. It’s completely empty OBP. His plate approach is just to take anything that’s not a homerable fastball. In AA, that gets you walks and homers. In the majors, you might not hit .100.
That’s not hyperbole with Cerda. He has a lot of tools and talent, but he’s not remotely close to being a major league hitter. If you put him on a major league team right now he’d make Aristides Aquino look like Mike Trout.
Good arm, though.
His BABIP at Chattanooga was .250, when he was pretty close to .315 in other years, so he may have been meaningfully better than the .198 looks. It was a good sign that his K-rate went down, but it still needs improvement.
It’s a good thing to have a guy like Cerda be the #21 prospect, especially compared to 8 years ago or so.
Looks like he might be a three true outcome hitter. Which could be useful depending on power.
A guy with 4 good to great tools, at a premium defensive position, and some quality production above high A. The fact that he is the #21 prospect shows how far the system has come in just a year or two. Cerda is a true boom or bust prospect. If he can keep his K% at or below 30%, I think he can be a quality 4th/5th OF
After reading this I have to wonder how he is rated this high. He has offensive power and can play defense but his speed is slowing down. He doesn’t run bases well and won’t take a walk. #22 and on must be real messes. Have to wonder why Reds wasted a 40-man spot last year. With this scouting report nobody would pick him in Rule 5.
Great Defense and Great Power is why he is this high. Both are standout tools, and that is rare. He has never got for average, but has always maintained a great walk rate, so he is not a total mess. Combine that with relative youth and you have an intriguing, high upside high risk prospect. We also didn’t use a 40 man spot I don’t think, but I could be wrong
I agree with much of what you point out MK. Cerda’s YTD stats are not that impressive. However, I think this ranking is fair (I have Cerda at 27 in my rankings). What I considered was his last 95 PA in Chattanooga. In these 23 games Cerda had a K% of 24% and a BB% of 18%. His ISO dropped to .176 and that kept his OPS at .781. If he can bump his ISO back up in 2023 without increasing his K% then he becomes a better prospect in my mind than a CES.
Also something to consider is that once you get to prospects 21-25 you have players who have not played in full season ball, have major a flaw(s) or both.
Started making more contact in Double-A, so we’ve got signs of progress on the contact front – now he’s just got to be able to turn that contact into more production. The tools are there for that to happen, he’s just got to do it. A 30% strikeout rate can work for a player with power and defense.
Cerda could be interesting. I don’t care about strikeout rates as much as some, but a .208 BA in A+, and AA isn’t going to get a guy to the show. His power is real, hopefully he’s been selling out for power, and can make an adjustment to raise his average in 23.
Thought about this more. If you look at his 2022 slash lines by month, they’re incredible. Month by month he goes hot to cold to hot and repeat. If April, June, August Allan Cerda can show up at the plate like 75-80% of the time, instead of half the time, that’d be probably more than enough.
The interesting stat shown here is more appalling than interesting. If he hits lefties even remotely close to how he hits righties, do we not look at him totally different? I do not have a lot of historical context, but I don’t remember ever seeing a right hander struggle to that extent to hit lefthanded pitching.
I probably could have made this the interesting stat:
He hit .203/.338/.441 against lefties in Dayton in 59 at-bats.
He hit .053/.229/.158 against lefties in Chattanooga in 57 at-bats.
Walk rate and strikeout rate were nearly identical in both places. Just that when he made contact against lefties in Chattanooga it was almost always turned into an out. He went 3-57 against lefties in Double-A. One single and two home runs. BABIP was .036 against lefties in the Southern League.
That’s a mind-boggling stat too! I’m curious what you make of it. Is 57 at bats small enough to call that bad luck?
There was a ton of strikeouts in the sample, so it’s certainly not bad luck in the sense that he had poor numbers. But there almost has to be a ton of bad luck in the fact that of the 28 times a fielder had a chance to turn a batted ball into an out that they did so 27 of those times. I’ll open up the play by play data later and see what the batted ball distribution was on those AA batted balls.
It’s pretty simple. Lefties throw him change-ups. He has absolutely no clue how to recognize or hit changeups. In a league with as few teams as the SL, that book gets around pretty fast.
I can understand the club taking flyers in the draft and via international signings on these type of players. You may catch lightning in a bottle. The reality is very, very few make it. At 22, you don’t want to give up on a kid like Cerda who still might improve enough to be a ML asset. But after Acquino, Siri, Sparks, KJ Franklin, Jr. Arias, LaValley, Francisco etc., it’s just almost impossible to get excited.
This may surprise many on here but Jose Siri had a higher WAR last year than any projected starter the Reds have this year. Actually his WAR was greater than Stephenson, Votto, India, Barrero, Steer, Fraley, Senzel and Myers combined.
Just to clear some of this up: Tyler Stephenson had a higher WAR (BRef) than Siri did during the 2022 season in half as much playing time. The projection systems don’t seem to think he will hit much at all in 2023 for some reason.
Siri doesn’t surprise me. I think it’s great he stuck it out. It took him 4-5 clubs to get there but that’s sometimes part of the game. Who knows, maybe he can return to play some CF for us. I would not object.
I mean a few of these guys don’t belong in the same sentence as the others. Aquino, Siri, and Francisco all got to the big leagues and did some things – even if it were just for a short period of time. One guy you listed hit .186 in A-ball with 2 home runs in 71 games and never got higher than that level.
Sure, I agree. But I think there’s a difference between a player’s personal success vs. his value as a ML player. Have Siri and Acquino achieved personal success? Yes, quite a bit. Both will have had a handful of ML seasons on their baseball cards, made some money, maybe qualified for some pension. Some, not all, of the others as well, making some progress over 5-6 years in the minors. And I am vocal in defining organizational success when we develop guys that are role players, too. If Ivan Johnson can become a ML/AAAA utility guy, that’s good value. My point is not to dream too much on these toolsy guys with rather large deficits to overcome, especially given some of the numbers that can get attached to the ceilings as projected, I.e. Siri as a 30/30 guy in the ML’s. Maybe I’m just getting old.
I agree. A player that strikes out 30% of the time against double Ir triple A completion is likely going to strike out 40 or 50% of at bats at the major league level – which is really just unplayable.
Cerda, rece Hinds and likely Austin Hendricks just strike out to much to be considered likely contributors at the major league level – unless they drastically change their approach or all of a sudden develop better hand to eye coordination. Hitting major league pitching is incredibly difficult.
This is why we need to give fraley, Fairchild and Friedl lots of at bats because they have proven much more in their short mlb career and there is no outfield help coming soon from the minors. We really should have picked a college outfielder last draft in the comp A slot.
I think a closer hitter to Jose Siri is EDLC. EDLC has more power
Siri AAA stats .290/.344/.523 .867 ops .390 babip 7 BB% and 30.8 K% .238 iso
EDLC has same issues at the plate as Siri. 40% chase rate out of zone on breaking balls and only 70% contact rate on non fastballs. EDLC has to improve in these areas or MLB pitchers will eat him alive.
Siri was two levels behind what EDLC is at the same age. Siri split his age 20 season between Billings and Low-A, where in 27 games he slashed .145/.163/.181. EDLC split his age 20 season at High-A and AA, where in 47 games he slashed .305/.358/.553. Plus, Siri was 6 months older in his “age-20” season.
They are both from Sabana Grande de Boya in the Dominican, though.
Yes I get the level and age thing but that is more about power IMO because of body maturity.
You be hard pressed to find a successful MLB player that has such poor plate discipline at EDLC level.
Remember slash line in Milb are very deceptive that is why you always need to check babip. EDLC has extra ordinary high babip that tends to correct itself. It is why I never trusted Senzels milb numbers. You normalize the babip and that tends to take a lot of shine off the slash line. For example if you do that with EDLC in AA it runs more along the lines of 250/305/500 which drops him to .805 ops
EDLC advantage is that he is young but he needs to drop the k rate (See Jo Adell)
Patrick, are you familiar with the aspect of BABIP where better players can exhibit higher rates over long periods of time? Votto’s being .339 for his career. With Senzel, his exit velo is pretty average, EDLC is so dynamic in comparison.