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    Hector Rodriguez (Photo: Doug Gray)
    Photo: Doug Gray

    Reds MiLB Notebook: The good and the bad hitting

    Doug Gray 15

    We’re going to start today out by talking about some good hitting that took place in winter ball on Wednesday. Out in the Arizona Fall League the Reds had three guys in the lineup for Glendale. Tyler Callihan led off and started in left field. He went 1-4 but his one was a home run. It’s his second of the AFL season and the second in as many days.

    Callihan, who entered November with a .313 average, had gone just 1-19 in the first four games of November for the Desert Dogs and saw his OPS drop nearly 200 points to .633. But in the last two nights he’s gone 3-9 with two home runs and pushed his line through 18 games in the AFL to .250/.321/.395.

    Christian Encarnacion-Strand was also in the lineup. The big leaguer who is utilizing the fall league as a de-facto rehab assignment went 1-4 on the night. Edwin Arroyo started at shortstop and went 0-4.

    Thursday is the final day of the regular season for the Arizona Fall League. All three games on the schedule begin at 3:30pm.

    Update: It turns out that MLB.com’s standings page lied. It listed three teams as being eliminated from the playoffs last night. After today’s games the playoffs were listed and Glendale, who was one of the three teams not listed as eliminated, is not in the playoffs and was the tie-breaking loser among the three teams who finished 16-14.

    Hector Rodriguez keeps on hitting

    When the Dominican Winter League season began, Hector Rodriguez (pictured aboved) didn’t take the field with Escogido. The outfielder joined the club a little over a week ago and last night he extended his hitting streak to five games to begin his winter league season. The 20-year-old has gone 8-21 (.381) so far with seven runs batted in. Three of those came on Wednesday night. His single in the bottom of the 7th inning tied the game up and his team would go on to score six more runs over the next two innings to move to 15-5 on the season.

    The bad side of hitting

    While Wednesday featured some good performances from the hitting side of things in winter ball, there was an article that came out earlier in the day that didn’t look so good for the Reds prospects. Baseball America released their farm system statcast hitting rankings. Within it they looked at Hit+, 90th percentage exit velocity, contact rate, chase rate, and barrel rates for the systems across baseball as a whole. Cincinnati did about as poorly as one could imagine. They were dead last in two of the five categories. You can see all of the data here, but you will need a subscription to Baseball America to see it.

    With that said, it’s tough to say just how much this means about “the future” of the big league club and the guys who will eventually make it there. Most of the players in the farm system won’t turn into big leaguers. Among the group that do make it, most of them won’t be starters who get significant playing time. It’s how that group performs that matters most. And it’s impossible to isolate those guys right now because no one really knows which guys those are. Still, you would like to see better performance as a whole than what the 2024 data showed, because it’s clear that when looking at this as a group-data point that Cincinnati had the worst hitting farm system in the game.

    Doug Gray
    Doug Gray is the owner and operator of this website and has been running it since 2006 in one variation or another.

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    15 Responses

    2. While CES has hit OK average wise in the AFL he’s shown little power and that’s a concern. He does have a handful of doubles but no HRs. Maybe the idea was just make contact and let the power catch up in the Spring. CES has 30-35 HR/80-100 RBI potential, that has to be his game.

      1. CES has hit the ball quite hard in his limited action. That’s what I’m looking at – it shows that the injury hasn’t really changed his power potential. The home runs will come as long as he can make contact.

    3. I’m excited to see Rodriguez hit at the AA level. It’s nice to see a LHB that doesn’t have extreme splits vs LHP. He seems like a 4th OF with his defensive versatility, or maybe even a starter if things go really well for him.

      1. Agreed. A LH, 3rd/4th OF, who literally hits almost everything, with decent pop, is a pretty nice asset. Still a near-astonishing windfall for Naquin when Acuna gets tossed in. Both guys stand a pretty good chance of playing a fair amount on a second division team, and could be valuable AAA reserves for a morecsuccessful team.

    4. As i said yesterday, that BA article was pretty troubling. Thanks, Doug, for adding some perspective.

      If there is any other type of silver lining, it’s the info on the Cleveland system, where their minor league contact and barrel rates are very good, their exit velos, not so much. Having just hired Tito and Valaika, there may be a better system and strategies on the way.

      I have no idea, however, what the broadcast crew will talk about, though, if our exit velos sink in exchange for better contact.

        2. My eyebrows sure went up when seeing the Statcast data on two seamers in the organization. Basic training for GABP. Plus I just get infatuated with hard throwing sinker/slider guys. You can also see a possible sign of the DJ School of Rock thing for throwing up in the zone in the four seamer data (and, with the relative ‘flat’ numbers on sliders). I am wondering if that indicates some of the emphasis of throwing sliders up in the zone as well. Lots and lots of food for thought, and the next article. Not to mention the relative glee in seeing where the Cardinals ranked …

    5. Doug, Could this farm system hitting problem be improve in next years in some way? Or just it can’t be turn around? I think the best hitting prospects in the Reds farm are Collier, Stewart, Stafura, O’Donnell, Duno among others , are these guys even doing it bad ?

      1. Sure – it could be improved. But we need to be able to identify the problem first. And with just the overall data, it’s impossible for me or you to do that. Heck, even with the individual data it may be impossible. Maybe it comes down to scouting and signing players who aren’t good enough at pitch identification, which leads to less contact, more chase, weaker contact when they do make it, etc. But maybe it comes down to something the club is trying to teach guys (this feels less likely as it’s very rare you’ve got anything close to a one size fits all approach to teaching even on one team, much less throughout the entire organization).

        1. The article corroborated the numbers we’ve heard about re: Cleveland’s ML club, being more contact oriented and less exit velocity oriented, occurring in the minors, as well. With Tito managing and Valaika running hitting up and down the system, maybe we can cross our fingers and hope to spit that a re-orientation to greater contact may emerge. It’ll take time, of course, but if our hitters are good, they may make the adjustments to a different approach organizationally. .

    6. There are always qualitative factors to consider in looking at numbers.

      The Reds pretty much knew going into last year that they had little offense in the upper minors, other than Rece Hinds and Edwin Arroyo, and Arroyo didn’t play. Chattanooga was pretty much the worst team in the minors.

      Plus, at least as I understand it, there is no Statcast at Daytona and a handful of other parks in the FSL, so we missed some data there. (I didn’t see this addressed in the Baseball America story.) With Dayton the main source of data on the Reds’ real prospects, I don’t know if the data in the story really tells us much.

      So, who knows? It would be better to be #1, but …

    7. We knew some of the middle infield prospects would have to change positions. Thay began with Marte going to third base and looks like the process continues with Callihan in left field and McLain getting time in center. I do think there needs to be an offensive upgrade in center and if he isn’t a shortstop McLain might be more valuable at a more important defensive position than second base.

      1. Yep, I chuckle when I read you can’t move McLain off of 2B. The guy’s natural position is SS. EDLC has been named the SS, so then why wouldn’t you look at McLain at another premium position?

        To me he’s our best option for two positions CF (premium), or 3B (nonpremium).

        I think at the end of the day CF might be the best spot. He has Allstar upside, and that’s the biggest thing we are missing in the OF. I also like Marte as a RF, he’s a big kid with a big arm, and good speed.

        The help that we have coming by 2026 will likely be infield talent with Arroyo, Collier, and Stewart being the best and closest positional prospects we have. I like Rodriguez, and O’Donnell, but neither are considered elite prospects.

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