With the trade deadline closing in around Major League Baseball, Eric Longenhagen has updated the Fangraphs edition of the midseason Top 100 prospects list. On the updated version there are five Cincinnati Reds prospects.
Leading the list for Cincinnati is Chase Burns. The right-handed starter is the top pitching prospect in the game according to this list and the 6th best prospect in baseball. This isn’t too surprising to anyone who has been following along this year. Burns entered the year among the top pitchers in the minor leagues, absolutely dominated in the minor leagues, and in five of his six starts in the big leagues has been pretty good overall. That sixth start when he was apparently tipping pitches in Boston has led to an ERA of 6.26 with the Reds to go along with 12 walks and 45 strikeouts in 27.1 innings.
You don’t have to go far down the list to find the next Cincinnati prospect. Catcher Alfredo Duno also checks in within the top 20 prospects in the game and he’s rated as the 2nd best catching prospect in baseball here. The 19-year-old has had a strong season at the plate for Single-A Daytona. Playing in a career high 81 games already this season he is hitting .262/.407/.437 in the pitching friendly league with 66 walks and 76 strikeouts. Duno has also shown plenty of pop in his bat, slugging eight home runs, two doubles, and adding in 22 doubles this year.
Despite missing the entirety of the season to this point while dealing with an elbow injury and now an oblique injury, Rhett Lowder also found himself in the top 50 on this list.
Not too far behind Lowder was Chase Petty. While he has had some recent struggles in the minor leagues over the last few weeks that have nearly doubled his ERA on the season for Triple-A Louisville, Petty is still just 22-years-old and has big time stuff and for the most part, strong minor league results. His time in the big leagues show that he still has some work to do in order to take that next needed step towards success at the highest level of the game.
Near the bottom of the list is yet another pitcher for the Reds and it’s a bit of a controversial one – Luis Mey. While it is not arguable that he’s got some of the best relief stuff in the minor leagues he’s also got a very long history of struggling to consistently throw strikes, leading to a ton of walks that has almost always held guys back from being any sort of reliable big league pitcher over any sort of long period of time.