Home
    Articles
    Alfredo Duno (Photo: Joey Tedesco/Daytona Tortugas)
    Photo: Joey Tedesco/Daytona Tortugas

    Reds MiLB Notebook: Alfredo Duno’s impressive 2025 season

    Doug Gray 20

    There’s little doubt that Alfredo Duno is going to win the Florida State League’s Most Valuable Player award for 2025. The voting likely already happened, but nothing has been announced yet.

    With that said, it would be a shocking upset for anyone but Alfredo Duno to win the award. With Sunday being the final day of the regular season the stats are final. The 19-year-old catcher hit .287/.430/.518 on the season for Daytona. The Tortugas’ backstop led the league in home runs (18), RBI (81), on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, doubles (32), walks (95), and runs scored (78). He finished second in the league in both hits (112) and batting average (.287). He was far and away the best hitter in the league. And he did that while also playing the most important defensive position.

    The raw numbers themselves are impressive. Heck, they are more than impressive. But let’s give it some more context for just how good the season was. The Florida State League is a well known pitchers paradise. Despite that, Alfredo Duno‘s league leading 52 extra-base hits (the player in second place had 40) made him just the 11th teenager since 1960 in the Reds organization to top the 50 extra-base hit mark. Only six times did a teenager top the 52 mark, with Tony Perez back in 1961 setting the top mark with 66 of them for Geneva. Jay Bruce (63), Wily Mo Pena (56), Austin Kearns (54), Steve Gibralter (54), and Edwin Encarnacion (53) were the others that had more than 52 in a season.

    While I have a database that goes back to 1960 of the Reds farm system for your typical stats, some more advanced stats aren’t there. Fangraphs only has minor league stats going back to 2006. But they also had a few advanced level stats that I don’t in my database. The big one they have is weighted runs created plus (wRC+), which is adjusted to the league itself.

    In 2025 Alfredo Duno had a 164 wRC+. That was the 3rd best mark in the Reds farm system going back to 2006. Joey Votto‘s 170 in 2006 with Chattanooga when he was 22-years-old and Marquez Smith‘s 170 in 2014 when he was 29-years-old in Bakersfield were the only seasons that were better. The next closest to Duno’s 164 was from a 27-year-old Jeremy Hermida in Louisville back in 2011 at 154.When it comes to other teenagers – the next best season was from Jay Bruce in 2006 when he was with Dayton and had a 142 mark.

    Duno’s season stands out, but he wasn’t the only Tortugas player who made a mark in the record books. Kyle Henley, Daytona’s leadoff hitter and center fielder, played on Sunday and he picked up his 57th stolen base of the year.

    That wasn’t near the organizational record, which Billy Hamilton set in 2012 when he stole 155 bases in 132 games between Bakersfield and Pensacola. The 57 steals, though, did put Henley in a tie for the 17th most since 1960 on the farm. Those represent the most in a season in the farm system since 2013 when Billy Hamilton had 75 and Junior Arias had 60.

    Kyle Henley only played in 99 games this season.  Back in 1987 Ramon Sambo also played in 99 games and stole 61 bases (the next season he stole 98 while playing in 139 games). Everyone else in that 57+ steal club since 1960 played in at least 120 games when they got there.

    While the regular season is over for Daytona, they made the playoffs thanks to their 36-29 record in the second half of the season. The Tortugas will host game one against St. Lucie on Tuesday night. The two teams will have Wednesday off before continuing the series in St. Lucie where games two and if needed, game three will be played.

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

    Related Posts

    20 Responses

    2. As much as Sal Stewart is my boy and he did it at higher levels, I think Duno has to be the Reds minor league player of the year. BA hangs a 65 grade on his power and that power really started showing up in games down the stretch this year. Can’t wait to see Duno play live in Dayton next year.

      1. Duke, how advanced is he defensively?

        57 years later, it’s still flabbergasting that Johnny Bench was Rookie of the Year and Gold Glove winner at catcher as a 20-year-old.

        1. From what I’ve seen and heard, he is pretty much average right now with some upside for more. Moves well behind the plate for a guy his size, above average arm, average pop times.

        2. Adding on, the first i noticed about Duno back in spring training was he seems to have really good hands. His arm definitely plays.

          One other thing i like quite a bit is that he seems really spirited, lots of good enthusiasm behind the plate.

    3. I agree with Duke and also believe Duno’s upside is perennial allstar level. I will beat the drum if he has another successful season next year, for the Red’s to give him a long term contract. I get all the pitfalls, but if they want to keep crying small market constraints, they need to be smarter about keeping high end players.

      Great work Doug, I have supported you above the miniscue $$ you solicit, and I am going to raise that amount again. Your coverage of the Reds system is the best and I appreciate it.

      1. Even if it isn’t Duno, I want to see them at least try the immediate contract like what the Red Sox are doing with SOMEONE, so they can wrap them up for 8-9-10 years as a fixture for the club.

    4. The only thing I don’t like of Duno is he’s still at low-A… Can’t wait to see him to climb to Double-A at the end of 2026 as the things go well and hopefully being healthy heding to a big league debut in 2027 at age 21

    5. Konnor Griffin, age 19, #1 overall prospect in baseball, was out-OPS’ed in the FSL and 2025 full year by Alfredo Duno, also 19.

    6. Just going to leave this here, I have disabled the search function for the site.

      The problems that the site was having with being incredibly slow, being down, etc, were related to Chinese hackers using the search function thousands of times per minute to try and create their own “pages” on the site.

      Before taking further steps that would cost more than the site makes in a month for a 1-time fee, plus about $500-1000 a year for each year after that, I am trying this solution first to see if it will alleviate the problem.

      Thanks for your patience, understanding, support, and by and large not fighting with each other in the comments.

        1. Would have been helpful for me to actually turn that function on before just now. But it’s actually off now.

    7. Like to see Duno be sent to AFL which might be close to AA level. If he can dominate there he might be able to skip Dayton.

      The great catchers over the years have made the Big Leagues young : Bench-19, Carter 20, Perez 21 Munson 22, Simmons 18, Fisk 21, Parrish 21

    8. How are his catching skills? Given his plus-plus power and hitting how bad does his catching have to be before you think about maximizing the hitting and availability by moving him to 1st (I assume that would be the only realistic option).

      1. I think the reason you don’t move him to first is the lack of catching prospects in the system.

        A lot of younger catchers are around 225 or below hitters. Couple better hitters in A, but one only has 100 at bats

      2. He is a lot better than Devin Mesoraco was at the same age. Devin resembled a basketball backboard when he was at Low A Dayton. At least 3 pitches an inning hit Devin’s glove then fell to the ground.

    Comments are closed.