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    2026 Cincinnati Reds #11 Prospect: Adolfo Sanchez – OF

    Doug Gray 19

    After getting the largest bonus from the Cincinnati Reds in 2024 among their international signing class, Adolfo Sanchez split his season playing with both the Dominican Summer League Reds and Rojos. He had some struggles at the plate, hitting just .216/.356/.345 with 60 strikeouts in 45 games in his first professional season.

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    Cincinnati kept Adolfo Sanchez in the Dominican Summer League for 2025. On June 2nd the season opened up and the 18-year-old found himself on the DSL Reds. He went 0-3 with a walk. The next day he went 2-4 as he picked up his first hits of the season. Sanchez went hitless in two of the next three games, but on June 9th he would go 2-5 and pick up his first home run of the year. He never really slowed down from that point forward, hitting .317 in 20 games during June with as many walks as strikeouts (14).

    The month of July began with a 3-game hitting streak where two of the games also included a walk. The two games that followed were hitless.  Over the following 11 games he would pick up at least one hit in each game. But in that 11th game on July 25th he would injure his knee and his season came to a close a month early, though his season was going to end around that time anyways as the Reds planned to bring him stateside along with a handful of other Dominican Summer League players to have them work out in Arizona and play in the bridge league and instructional league. Sanchez still came to the US, but he didn’t play as he was recovering from the knee injury.

    For all 2025 Season Reviews and Scouting Reports – click here (these will come out during the week throughout the offseason).

    Adolfo Sanchez Scouting Report

    Position: OF | B/T: L/L

    Height: 6′ 1″ | Weight: 185 lbs. | Acquired: International FA (2024) | Born: September 19, 2006

    To say that the 2025 season went better than the 2024 season for Adolfo Sanchez would be an understatement. He was an entirely different player at the plate this past year. While he continued to walk a bunch, like he had in 2024, his strikeout rate dropped off by an incredible amount. In 2024 he struck out 33.9% of the time he came to the plate. In 2025 he struck out just 13.6% of the time he came to the plate. He also showed a little bit more power than he had in the previous season, too, as he hit .339/.474/.504 with more walks than strikeouts.

    During the time between 2024 and 2025 Sanchez worked on changing up his swing a little bit and those things paid off in a big way. He made way more contact, he made harder and better contact, and it allowed him to just perform much better.

    At the plate he has a chance to hit for both average and power. The hit tool may profile a little better than his power, but both have the potential to be at least big league average in the long run. After being rather pull heavy in 2024, his spray chart was a bit more equally distributed as he covered the entire field in 2025.

    With that said, he’s still very far from getting to that level and has a whole lot of stuff to work on and improve. It’s a pretty big jump from the Dominican Summer League to the Arizona Complex League, much less to the levels higher than that. Still, you love to see the big time improvements he made from age 17 to 18.

    Defensively he’s played all three outfield spots in the last two years. There’s been little time in left, but he’s played plenty of right field. More than half of his time, though, has come in center. He could wind up in center or right in the long run depending on how much his frame fills out and what that will do with his speed. He’s got an above-average arm that will play well in right field if he does have to slide over there down the road.

    Stats

    Spray Chart

    Video

    Interesting Stat on Adolfo Sanchez

    His home and road splits were huge in 2025. At home he hit .241/.397/.362 with 10 walks and 14 strikeouts in 73 plate appearances. On the road he hit .429/.543/.635 with 14 walks and seven strikeouts in 81 plate appearances.

    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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    19 Responses

    2. I’m very excited to see what Sanchez can do stateside this year. A true five tool talent, but what has me most excited was the improvements in K% while maintaining a great walk rate as well. If he can stick in CF, you don’t need him to be a masher to be a game changer. 15-20 HR power from a CF is a big plus. It’ll be interesting to see how Sanchez and Eli Pitts share time in CF/RF this year. Pitts is another athletic guy whose profile seems to be a lot like Sanchez.

      1. That ACL team might be loaded this year.

        Likely to get Hall, Watson, and Pitts as well as the DSL kids moving up, Sanchez, Mariano, Morillo, Nunez, not to mention some arms like Aguilera and Merite.

        I was thinking, if there were ever a year to go down for a week, this year might be it, especially with 200.00 round trip tickets from Seattle to Phoenix right now (already looking at February).

        1. I have a feeling that Watson might go straight to Daytona. Big solid frame, was known more of a pitcher than a thrower in the draft already but with a lot of projection left in his big frame. I think he might be ready for more advanced competition than the complex leagues.

        2. Don’t wait until June or July to do it.

          I’m doing a Grand Canyon hike in mid-May, so I may stay a couple of extra days to see a Complex League game while I’m at it.

        3. Ed, you mean 130 degree day games aren’t good?

          First started looking at going late Feb for a little early Spring Training and an NBA game. Now, i’m thinking you are correct and May might be better for the rookie league (my brain still goes to June/July and doesn’t get them started that early).

          It’s a shame about the North Rim park lodge fire. In my youth, i skied, snowshoed and backpacked into the North Rim area. Just beautiful winter forest.

        4. The Duke, is Edgar Colon a guide, about Watson? If Stharlin Torres can start and stay all season in the ACL, it also seems possible for Watson, too. I really just don’t know.

          I am still surprised they had Colon at Daytona — i mean, was he more advanced than Torres? Or was it expediant? Cannon fodder? It’s hard to discern how it benefitted Colon. As with all lower minors stuff, we won’t know for sure.

          I believe you are right about Watson being advanced. Somewhat opposite of, say, Schoenwetter. The other thing having me think he will start in AZ is how the Reds can be mystical in their minor league placements, ie ranging from slow, methodical one-step-at-a-time, even with higher level guys, or be very aggressive in promoting players.

          They do have the ability to individualize but it’s often at a slower pace than we here think is warranted.

          Either way, I’m excited to see what Watson can do as a pro.

        5. 130 degree games are not good.

          I honestly can’t believe that they play them. The pitches don’t break in that weather like they do anywhere else, so I don’t know what they learn from those games. I think MLB should set up a facility in Nebraska to play Complex League games.

        6. “But it’s a dry heat …”

          One of the best lines from the movie Aliens.

          Nebraska has its own heat issues in sumner but still might be better than AZ. When we’ve talked about this previously, I would suggest places like Eugene, Oregon or Montana, but they have issues, too, like smoke from fires, though that’s usually later in summer. It’s moot anyway, given the money sunk into those AZ complexes. Next time maybe.

    3. If weather was the only issue, plenty of college wood bat ballparks in the Midwest, but I suspect the actual structure of the ACL league is the main reason they don’t worry about summer weather in AZ.

      1. Yeah, they do have the infrastructure in place in Arizona.

        But they could play from mid-April to the end of May in Arizona, then switch to Eugene and Corvalis, Oregon to play from early June to early August. Use the Oregon and OSU dorms to house the players, and build a big 4-game-field complex in both towns.

        It would cost some coin, but it beats forcing teenagers out into 110-degree (dry) heat for 2 months, hoping it teaches you something about them. And it costs some money to run Arizona, too.

        1. That would be a serious downgrade to what all of those teams have in Arizona. The weather would be better, but every single other thing would be worse. Plus, plenty of teams have invested tens of millions of dollars building out housing complexes at their facilities. That money is already spent and now you are saving on it every single day moving forward.

          The labs that most teams have in Arizona aren’t going to be replicated somewhere else, and teams are never going to build a shared facility that has their tech in it.

          In 1997 this plan may have worked. In 2026 it’s a non-starter. Things are just different these days.

        2. I understand that it isn’t going to happen.

          But go to Goodyear, Arizona for 5 days in mid-July, and tell me that having teenagers play in that weather is the best that baseball can do by those guys.

          1. Baseball has never done anything remotely close to “the best they can do by those guys”.

            For the large majority of the existence of minor league baseball the clubhouse guys were providing pb&j sandwiches for guys for tips.

    4. Back to Sanchez. I liked The Duke’s comment about Sanchez having five tools. It reminded me of Doug’s occasional comments about a player having five tools, just not one exceptional tool. At only 19, it’s fair to say he may gain some added ability and/or skill. For now, i like the idea of a well rounded OF who has a decent chance to be an above average hitter with some power and one who can throw and defend.

    5. Adolfo Sanchez has shown no power so far… Maybe he can get stronger next year in Arizona ….

      1. I don’t think I’d say he has shown no power so far. He slugged .504 this season while hitting .339. That’s an isolated power number of .165. For perspective on that, the 2025 MLB average isolated power number was .146. Of course there’s an enormous difference in the level of competition and all of that, but I do think “no power” is not quite accurate.

        1. I mean he only hit 2 homers in DSL 154 PAs this season…Of course, he hit for elite average and good amount of doubles and triples so that is good.

      2. It’s probably inaccurate to expect a big HR hitter out of Sanchez. He’s not that type of player. He is more of well rounded, hit/power/speed/defense player, ideal for CF, IMO.

        I’m thinking this time next year we’ll have a lot more information as to how hard he’s hitting the ball, etc.

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