Home
    Articles
    Reds Hat
    Generic Reds Hat

    2026 Cincinnati Reds #13 Prospect: Liberts Aponte – SS

    Doug Gray 10

    Every year the Cincinnati Reds have a new international signing class and back in January of 2025 they welcomed another group into the organization. Liberts Aponte was among that group and he got the largest signing bonus of any of the Reds signees this past year.

    This article was first sent out to those who support the site over on Patreon. Early access is one of the perks that you could get be joining up as a Patron and supporting the work done here at RedsMinorLeagues.com.

    While he signed in January, Liberts Aponte had to wait until June 2nd when the Dominican Summer League began to get his professional career started when it comes to playing in actual games. He would pick up a single in his first game, going 1-4. The next day he added another hit – his first double, and he walked twice. Six days later he had his first multi-hit game and one of those hits was his first career home run. He would slump for the next week, but got things back on track a bit as he picked up hits in four straight games from the 20th through 26th, and added two more home runs in that stretch.

    After finishing June by going 1-14 in the final four games, Liberts Aponte began July with a 7-game hitting streak that saw him walk four times, strike out just four times, drive in six runs, score eight runs, double twice, and triple once. But for as hot as he was in the first half of the month, he would go 4-27 in the final two weeks of the month – though he did pick up his 4th home run of the season in there.

    Some of those struggles continued into August. Aponte played in 15 games during the month and had hits in just five of those games. But he made those five games count and he had 12 hits in those five games. On the second to last day of the season he would go 4-4 with a walk, three runs scored, and five runs batted in as he hit for the cycle.

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

    Liberts Aponte Scouting Report

    Position: SS | B/T: R/R

    Height: 6′ 0″ | Weight: 160 lbs. | Acquired: International FA (2025) | Born: November 8, 2007

    When Liberts Aponte was still an amateur player the reports were that he was more of a glove-first player who had a chance to hit down the line. In some ways that was still true after his first professional season, but in other ways it definitely wasn’t.

    Aponte hit just .247 on the year, which isn’t exactly great. So on that front he didn’t exactly outperform the reports. But he did go out and hit seven home runs and show a bunch of power and that really beat the expectations for this point in his career.

    With that said there is still plenty of work to do with the bat. Aponte’s pull power is all to his pull side. And at least at this point so is his ability to turn batted balls into hits. That could change as he continues to grow and mature and fill out his frame. Despite hitting seven home runs his raw power still suggests he’s in the below-average range. He’s got some quick-twitch athleticism going on but he’s going to have to get stronger as he faces more pitchers with good velocity. That lack of strength could also be an issue with his hit tool, which also grades out as below-average. He’s got a solid understanding of the strikezone and does use the entire field but just like his power – he was only able to find hits to the pull side as he hit an abysmal .235 when the ball went to right field.

    Defensively is where Aponte shines. He’s got outstanding hands and actions to go with good range and arm strength. He can make highlight plays look easy and he projects to be an above-average to plus defender. There are still things he needs to work on defensively, though you can say that about nearly every 17-year-old baseball player that’s ever existed. He made 13 errors and had a .907 fielding percentage in his debut. Six of those errors were of the fielding variety, while the other seven were throwing errors.

    The early returns on the power output were interesting to see and maybe some of the scouting reports we’re getting just haven’t quite caught up with what he did during the season, but he also didn’t stand out with how hard he was hitting the ball either despite hitting plenty of home runs. Consistency was a bit of a problem during the year, too, as he was often going through either a hot or cold stretch.

    Still, the pieces are there for him to be a solid hitting shortstop if things go right for him. And if that happens and you couple it with above-average to plus defense at shortstop you are going to have quite a valuable player.

    Stats

    Spray Chart

    Video

    Interesting Stat on Liberts Aponte

    He had seven home runs on the season. The rest of the Dominican Summer League Rojos hit six and no other player had more than one home run.

    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

    10 Responses

    2. He apparently has a pretty good idea of the strike zone for such a young player as .121 of his OBP is attributable to walks.

      1. While you can usually do that kind of math in the minor leagues and it holds true – that is not something you can really do in the DSL.

      1. Defensively, yes. Offensively I would say no. Though with his age that kind of thing can change quicker than others.

    4. I bet if one dissected Pete Rose’s career with variable length stretches of performance one could find some inconsistency. Essentially nobody in baseball is consistent when looked at over a few games, or a week or two. These stretches are the very definition of small sample sizes.

    5. I’m fairly certain Aponte hit the first HR of the year for the Rojos and recall commenting that I didn’t see that coming.

      Then I wrote that same thing six more times over the season.

      Lots and lots of outliers in rookie ball, but i do wonder whether if the Reds will push him up given his plate discipline and in order to get him stateside and to the AZ facility. I can see a path where they have him work on his game, gain strength, etc over a one-two summers at the complex vs in the Dominican. That’d be something, Steele Hall and Liberts Aponte playing short on the same team (probably why it won’t happen, too).

    6. This is a little rich on Aponte for my liking. Plenty of upside but a guy who hit .247 in what is basically high school baseball level I am going to take a wait and see approach. If he makes the same kind of strides Adolfo Sanchez made this year then i’ll start getting a little more excited. Aponte is 100% going to start the year on the DSL Reds. And even with Sanchez I still have him outside of my top 10 until we see what he does against more advanced competition in the complex league this year, and if things go well, maybe in Low A.

      1. Aponte’s BB% and K% were 15.0% and 18.1% in his first season.

        Sanchez’ were 17.9% and 34.0%, so he had a greater issue with contact. Making hard contact is a different story though.

        Given their ages, it is always interesting to see how they develop over the offseason. Aponte could show up at 6’2″ for all we know.

      2. It’s a bit better than high school level, if for no other reason than they use wooden bats. But, yeah, there are a ton of pitchers in that league that pretty much have no control. In a good southern California high school league the pitchers are probably a bit more polished.

    Comments are closed.