Sebastian Elizalde had a strong regular season in his first year in the Cincinnati Reds system, hitting .289/.380/.461 with 29 doubles, two triples and 16 home runs between Dayton and Bakersfield in the 2014 season. Signed out of the Mexican League in the 2013 season he made a strong transition to the US. He must have been looking forward to playing in his home country though as the Mexican Winter League kicked off over the weekend.
Elizalde is playing for Hermosillo, which is just an hour and a half from where he was born, though significantly further from where he resides. Still, being back and playing in front of his home country must have been nice as he went off in his first game on Saturday. Playing left field and hitting 3rd in the lineup he went 3-4 with a double and a solo home run in a win. On Sunday he may have topped that as he went 3-5 with another double, three runs scored and a solo home run in the 10th inning to put his team ahead for good. On the weekend he would go 6-9 with two doubles, two homers and four runs scored.
Donald Lutz is also playing in Mexico this winter and while he didn’t have quite the weekend that Elizalde did he had a hit in each of the two games over the weekend for Obregon, including a solo home runs on Sunday that tied the game up and sparked a 5-run inning that put the home team ahead for good.
The Venezuelan Winter League got started last week as well and over the weekend Ross Perez got some game action for Ansoategui, going 1-5 with a walk, homer, two runs and two runs batted in. Alejandro Chacin also made an appearance in the league by tossing a hitless inning with a strikeout on Thursday night. He’s the only Reds pitcher to appear so far outside of Arizona.
Here’s an update on the stats for everyone who has played in the fall/winter leagues so far:
| First | Last | League | AB | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | K | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| Sebastian | Elizalde | LMP | 9 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .667 | .667 | 1.556 | 2.222 |
| Hernan | Iribarren | VWL | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .444 | .500 | .444 | .944 |
| Donald | Lutz | LMP | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | .250 | .250 | .625 | .875 |
| Seth | Mejias-Brean | AFL | 14 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .214 | .267 | .286 | .552 |
| Felix | Perez | VWL | 17 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | .235 | .278 | .471 | .748 |
| Juan | Perez | AFL | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .250 | .400 | .250 | .650 |
| Ross | Perez | VWL | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | .200 | .333 | .800 | 1.133 |
| Marquez | Smith | LMP | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | .000 | .375 | .000 | .375 |
| Kyle | Waldrop | AFL | 15 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 1 | .533 | .533 | .800 | 1.333 |
| Jesse | Winker | AFL | 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 2 | .455 | .563 | .909 | 1.472 |
| First | Last | League | W | L | SV | SVO | IP | H | HR | BB | K | ERA | WHIP |
| Alejandro | Chacin | VWL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Ryan | Dennick | AFL | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0.00 | 0.50 |
| Carlos | Gonzalez | AFL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0.00 | 0.50 |
| Nick | Howard | AFL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 6.00 | 1.33 |
| Ben | Klimesh | AFL | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 9.00 | 2.00 |