The Cincinnati Reds have made a plethora of promotions for Wednesday afternoon. The biggest promotion of the group would be that right handed pitcher Tyler Mahle has been promoted from Advanced-A Daytona to Double-A Pensacola.
The righty posted a 2.50 ERA in the first half of the season with the Daytona Tortugas in 79.1 innings pitched. He walked just 17 batters and had 76 strikeouts while posting a 0.95 WHIP. All of those stats were among the league leaders in the Florida State League.
Joining Mahle in jumping from Daytona to Pensacola is third baseman Taylor Sparks. He was repeating the level, having spent all of 2015 with the Tortugas. His numbers, at least on the surface, took a step backwards. He is hitting just .220/.265/.359 on the season with 14 doubles, a triple and six home runs. His walk rate is down from 6.1% to 4.2% on the year, which isn’t a good sign as it was already lower than you’d like to see before the decline. On the bright side, he cut his strikeout rate from 32.9% to 21.8%. The largest reason his numbers overall have declined though is that his batting average on balls in play has dropped from .350 to .249. That low of a BABIP is unlikely to continue.
They are taking the spots in Pensacola that are left by the promotions of Amir Garrett and Tony Renda. We knew that Garrett was promoted last week, but the official roster move didn’t happen until today.
Renda will get his first taste of Triple-A when he takes the field for the Louisville Bats. The 25-year-old was hitting .326/.369/.467 with 25 doubles, three triples and two home runs with Pensacola at the time of his promotion. He had 14 walks and just 20 strikeouts in 282 plate appearances. Where he will slide into things for Louisville isn’t quite known, but he’s seen time in left field, at third and second base this season in Double-A.
Tanner Rahier has also been promoted to Daytona from Dayton. He will likely slide into the void left at third base with the promotion of Taylor Sparks for the Tortugas. In 16 games with the Dragons this year he was hitting .221/.243/.294 with two walks and 16 strikeouts. He missed all of the 2015 season while serving a suspension and that carried over into 2016 and caused him to miss all of spring training. His assignment to Dayton to begin his season was likely just a bit of a “rehab” assignment to get him back into game action after getting his work in out in Arizona during extended spring training.