If there is one prospect that projects to see real time on the field for the Cincinnati Reds in 2019 it’s Nick Senzel. The organizations top prospect hit .310/.378/.509 last year in Triple-A Louisville. Of course, his season ended early due to a finger injury. The injury required surgery and caused him to miss all of July through September.
Once he had recovered he joined the Reds in instructional league to start taking fly balls in the outfield. The plan was to then send him to the Arizona Fall League to continue learning the outfield. That plan didn’t work out, though. Nick Senzel wound up getting surgery to remove bone spurs in his throwing elbow. Since his recovery he’s been working in Goodyear, where he’s stayed all offseason, working on learning to play in the outfield.
Exactly where Nick Senzel fits into the lineup isn’t the easiest thing to figure out. At the two positions he’s seen the most action at, third base and second base, he’s blocked for at least 2019 by two All-Star players in Eugenio Suarez and Scooter Gennett. That’s why the Reds have explored the idea of trying him in the outfield. The bat is ready, and it would be an improvement to the everyday lineup. So they are trying to find a way to make it work.
Yesterday saw the ATC Projections released over at Fangraphs. The system is one of many projections that will be rolling out as we get closer to the regular season. For Nick Senzel, the system projects him to hit .276/.344/.468 with 20 doubles, 2 triples, and 10 home runs in 85 games played. The .792 OPS it projects for him would be good for 6th best on the Reds. The system thinks the Cincinnati offense is going to be pretty good.
That would be a solid rookie season at the plate for Nick Senzel. How does that stack up to some other top prospects in baseball? Using the just released Baseball America Top 100 list, I found the 10 top hitting prospects who had projections listed with the ATC Projections and more than 100 plate appearances in their projections. That took us from the top prospect on the list, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. down to the #31 overall prospect on the list Luis Urias.
The chart is sorted by OPS. Nick Senzel stacks up quite well and is near the top. The power difference between the top two guys, and Senzel, is what has them separated into their own grouping.
Of course, that list is only looking at hitting value. There’s no baserunning calculation involved, and there’s no defensive assessment, either. Those two things are pretty important to the overall value of a player, of course. For Nick Senzel, he’s above-average at both if he’s playing on the dirt. In the outfield we simply don’t know enough to say. What we do know is that, offensively, he should be able to contribute quite a bit to the Reds lineup. Figuring out how to get him into that lineup, though, will be the question of the spring.