The season will not begin for the Daytona Tortugas until Friday, but we’re getting an early look at what the opening day roster is going to look like today. It’s the third roster we’ve gotten, with Dayton’s being released earlier today and then the Bats roster coming out last week when their season began.
Here’s the first look at the 2023 Daytona Tortugas roster:
There are seven Cincinnati Reds Top 25 prospects that will open the season with Daytona. Six of them are not surprising, but one player being on the roster was indeed a bit of a shocker.
The top prospect on the roster is Reds 2nd rated prospect Cam Collier. Cincinnati’s 1st round pick from 2022 is coming off of a season where he hit .333/.419/.537 as a 17-year-old at Chipola Junior College before the draft. Following the draft he only played in a handful of games with the ACL Reds, but hit .370/.514/.630 with more walks than strikeouts.
Collier will be joined on the infield by a bevy of Reds Top 25 prospects. Fellow 1st round draft pick from 2022, Sal Stewart will be joining the infield in Daytona. When drafted he was viewed as a corner infielder, but saw some action at second base in spring training. The Reds 10th rated prospect didn’t play much after the draft, but hit .292/.393/.458 in his eight games with the ACL Reds.
Victor Acosta came over to the Reds in a trade at the deadline last summer. One of the Padres top international signings from 2021, he’s hit .265/.397/.431 with 31 steals in his 98 professional games since signing. The Reds 16th rated prospect has seen much of his time on the field has come as a shortstop, but he has played in 17 games at second base.
Carlos Jorge, Cincinnati’s 18th rated prospect, has had a strong start to his career. Since signing as an international free agent in 2021 he’s hit .309/.422/.558 with 54 stolen bases in 89 games played. In 2021 he split time between shortstop and second base, but last season all but two of his innings in the filed were spent at second base.
Leonardo Balcazar is the Reds 20th rated prospect. He split time in 2021 at second and shortstop with Jorge, but last year almost all of his time came at shortstop with the ACL Reds. He also signed in 2021 and he’s hit .294/.383/.502 with 21 stolen bases in his 71 games since signing.
The outfield should be fun to watch. Malvin Valdez got the largest signing bonus among the Reds international signees in 2021. He remains one of the better athletes in the organization, but he has struggled to turn some of that athleticism into skills at the plate. He’s hit just .218 in his two seasons and he’s slugged just .331. Valdez has walked at a good clip, and he’s stolen 35 bases in 90 games, but the bat hasn’t quite matched up to the defense and base running just yet.
Cincinnati’s 23rd rated prospect Ariel Almonte will look to continue what he’s been doing since he signed – show off his raw power. Last season he hit .286/.390/.493 with 11 doubles and six home runs in 42 games as an 18-year-old. Like Valdez, he signed in 2021 and got the second largest bonus among the Reds international pick ups.
Hector Rodriguez is the big surprise on the roster. The Reds 24th rated prospect is returning to Daytona to start the year. That’s not the surprising part – at least not on it’s own. Rodriguez saw his season come to an end early last year after a bad leg injury. He was expected to miss time to start the year, but apparently he healed up faster than expected and his rehab went well because it seems that he is ready to go. Last season he hit .333/.372/.536 with 16 steals and just 20 strikeouts in 196 trips to the plate between his four different stops.
The pitching staff has some interesting names there. The biggest one, perhaps, is Lyon Richardson. He was added to the 40-man roster in November. He was last on the mound in 2021 when he was with the High-A Dayton Dragons. Richardson underwent Tommy John surgery following the season and then missed all of the 2022 season. He was back on the mound in instructional league in short stints, and reportedly hit 99 MPH while out in Arizona last fall.
Fresh off of being in the World Baseball Classic, Nicolo Pinazzi (Italy) and Arij Fransen (Netherlands) will be with Daytona. Fransen pitched 39.0 innings with the Tortugas last season, while Pinazzi appeared in one game and threw 3.0 innings.
Jacob Heatherly is returning to the mound for the first time in two years. The left-handed pitcher last threw in the summer of 2021 when he pitched in five games for the ACL Reds and threw 8.2 innings. He’s battled injuries over the years and is looking to have his first fully healthy season since 2018 when he was in Greeneville.
Kenya Huggins was the Reds 4th round pick last summer. He went to the same school as Cam Collier – Chipola Junior College. After the draft he only pitched in one game with the ACL Reds, throwing one inning and striking out three batters. While at Chipola in 2022 he posted a 2.96 ERA with 97 strikeouts in 73.0 innings pitched.
While Daytona does not have a video broadcast for their games, they do open up the season facing off against the St. Lucie Mets this year and the Mets do broadcast their games on MiLB.tv. This season MiLB.tv is included with MLB.tv, too, so if you have that you now have an opportunity to watch a bunch of minor league games – though only 21 of them (as of now) featuring the Tortugas.