The Cincinnati Reds have promoted Julian Aguiar to Triple-A Louisville. Aguiar will join the Bats rotation after making 13 starts for the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts. He began the year as the club’s 18th rated prospect.
In the 2023 season, Julian Aguiar performed so well that he was named as the 2023 Reds Minor League Pitcher of the Year. He made 14 starts with Dayton where he posted a 1.92 ERA before moving up to Chattanooga in the second half. He made another 11 starts there with a 4.28 ERA. In total he threw 125.0 innings with a 2.95 ERA, 37 walks, and 138 strikeouts.
He was solid with the Lookouts last year, but he didn’t stick out, either. This season he took a step forward in Double-A. The just turned 23-year-old (birthday was June 4th) made 13 starts with Chattanooga to this point and posted a 3.38 ERA. In his 69.1 innings pitched he allowed 69 hits, just seven home runs, walked 13 batters, and had 54 strikeouts.
This time around the Southern League he allowed fewer hits, home runs, and walks than he did last year. His strikeouts are also down and by quite a bit – dropping from 26.3% in 2023 to 19.1% this season. He’s also traded some grounders for balls in the air as his groundball rate has gone from 47.7% in Double-A last year to 39.9% this year.
His stuff doesn’t appear to have changed this year. The fastball is still working in the mid 90’s and touching 97 MPH. His secondary offerings are still fine with his slider showing itself as an above-average offering. It’s tough to see why exactly the strikeouts have dropped off so much – at least on the surface.
With him heading to Triple-A we will start to get some more detailed information on all of his pitches thanks to Hawkeye being in all of the ballparks. While that won’t tell us why his strikeouts dropped off from last year, it may give us a little more insight to why they are where they are today (assuming, of course, they don’t pick up in Triple-A).
You can see the career stats for Julian Aguiar here.