The Cincinnati Reds are calling up right-handed reliever Zach Maxwell from Triple-A Louisville. He is going to be taking the place of Luis Mey in the Reds bullpen after he was optioned back to Louisville on Thursday afternoon.
In the 2025 season, Maxwell has posted a 4.17 ERA in his 51 games out of the Bats bullpen. He’s thrown 49.2 innings with 42 hits allowed, he’s given up six home runs, walked 32 batters, and he has struck out 59 of the 220 hitters that he faced.
He’s struggled this season with consistently throwing strikes. That’s been something he’s battled with since his time at Georgia Tech (drafted out of there in 2022 in the 6th round by the Reds). While his walk rate has improved since his days in college, it’s still a rate that is far higher than you want to see.
Diving into the numbers a bit, he’s held hitters to a .225/.338/.358 line this season. The on-base percentage, of course, isn’t great given the average against him, but guys aren’t getting too many hits or hitting for much power against him. He has only allowed one steal this season, but there have also only been two attempts.
When it comes to hit splits this year things are interesting. Right-handed hitters are hitting .214/.302/.384 against him. They are showing a decent amount of power on the occasion that they do get a hit. They have a good, but not great walk rate against him (11%), and they are striking out at a 30% clip. Lefties are hitting for a higher average – .240. But they are hitting for almost no power, slugging just .320. Where lefties shine is that they are walking a ton against him, posting a 19.3% walk rate (that’s Joey Votto level walk rates) and they aren’t striking out much against him, either (22.5%).
Those numbers could allow the Reds to try and utilize him as more of a righty specialist for this year in the big leagues. But it would probably be prudent to try and keep him from facing big league left-handed hitters this season if they can.
You can see all of Zach Maxwell’s career stats here.