On Monday evening the Cincinnati Reds lost to Arizona 11-6. That game was never close after the bottom of the 3rd inning and it was 10-1 after the 4th inning. The Reds would score a few runs later in the game, hitting four home runs on the day – but three of them were solo shots and the other was a 2-run homer. Later in the game the prospects and minor leaguers got into the game and that provided a few things worth talking about today.
Let’s start by talking about outfielder Carlos Jorge. He has been called up from minor league camp often in March, but he’s not officially a part of big league spring training. That hasn’t stopped him from both trying to make an impression and actually doing it. He has 13 at-bats in eight games and after going 1-2 with a triple on Monday he’s now 4-13 with a double and three triples. That’s good for a .308 batting average and an .846 slugging percentage.
The triple that Jorge hit on Monday had an exit velocity of 103.5 MPH and it went 342 feet. The sample size for this spring is incredibly small for the outfielder, but he’s now had nine batted balls with the Reds and six of them are triple digits. Another one, a triple, was at 98.6 MPH off of his bat. His average exit velocity on those batted balls is 95.9 MPH. Eight of the nine batted balls he’s had have been in the air, with just one ground ball.
Last season there were some improvements made by Carlos Jorge while he was in Dayton. He had played in 118 games with the Dragons in the 2023 and 2024 seasons and his strikeout rate was 31.3% and his walk rate was 7.4%. But last season with the Dragons he walked 11.1% of the time and struck out just 18.6% of the time. Both of those rates were dramatic shifts in what he was doing at the plate, but they didn’t do a ton to change how much he hit. In fact, his power dropped off in a huge way.
This spring the power has shown up in the big league games. But it is worth noting that the sample size is just a handful of at-bats and that it’s spring training. In Arizona. Still, it’s encouraging to see some pop from Jorge after last season where it disappeared.
Speaking of exit velocities…. let’s talk about what shortstop Alexander Vargas showed off in the game. If you followed the game on gameday you didn’t get the information. If you were listening on the radio you heard them talking about how hard and far he hit a foul ball but they didn’t give you the precise information beyond that. Well, I’m here to share that information with you: Vargas hit that foul ball 410 feet and it had an exit velocity of 107.9 MPH.
Vargas joined the Reds in the middle of August of 2025 as a free agent signing after he was released by the New York Yankees. He had long been on the radar of the team, though. Vargas was initially expected to sign out of Cuba with Cincinnati. Due to penalties from their overspending in 2016 the team was unable to spend more than $300,000 on any single player in both 2017 and 2018, but Vargas was expected to forego signing in 2018 to sign with the Reds in 2019 when they had more money. That changed at some point in 2018 though and he wound up signing with the Yankees in August of 2018 for $2,500,000.
In some ways he’s similar to the same guy he was then, but he’s quite a bit different in some other ways, too. He’s still a quality defender and he’s still got speed. But he’s also a much larger guy now, at age 24 than he was at age 17 (who amongst us, right?). He’s never really hit for much power, with 32 home runs in 470 career minor league games and a .350 slugging percentage.
The information here is pretty old, but following the 2021 season Baseball America noted in his scouting report the following: “Vargas has continued to add strength to his frame and now checks in at a much more formidable 162 pounds, but he still has a long way to go. His average exit velocity in 2021 was roughly 83 mph, among the lowest in the entire system. As he continues to gain strength, the Yankees believe his raw tools will be better amplified. ”
Depending on where you look, Alexander Vargas is listed at 175 lbs. (2026 Reds Media Guide) or 184 lbs (pretty much everywhere online). Either way, he’s put on some weight since that point in time. That was also the last season that we got that kind of statcast data on him. The switch hitter has always had some tools and some promise but he’s never really been able to put much of it together at the plate.
Last month we were able to see a little bit of video and had another limited sample of batted ball data for Vargas from his time in the bridge and instructional league. In that 9-batted ball sample size he topped out at 102 MPH with his exit velocity and averaged 88 MPH.
2026 will be an important year for Vargas. He only played in 18 games last season with Dayton after signing with the Reds. But he’s started each of the previous two seasons in Double-A, but he’s struggled in both seasons and in 2025 was demoted back to High-A where the struggles continued. At age 24 he’s running out of time to show that he can perform and be an every day player even at the minor league level. With a new organization he might get a little more runway for that as they may want to see if things can click with them, but there are a lot of infielders both ahead of him and behind him with plenty of potential themselves who are going to get playing time and everyone is moving a bit faster now that there are fewer rookie-level teams and leagues to spread out the playing time for everyone.