Cincinnati Reds Top 39 Prospects

After his first two seasons were marred by multiple injuries (elbow and rib), Duno’s absurd physical gifts were on display in 2025, as he slashed .287/.430/.518 with more walks than strikeouts, led the FSL with 18 homers (only one other player had more than 11), and then struggled in the Arizona Fall League until he went nuclear in the postseason. Duno is one of the freakier prospects in baseball, a tool shed 6-foot-2 catcher with enormous power and rare twitch for such a big guy. His titanic size and strength, as well as his remarkable agility, give Duno extraplanetary power potential and allow one to forecast huge growth for him on defense. His ability to explode out of his crouch is incredible, and make him a threat to turn an errant pitch into an opportunity to hose a runner who underappreciates his quickness. Though he isn’t a great pitch framer right now, catchers with this kind of physicality tend to develop into good ones over time as they get a feel for how to leverage their size. Technical refinement should yield an eventually plus defender.

Though he cut his strikeout rate from 28.8% in 2024 to 18.4% in 2025, Duno is probably going to punch out quite a bit in the big leagues. His swing features a ton of effort, and his underlying contact rate (69%) is in a yellow flag territory, with most of his misses coming against elevated fastballs. But don’t let your fastball leak toward Duno’s hands, or he’s going to rip it into the parking lot. He is still getting a feel for his volcanic bat speed and bodily verve, and his timing at the dish improved throughout 2025; his skill as a hitter should continue to improve and his hit tool is going to play up a bit because of how hard he puts the ball in play. This is a college-aged catcher with 30-plus homer power, plus plate discipline, and a profile saturated with freak factor thanks to Duno’s size and athleticism. He plays the game with a youthful affability and enthusiasm, which can be a double-edged sword at catcher and result in some bloopers, but that’s common for a prospect this age. There’s a chance that Duno could be a top five overall prospect in 12 to 18 months if his contact rate can just hold around 70% as he climbs the minors.

I had questions about Stewart entering 2025 that he emphatically answered. He tends to be late on fastballs and is rarely on time to pull them in the air, and I worried his contact ability would dip as he faced better velo, and that this would make his overall production more demure, especially if/when the immobile Stewart moves to first base. Though he still has a stark inside-out batted ball profile, he’s made mechanical tweaks to preempt this potential issue, and he is such an exceptional hitter in basically every other way that he is arguably as sure a thing as a bat-first prospect can be after torching the upper minors (.309/.383/.524) and comporting himself well during an 18-game cup of coffee in the big leagues.

Stewart tracks pitches exceptionally well and can guide his barrel all over the zone to impact them. His deft hands can strike the baseball with power even when Stewart is forced to adjust to breaking stuff mid-flight, and he can drive pitches into the gaps without taking his best swing. He’s an exceptional bad ball hitter, and makes lots of high-quality contact even when he’s chasing soft stuff below the zone. The major league average contact rate on pitches outside the zone is 54%, while Stewart’s in 2025 was an incredible 66%. Pitchers’ best chance of beating Stewart is to try to rip fastballs past him at the top of the zone, as he swings underneath enough of these that his in-zone contact rate was merely average in 2025, even after making a relevant adjustment. Whiffs against pitches like this were the primary reason I was apprehensive about stuffing Stewie last year; his front foot was often late getting down in 2024. He now simply doesn’t continue to close his stride when he sees an elevated fastball; he just hauls off and hacks with his front foot landing more toward third base. That Stewart can ID pitches and adjust his footwork accordingly like this is pretty special. He’s still often late on fastballs, but not so late that he misses them altogether. He simply keeps the second baseman and right fielder busy by driving them the other way. His splits against high-velocity heaters were very favorable: In a 225-pitch sample against pitches 94 mph and above in 2025, he had an 1.042 OPS.

Stewart’s third base defense isn’t great. He’s a husky kid with poor range and a mediocre peak-effort throwing arm, but his hands and actions allow him to make some nice plays, and his short-area, wrist-flick throws are crisp. He isn’t unplayable at third but is definitely below average, and he’s pretty likely to end up primarily at first as he ages. It’s going to be important for Stewart to work to stay agile, as it’s possible that things could go sideways for him athletically given the makeup of his build. The contagious competitive fire and intensity Stewart brings to the field every day needs to extend to his conditioning to help preserve his talent as a hitter for as long as possible. So long as that happens, he’s going to be a really good hitter and a corner infield piece the Reds can build around.

Lowder’s performance steadily improved throughout his college career, which ended with a bang. He went 15-0 in 17 starts for Wake Forest prior to the 2023 College World Series and posted a sub-1.00 WHIP and sub-2.00 ERA during his draft spring. He was drafted seventh overall as a quick-moving, strike-throwing, three-pitch starter, and in his first full pro season, Lowder was exactly that. He ascended all the way to Cincinnati, where he made six starts at the end of the year, not enough to lose rookie eligibility. His 2025 season was derailed by injuries. A preseason forearm strain kept him shelved until May, and after a few starts back, Lowder strained his oblique and was out until late August. He was only able to work 9.1 regular season innings and then nine more in four Arizona Fall League starts.

A gangly, unspectacular athlete with a theatrical, cross-bodied delivery, Lowder clearly works hard to keep his somewhat awkward frame in great shape. His bow-legged front side, as well as the stiffness in his hips and lower back, contribute to a funky operation that aids in deception, albeit via an atypical look for a starter. Lowder’s stuff isn’t overwhelming, but the pieces of his repertoire fit together nicely, and while imprecise, he fills the zone with them. His best pitch is his mid-80s slider, which has considerable length for a breaking ball that hard and spins at roughly 2,800 rpm. The sink/tail action of his fastball limits its bat-missing ability in the strike zone, but its movement pairs nicely with his slider, and it’s hard for hitters to cover both sides of the plate when those two pitches are located well in sequence. Lowder’s changeup has enough tail and sink to miss the occasional bat, but it more frequently induces groundballs, which is true of his entire repertoire. This is the stuff of a low-variance fourth starter whose profile now has a little bit more volatility because of the injuries.

Hall reclassified from the 2026 graduating class and became one of the youngest players available in the 2025 group, as he turned 18 a couple weeks after the draft. Because he reclassified late in the fall, he was scouted less intensely in the summer of 2024 (when teams didn’t know he’d be eligible) and more during the spring of 2025. Hall became much, much stronger throughout the summer of 2024 — his arms grew more than the Grinch’s heart during that span — but he was still more a catalyst with a slash-and-dash style and an oppo gap tendency than a slugger. His contact performance in a relatively limited underclass showcase environment was only fair, as breaking balls evaded him at a concerning rate. I had him ranked 35th on the 2025 Draft Board, but Hall was selected ninth overall and was signed away from a Tennessee commitment for a whopping $5.75 million.

Hall has breathtaking speed and was one of the fastest players in his draft class. He reaches top speed in the blink of an eye, will post some 4.00 run times to first, looks like he’s floating from base to base, and maintains top speed as he changes direction. He has game-changing wheels, even compared to big leaguers, and this speed plays on defense, too, as Hall has superb range and athleticism. We’ll learn more about whether his swing’s length will prevent him from making a meaningful offensive impact in pro ball in 2026 as he faces pro stuff. He has a realistic low-end regular shortstop floor, with more ceiling than that if it turns out Hall can shorten his swing enough to catch pro velocity. His look during bridge league and instructs in this regard was mixed.

Rodríguez, who came over from the Mets in the 2022 Tyler Naquin trade, has performed at a high level (he’s a career .289/.337/.463 hitter) despite being one of the most aggressive, chase-prone hitters in pro baseball during the last half decade. He spent 2025 split between Double- and Triple-A and slashed a combined .283/.336/.450, and though his performance slipped while he was in Louisville (85 wRC+), the Reds still added Rodríguez to the 40-man roster after the season.

Though he’s a small athlete with roughly average bat speed, Rodríguez packs a pretty good punch for a hitter his size. He’s a compact 5-foot-10, 200 pounds or so, but he has above-average measurable raw power at age 21 (though his bat speed is more average) and he was able to muster an above-average hard-hit rate (46%) in 2025. He maneuvers the barrel around the zone well, and his short levers help him stay on time to pull and lift the baseball, and make Rodríguez a threat to golf out middle-in pitches. It’s tough to totally buy into Rodríguez’s long-term production because of his epicurean approach. This guy swings at everything, and no matter the pitch type or situation, his chase rates are multiple standard deviations worse than the major league average.

Given how apt he is to expand the zone, it’s incredible that Rodríguez has consistently maintained low strikeout totals, which speaks to his excellent bat control. But there’s a pretty good chance that he ends up a sub-.300 OBP hitter, and now that the Reds have stopped deploying him in center field (he’s still playing there for Escogido), it’s tough to project Rodríguez as a consistent impact performer when compared to his corner outfield peers. Instead, his projection is that of a righty-mashing platoon outfielder with added variance coming from the volatile chase/OBP portion of his skill set. Jake Fraley‘s departure clears the runway for Rodríguez a bit, and he’ll now likely compete with Will Benson and Tyler Callihan for reps.

Franco signed in the fall of 2018, and his career got off to a relatively slow start due to the timing of the pandemic and a few injuries. Until June of 2024, he’d spent the better part of three seasons at Low-A Daytona; since then, he’s been ascendant. He split 2025 between Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville and posted a 3.11 ERA across a career-high 110 innings. Most impressively, Franco and his hulking 257 pound frame were still generating mid-to-upper-90s velo at the very end of the year. He generates plus velo with ease and balance, allowing him to throw lots of strikes even though he lacks precise feel for location.

What complicates Franco’s profile is his lack of a true weapon with which to attack lefties. His changeup lacks movement and his feel for it is just okay. His breaking pitches run together in the 83-88 mph range, with some looking like sliders and others looking more like curveballs, but from a measurable movement standpoint, they’re all pretty similar. Because of how well Franco hides the baseball, his breaking pitches played like 55- or 60-grade offerings in 2025, but visually both are closer to average. His ability to pair elevated fastballs with surprise breakers in the zone gives him the attack foundation of a backend starter, and in Franco’s case it’s fair to say he’s going to have a plus fastball now that he’s shown he can hold big velo all year. He’s a threat to root into the back of Cincinnati’s rotation at some point in 2026 and projects as a long term no. 4/5 starter.

Collier graduated high school early in order to attend a junior college and turn pro at an especially young age. He was signed for a massive over-slot bonus of $5 million at pick 18 in 2022, and though he’s been in pro ball for four years, he is still barely 21 years old. Collier was coming off a career-best season in 2024 — .248/.355/.443 line with 20 homers as a 19-year-old at High-A Dayton — when he tore the UCL in his left thumb during spring training. It necessitated surgery and kept Collier out until mid-May. He spent two weeks rehabbing in Arizona, then another couple back in Dayton before the Reds felt comfortable promoting him to Double-A Chattanooga, where he hit a modest .263/.377/.347 with just two homers in 74 games. He had a similar low-slug line in the Arizona Fall League.

Collier’s difficulty accessing his power in 2025 might reasonably be explained by the nature of his injury, as hand/wrist issues tend to linger even after hitters return to action. But Collier’s issues are more mechanical in nature. He has lovely-looking low-ball power, but for most of its journey, his bat path is on a downward trajectory that limits his ability to cover the top of the zone, and makes it difficult to launch and slug even though he’s hitting the ball hard. His measured exit velocities remained excellent — he has above-average raw power already and should have plus raw at peak — but Collier’s ability to do damage is limited to the lower third of the zone. He has skillful feel for adjusting his hands and body posture to make flush contact with these pitches, and he has the power to hit fastballs hard to the opposite field, but when you’re talking about a first base prospect, any kind of offensive flaw looms large in the player’s overall profile.

Collier was drafted as a third baseman but spent two-thirds of his defensive innings at first base in 2025. His stout build and lack of mobility made him a well below-average third baseman, but he’s a natural-looking first baseman with plus hands, scoopability, and ball skills. He’ll add some value on defense even though he’s going to be relegated to first base, but because it’s going to be tough for Collier to tap into his raw power with this swing, he’s going to be a lower-end regular there.

An absolute unit, Maxwell is the size of some NFL linemen at a whopping 6-foot-6, 275 pounds. He spent most of 2024 and 2025 at Triple-A Louisville and made his big league debut in late August. Maxwell wields triple-digit heat and can reach back for 102. He hides the ball well and creates backspinning action on his fastball, but his inability to command it to effective locations prevents it from being a truly elite pitch. The same is true of his slider, which has plus two-planed movement at plus-plus velocities. He’ll throw it as hard as 93 mph (it usually sits 88-89), and it has power finish that often embarrasses hitters. A new cutter in 2025 gave him a way of inducing weak contact when he falls behind in the count.

This is late-inning stuff. Maxwell has K’d 14 hitters per 9 IP throughout his pro career, and if he had even average command, he’d be a slam dunk setup man or closer prospect. But his walk rates have tended to live in the 13-16% range, his career WHIP is just shy of 1.60, and he hasn’t been totally dominant because a lack of feel for location undermines his performance. Maxwell is a pretty tightly wound athlete and isn’t especially fluid, so this isn’t something I’d expect to improve all that much. He’s still going to be an impact reliever, but he’s a better fit as a good bullpen’s third option rather than its first or second.

Petty, who touched 102 mph in high school, came to the Reds from Minnesota during the spring of 2022 in a trade for Sonny Gray. After missing time with an elbow issue in 2023, he had a healthy and complete 2024 season in which he worked 137 innings spent mostly at Double-A Chattanooga, many more frames than he had thrown in any year prior. At the very end of the season, after Petty had been promoted to Louisville, his fastball was still sitting 94-97 mph, and he has carried that into 2025 and had a great first three months of the season that included a three-game big league cameo. He posted a 2.86 ERA at Louisville through June, as both his slider and changeup were missing bats at a plus rate. In the second half, though, Petty got shelled. From July on he had an ERA over nine, his fastball was very vulnerable to hard contact, and he was bounced from several starts before he could get out of the third inning.

Petty’s fastball shape has never been great, but his velocity and lower arm angle has tended to aid its effectiveness. In the latter half of 2025, it was getting crushed even though Petty was still throwing plenty hard. His secondary pitches’ bat-missing ability also took a dip. A year ago Petty looked like a near-ready no. 4 starter. His 90 mph gyro slider acted like an effective cutter, his 84-88 sweeper is a bat-misser when located well, and his huge arm speed allowed for changeup projection. In 2025, his fastball was less sink-oriented and Petty’s breaking ball spin rates lost a couple hundred rpm. He had no IL stints or obvious mechanical change, his stuff just wasn’t as good as before.

What might indicate that Petty will get back to his 2024 look? For one, he’s a very special athlete whose body unwinds like a tornado during his delivery. He powers down the mound and creates huge hip/shoulder separation. The potential for a total bounce-back, or a leap in his stuff if Petty is moved into the bullpen, is priced into his FV grade here. It’s important not to lose sight of Petty’s special athleticism or arm strength and overreact to a bad year, but it’s also important to acknowledge that if his 2026 stuff looks like his late-2025 stuff, his prospectdom is in trouble.

The biggest development for Jorge across the last year or so has been his wildly successful transition to center field. In 2024, he moved from second base (where he wasn’t very good) to center, and he has very quickly turned into an impact defender there. He’s much more comfortable going back on balls hit over his head than he is attacking ones hit in front of him, but his speed and guile around the wall have helped him make a bunch of highlight reel plays out there as he goes full tilt into the gaps. The full-body style of throwing outfielders are more often able to use has turned out to be a better fit for Jorge as well, and he has lethal arm strength when he beats the ball to the spot and can set himself to throw, which he often does. This defensive ability gives Jorge an extra outfielder’s floor.

The amount of offense he’s going to produce is likely to be limited by his size. Jorge is yoked for a 5-foot-9 guy, but you can only be so strong when you’re that small. His full-body swing is wildly entertaining, but be careful not to mistake all that effort for big bat speed, as Jorge’s is closer to average. The uppercut style helps generate loft from pole to pole, though Jorge’s wall-scraping power is more dangerous when he can drop the bat head and golf something out to his pull side. Though his 2025 line (.251/.342/.355) was unexciting and his tools are modest, this is a well-rounded hitter without an issue that might cause his entire profile to bottom out. Though he wasn’t added to the Reds’ 40-man roster during the offseason, Jorge continues to project as a glove-oriented fourth outfielder.

So cut that he appears to have been sculpted from marble, Lewis is the type of athlete who looks like he could believably play just about any sport at a high level, from college wrestling or swimming to football. After signing out from under an Arkansas commitment for a little over $3 million, Lewis had one of the weirder full season pro debuts in 2025, as he generated the measurable power of an apex power-hitter and the contact performance of a total non-prospect. He hit multiple balls over 118 mph during the season and generated a 109-mph EV90, which was top 50 in all of pro baseball. That said, only a few big league hitters have a contact rate as low as the 63% mark Lewis posted against low-level minor league arms. That’s down in Gabriel Arias territory, a player who’s also a good comp for Lewis in terms of physicality and power, though Arias is a much better defender right now.

The hitting environment in Arizona allowed Lewis to thrive despite whiffing a ton, and he had a .928 OPS when he was promoted to Low-A Daytona for the final six weeks of the season. Lewis’ strikeout rate exploded to 35.4% there, but he still hit for enough power to post an above-average overall batting line, at times cutting his stride completely in an effort to be on time. Lewis has great bat speed once his hands get moving, but he’s usually late, he doesn’t track pitches especially well, and he’s quite chase-prone. His showcase tools are deafening and exciting enough to hold Lewis in a fairly valuable FV tier just in case things improve, but hitters who whiff this much in rookie and A-ball tend to be low-probability prospects.

Jimenez is stacked intentionally right behind Tyson Lewis because the two are very similar: extreme power-over-hit prospects whose bat speed and power is exciting enough to make them a valued player despite red flag strikeout issues. In Jimenez’s case, he K’d at a 25.9% clip in his second DSL season, though he barely played in 2024. He flashed big bat speed and pull power in Arizona during the fall and was sent to play Winter Ball in Australia with the Sydney Blue Sox.

The way Jimenez’s body unwinds as he swings is explosive and beautiful. Even on swings where he doesn’t take a well-executed stride, he’s still able to produce power because of this brand of athleticism, which at times includes him dropping to a knee to lift the baseball. Jimenez’s underlying data reinforces that he has precocious power, with a hard-hit rate of 45%, a 113 mph max exit velocity, and a 106 mph EV90 in 2025, all above the big league average on a teenage hitter. He doesn’t have Corey Seager’s physical projection or anything, but Jimenez’s size and athleticism look like that of a dangerous big league power hitter. Still, his contact performance is scary. Hitters with a sub-70% contact rate in rookie ball tend not to pan out, and Jimenez posted a 64% mark in 2025. He has the tools of a high school prospect taken in the second round of a draft and might be a big arrow up guy in 2026 if he can make more contact in Arizona.

Aponte was considered a glove-first shortstop when he signed for $1.9 million in January of 2025, but his DSL debut was more encouraging than anticipated on offense. Namely, Aponte has a little more juice than his amateur reports suggested. His wrists are strong through contact and help him generate above-average bat speed. He was tied for 15th among DSL hitters with seven homers in 45 games, and he still has room for strength on his spindly frame, so much so that it wouldn’t be shocking if the Reds left Aponte in the DSL for a second season because he’s not necessarily strong enough to compete on the Goodyear complex just yet. Aponte is very twitchy and has great hands and actions, so he’s still tracking as a viable shortstop and was an arrow-up prospect in this system throughout 2025.

The Reds tend to be very active in Florida during the draft, whether that’s scouting the JUCO scene or properly assessing signability, and signing Watson away from a Florida commitment with a $2.7 million bonus is in that vein. Watson has a huge 6-foot-5 frame and sits about 93 mph with tail and downhill angle from a low-three-quarters arm slot. His arm stroke looks awkward at times, but Watson commands all three pitches, and a mid-80s slider with big glove-side length benefits the most from his polished feel. Right now, his changeups often sail on him. His size and pitchability foundation gives him a higher floor than most prep pitchers form the 2025 draft class, but his fastball shape might cap his ceiling. He’s a pretty standard second round high school developmental project.

Morris was used in a long relief role at Ole Miss but ranked 50th on the 2025 Draft Board because he’s an obvious candidate to be upcycled into a starter prospect in pro ball. Morris would often go three or more innings in relief, he has starter’s size at 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, and his secondary pitches are nasty enough that he might not need a good changeup to get lefties out because his cutter/slider combo is a nightmare in on their hands. Morris sat 96 mph from high-three-quarters slot in college, and he was 94-98 in his two post-draft appearances at Daytona. Morris also has starter-quality feel for consistent glove-side location, but he really only works to that half of the plate, which might have to change against pro hitters. Whether or not he has season-long starter stamina is a black box right now because he hasn’t done it, so I’m sticking with a long relief projection here since we at least know he can do that at a high level, but this guy should be developed as a starter.

One of the Mariners prospects sent to Cincinnati in the Luis Castillo trade, Arroyo slashed .248/.321/.427 as a 19-year-old at High-A in 2023, with 49 extra-base hits in 123 total games on the year. A torn labrum and subsequent surgery shelved him for all of the 2024 regular season. In 2025, he slashed .284/.345/.371 at Double-A Chattanooga and then played winter ball in Puerto Rico. His 2025 batted ball profile was much different than in the years prior to his injury. This is a smaller athlete who took high-effort uppercut swings and was slated to have a below-average hit tool but get to some power by virtue of his style and approach. But in 2025, Arroyo struggled to lift the ball at all. His groundball rates had been in the 36-39% range since coming over from the Mariners, but he had a 50% groundball rate this past season. He was a much less dangerous hitter against pitches on the inner third in 2025, less able to pull stuff in the air from the left side of the dish. He was still able to produce a 107 wRC+ as a 21-year-old at Double-A, and it’s possible this is a temporary issue resulting from his injury and layoff, but his profile is in flux right now.

That extends to Arroyo’s defense. Arroyo is a special athlete who clearly has the range, athleticism, hands, and max-effort arm strength to play a quality shortstop, but his arm accuracy was a mess for the last couple of months of the regular season. He seems hellbent on using a low arm slot for basically every throw, and the further away from first base you get, the less that’s practical and creates risk that the throw sails or tails away from the first baseman. That said, the physical tools to play a good shortstop are here. The Reds gave Arroyo a 12-game run of reps at second base during the year, the first time he played the keystone at all in an actual game since 2021. This guy is athletic enough to play all over the place, and it might make sense for the Reds to move him around even more at Louisville in 2026 (his first option year on the 40-man) to see if Arroyo can play a superutility role.

For a while now, Balcazar has been a prospect where the stats and scouting look are incongruous. He’s posted an above-average line at basically every minor league stop, including a successful 2025 season in which he hit 12 homers (double his previous single season high) and cut his strikeout rate in half (13.4%, down from 25% the prior three years). Granted, he was repeating High-A at the start of the year, but Balcazar’s underlying data is similarly strong, as his contact (79% overall, 86% in-zone) and measurable power are both hovering on either side of the big league average.

This is a college-aged shortstop who is already on a 40-man roster, and who has performed pretty well up through the mid-minors. Why then is he graded as more of a low-end utility type? For the most part it’s simply because I struggle to buy that Balcazar’s swing will continue to produce an everyday player’s stats at the big league level. He’s strong for his size but tends to be late to the contact point, and it’s tough for Balcazar to pull fastballs, an issue that will likely be more pronounced against big league velo. He is also a bit of a bucket strider, and swings inside a lot of sliders that finish on the plate. These issues are not so pronounced as to consider Balcazar a bust (his defensive fit ensures he won’t be), but they are concerning enough for me to override what the data alone is telling us about his skill level and project him as more of a fifth or sixth infielder on an active roster. Balcazar doesn’t have the arm strength of a traditional shortstop, but his hands, actions, and exchange are all plus and help him get rid of the ball quickly and accurately. First basemen will need to be on scoop duty when he makes plays in the hole, but he’s otherwise a fit there. That should carry him to a modest big league role.

Morillo is a well-rounded, switch-hitting catcher who excels on both sides of the ball, and he presents an athletic foundation you can dream on. He owns a career .257/.414/.439 slash line in two DSL seasons, and came to Arizona for Instructional League in the fall of 2025, then thrived playing winter ball with the Sydney Blue Sox in Australia.

Morillo does a little bit of everything, and is a “skills over tools” type of prospect right now, but he’s well put together and is poised to add meaningful strength as he matures. If he can add relevant mass (and hopefully the power and catching durability that comes with it), then he’ll have a puncher’s chance to be a regular. RIght now Morillo’s game is about plate discipline and contact. He tracks pitches well and has a rhythmic, graceful lefty swing. On defense, his average arm plays up thanks to a quick exchange. Like most teenage catchers, Morillo is likely to be a slow developmental burn. A recent prospect like him is Blue Jays catcher Brandon Valenzuela, who has been in the minors for eight years and only now has found his way onto a 40-man roster.

Lantigua was a two-year DSL performer in the Dodgers system, then was traded to the Reds when Los Angeles was trying to accumulate pool space to pay Roki Sasaki last offseason. His 50% hard-hit rate in 2024 was among the best in all of the minors, but Lantigua generated that repeating the DSL. His 2025 output — .265/.334/.490 split between the complex and Low-A — brought his abilities into greater focus.

Lantigua has above-average bat speed, and his swing and approach help him stay on time to pull the ball consistently. Though his contact performance was in line with the big league average, Lantigua’s feel for the barrel doesn’t look great to the eye. He swings inside a ton of sliders as he tries to execute his pull-heavy approach, and this projection assumes the strikeouts will proliferate as Lantigua faces better breaking balls. He’s tracking like a lefty-mashing corner outfielder and will likely be limited to left field due to below-average feel for defense, foot speed, and arm strength.

Holman is a physical righty who went from Wilson High School in West Lawn, PA (Kerry Collins’ alma mater) to Alabama for two seasons, then to LSU, where he had a dominant junior year (with a sub-1.00 WHIP against SEC hitters) even though his velo was down a tick. After two starts at Daytona in 2025, Holman was put on the IL with a UCL injury that required surgery and cost him the rest of the season. If Holman continues to work with below-average velocity when he returns, his fastball’s lack of in-zone playability is probably going to be an issue. But he has two good breaking balls, led by a huge mid-70s rainbow curveball that looks like it’s headed to the backstop and then bends into the zone. His low-to-mid-80s slider has lateral action and distinct shape from the curveball, and is used as a chase pitch versus righties. Both breaking balls are plus. His delivery looks a little rough but walks were never an issue for Holman in college. He entered pro ball as a high-probability backend starter whose ceiling is probably limited by the line on his fastball.

Aguiar looked like a future Top 100 prospect in 2022 and 2023, as the former junior college infield convert mowed through both A-ball levels and spent the back half of the latter season at Double-A Chattanooga. That year, he worked 125 innings of 2.95 ERA ball, posting a 1.10 WHIP, a 26.8% K%, and a 7.2% BB%. In 2024, his stuff backed up and he needed Tommy John after the season, which cost him all of 2025.

None of Aguiar’s pitches generated even an average rate of miss in 2024. Before, his semi-erratic changeup (though it has been Aguiar’s best pitch on pure stuff) and well-commanded low-80s slider were both playing as above-average offerings, and his fastball was sitting 93-95 while touching 97. If the 2024 version of Aguiar was compromised by injury the whole time, then hopefully he’ll bounce back in 2026 and reclaim a no. 4/5 starter projection. But that 2024 version was more of a fringe 40-man prospect.

Lin was a two-way amateur prospect who signed for $1.2 million, and while he has played the infield or DH’d for at least part of his three pro seasons, his future is clearly on the mound. After he hit .172 on the complex in 2025, it’s likely he’ll solely be a pitcher going forward. To that end, Lin looks like a backend starter. Though his fastball was in the 93-96 mph range during the fall of 2024, he was more in the 90-94 mph range in 47 innings of work throughout 2025. Lin’s fastball has plus carry and real utility as a chase pitch even at these velocities, but his secondary stuff isn’t nasty or consistent enough for him to pitch backward effectively and sustain his 3.06 ERA and 31.8% strikeout rate from the most recent season. His curveball and slider run together a bit and tend to be slow, often in the mid-to-upper-70s. Lin is a good athlete with a balanced and consistent delivery, he throws strikes, and he has a fairly robust four-pitch mix for a guy who has been a two-way player. But as he’s a relatively squat, 5-foot-11 righty, he offers little in the way of the physical projection that might yield more velo. This is a spot starter’s FV grade.

Ortiz was a famous Puerto Rican high school two-way player (mostly a shortstop) who participated in a lot of the marquee national showcase events as an upperclassman. Ortiz was originally drafted by Washington coming out of high school but didn’t sign. He went to Chipola JC in Florida and played both ways there, then was the Reds’ 17th rounder in 2023 as a “draft and follow,” a long-defunct (and from 2007 to 2021, dormant) roster maneuver that allows clubs to pick a player and retain their rights into the next calendar year, well beyond the usual signing deadline. Ortiz went back to Chipola for the 2024 season, then signed for the max D&F amount of $225,000 in May of that year.

Ortiz has been deployed as a pitcher since turning pro and though he’s yet to exit Low-A, it’s going pretty well. He had a 2.86 ERA across 91.1 innings in 2025, and his fastball velocity grew throughout the year. By the end of the season, he was sitting 94 and reaching back for 96-97 at times, and his slider was generating plus-plus chase thanks mostly to JeanPierre’s feel for glove-side location more than pure nastiness. Ortiz is a little undersized for a pitching prospect, but he’s a plus on-mound athlete, his velocity is growing, and his secondary stuff and command have both rep- and athleticism-based projection. If one of them becomes plus, then Ortiz should be a fine reliever. If both of them become average or better, then he’ll have a long-term shot to start.

Redona put up video game numbers in his first DSL season — 0.86 ERA, 0.67 WHIP, 36.8% K%, 2.6% BB% in 31.1 IP — thanks almost entirely to his mature command of a deceptive riding fastball. He doesn’t throw all that hard, but the pitch averages 18 inches of vertical break and Redona commands it with machine-like precision to the top half of the zone. His fastball represented 70% of Redona’s pitch deployment. His silky smooth arm action helps him sell a precocious changeup, and he will show you an average breaking ball anywhere in the 77-84 mph range, but this is more a prospect with a shot to have special command than one who’ll grow into elite stuff. He’s a priority name to know from rookie ball even though he’s much more likely to be Tom Milone than Tom Glavine.

Sando thrived as a junior reliever at Santa Clara and then struggled as a senior starter and spent his first full pro season in the bullpen. After an early-2025 demotion to Low-A, he pitched so well that the Reds not only elevated him back to Dayton, but also moved him into the rotation there. Sando thrived, twirling some impressive six-inning outings late in the year, and was again promoted, this time to Double-A.

Sando is a control-over-command southpaw with a low-three-quarters delivery that helps his fastball play up. He bullies the zone with uphill fastballs and can land both his slider and changeup for strikes, but neither of those pitches is especially nasty. You could consider Sando a swingman candidate for 2027, though it’s more likely he winds up as a bullpen’s second or third lefty.

Pestka was one of a couple Reds’ 2023 draft-and-follow prospects who played amateur ball in 2024 before agreeing to a deal with Cincy that May; Petska was committed to Tennessee and would have pitched there in 2025 had he not agreed to a deal. Instead he pitched in Daytona for a second summer and worked 54 innings in 31 relief outings. Petska has a great curveball and good feel for locating his pitches. He isn’t a great athlete, but his delivery is easy and repeatable, and he located his fastball consistently in 2025 even though he was throwing two ticks harder than in pro ball the year before. Petska’s pure breaking ball quality is the kind commonly seen in big league bullpens. His curveball freezes opposing hitters and is an effective strike-one offering, preceding elevated fastballs. A new cutter rounds out a deep mix of breaking balls that should eventually facilitate a middle relief role. Consider Petska a candidate for accelerated promotion in 2026, as his 40-man platform year is already upon us.

Laureano is a potential late-inning reliever who missed all of 2025 after undergoing elbow surgery, though when it happened is a little cloudy. He was put on the IL late in 2024 after his stuff slipped, and then placed on the full season IL in March 2025; somewhere in there, he went under the knife.

Healthy Laureano sits in the mid-to-upper-90s and will touch 100. His delivery is incredibly explosive and athletic, with huge hip/shoulder separation, as well as trunk tilt that creates a high-three-quarters arm slot. Laureano’s fastballs have plus riding life and generated plus-plus miss against A-ball hitters in 2024. His slider is often short and cuttery, but it played like an elite offering when he was last healthy, perhaps because hitters at that level were forced to sit fastball just to have a chance to make contact with it. Every once in a while Laureano will also show you a good power-sinking changeup. He’s a pure relief prospect with high-leverage stuff and command that’s well below average.

Callihan was a high-profile high school prospect who signed for about $1.5 million in the 2019 third round. He was divisive due to questions about his defense, which have more or less persisted for the last half decade as Callihan has played a below-average second base and gotten reps at first base and in left field. Cracks in Callihan’s approach were evident early in pro ball, but he’s been more selective the last two seasons, though he is still apt to chase high fastballs. Lefty bat speed like Callihan’s tends to play in the big leagues. He has above-average power and is geared to pull. A hole in his swing against elevated fastballs has limited his ability to make contact, and he’s run sub-70% contact rates for the last couple of seasons. At the positions he can actually play, that puts Callihan more on the 40-man fringe. He made his big league debut in late April of 2025 and, after just a few games, broke his forearm careening into the left field wall chasing after a Matt Olson fly ball. He missed the rest of the year. He’ll enter 2026 as a potential platoon partner for Matt McLain and perhaps Spencer Steer.

Perhaps the prospect across baseball most likely to yield a Google “Did you mean…?”, Merite is a projectable and deceptive Dutch lefty who DSL hitters couldn’t touch in 2025, his second pro season. Merite had an 0.81 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in 33.1 innings, but what he brings to the table from a visual scouting standpoint is why he made the list, even though he’s roughly a half decade away from the bigs.

Merite is a lanky 6-foot-3, and his arm stroke is very whippy, difficult for hitters to parse. He’ll frequently bump 95 mph in the early innings of his starts, and even though his curveball features very little raw spin, hitters don’t pick it up out of hand and Merite dominated with it in a limited sample. There are lots of starter-y elements to Ryjeteri. He’s built and moves like a starter, his fastball plays, and he has some nascent changeup feel that should become more important as he matriculates to the U.S. in 2026. For now, he’s a good developmental starter, the kind who’d easily be on the scouting radar were he just wrapping up his freshman season at a college in the U.S.

Here we have an “old dog, new tricks” situation as, at age 26, the former College World Series hero Abel overhauled his delivery to include extreme drop-and-drive elements. He’s cut about six inches from his release height because of how deep he’s sitting into his back side as he builds energy for his delivery. His arm slot has also come down a bit. It has given his low-90s fastball a bit of a lift (literally), and considering how Abel has basically always been walk-prone, it wasn’t as if the Reds were rolling the dice with that aspect of his profile by changing his mechanics. Abel’s new fastball lets him be pretty loose with his command in the zone, and it hasn’t impacted the quality of his plus sinking changeup, which remains his best pitch. The lower slot has robbed him of some breaking ball depth and made that pitch more important to command in order to keep it out of trouble. The changes Abel made have turned him into a prospect again. He is still starting at Double-A, but he projects as a low-leverage long reliever in the bigs.

Allen missed meaningful portions of each of his first few seasons with oblique and thumb injuries, making it tough to gauge his offensive abilities with real clarity, then turned in a career-best offensive season in 2024. He regressed a bit in 2025, as he hit .224 at Chattanooga. Allen continues to track like a fringe 40-man guy who could be rostered due to his glove. He has plus range and ball skills to both gaps, and does a great job communicating with his corner outfielders. Though he has dangerous pull power against pitches down and in, he struggles to cover most of the rest of the zone and isn’t likely to hit enough to get a ton of big league playing time.

Acosta, who was acquired from San Diego a couple years ago for Brandon Drury, continues to track like a fringe 40-man infielder based on his defensive ability and versatility. He now has experience at three infield positions (third base was new in 2025) and is a capable shortstop with a huge arm. It’s possible he may be exposed to the outfield at some point in the future because versatility is going to be an important aspect of his rosterability. Acosta is a fine contact hitter but has so little power that it’s tough to consider him anything more than the last infielder on a bench. But when prospects can play defense like this, especially at shortstop, they tend to find their way onto a big league roster at some point, even if it’s just in the Sergio Alcántara, “Have Glove, Will Travel” role.

Henley, who signed for just shy of $400,000 rather than go to Georgia Tech, is an amazing young center field defender with elite long-term body and athleticism projection, but he’s very unlikely to make enough contact to be anything more than an extra outfielder. He K’d at a 31.9% clip at Low-A Daytona in 2025 and was so consistently late to the contact point that Henley was only able to pull a handful of pitches in the air all season. On defense, though, the way he glides into the gaps is a thing of beauty, and he has the long speed and ball skills to be a Gold Glove-caliber defender. Henley’s future is as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement.

Confidan is a huge-framed lefty power bat who has had trouble adjusting to new levels upon promotion. You could argue he shouldn’t be on this list at all, as he has struggled two of the last three seasons, he’s a bottom-of-the-scale contact performer against secondary pitches, and his swing lacks loft. But lefty-hitting prospects with this kind of size and power are rare: Confidan has plus all-fields raw power right now and might have 70-grade juice at peak. He’s had a 50% hard-hit rate each of the past two seasons, destroys pitches around the belt, and has hit balls as hard as the 113-115 mph range. His issues against spin are bad enough that Confidan’s overall offensive skill set is in the Quad-A player area — he might a candidate for Korea eventually — but there’s just too much power and size here for him not to have a little bit of prospect value.

Sanchez was one of the top prospects in the 2024 international class and signed with Cincinnati for $2.7 million. I had him graded above what is typical for a corner-only defender in that market because he had a very exciting combination of present power and power projection, and my sources were rather confident in his contact hitting ability, but Sanchez struggled in his first pro season. He slashed .216/.356/.345 and struck out 33.9% of the time in the DSL, which is an enormous red flag. His second stint there was much better, as Sanchez slashed .339/.474/.504 and cut his strikeout rate to 13.6% in 2025, though his build is rapidly maturing to the point where he is likely approaching his raw power ceiling more quickly than most hitters his age. He improved enough in 2025 to justify inclusion on the main section of the list, but it’s important for him to continue to hit well when he gets to the domestic complex level in 2026.

Alcantara is a 5-foot-9-ish quarter stick of dynamite whose swing is big, elaborate, and very powerful for a hitter of his stature. In his second ACL season, he cut his strikeout rate from a disqualifying 36.1% to a more reasonable 23.3%, which he sustained after a late-season promotion to Daytona. Built like a college running back, Alcantara is a patient hitter whose swing features a ton of movement. It’s typical for hitters with these kinds of swings to end up with below-average contact output, and that’s likely for Alcantara, but if he’s walking a ton and getting to some of his impressive power, it’ll be okay if he is striking out at an elevated clip.

What will be important for Alcantara is to develop on defense. He’s seen action all over the infield but was struggling to throw accurately from third base at the end of the season. The likelihood that Alcantara produces enough offense to be an everyday second baseman is low, and for now he projects as a bat-first utility guy whose profile features some risk that his bat-to-ball improvement is a level-repeating mirage.

Miller began his college career at LSU Eunice, which often acts as a feeder school for some of the powerhouses in the Southeast. In Miller’s case, he transferred to UT-San Antonio, where he became the school’s closer and was eventually one of the higher priority senior signs in the 2023 draft. He spent all of his second full pro season at Double-A, where he K’d 11 per 9 IP for the second consecutive year. Miller pitches off a vertical slider in the 86-90 mph range and tries to get ahead with that before elevating mid-90s fastballs in an attempt to get chase. A long, violent arm swing adds to Miller’s deception but also makes it tough for him to command his pitches. Scattershot control will likely limit him to lower-leverage relief.

Villafana signed in the middle of the summer of 2024 and barely pitched with the Reds’ DSL teams that year. Then, as an older rookie baller, he came to the U.S. in 2025 and led the complex roster in innings. Though Villafana’s strikeout and walk rates were favorable, he gave up 78 hits in 46.2 innings, an indication that his fastball is hittable even though it’s hard. His movement data corroborates this, as his heater has equal parts horizontal and vertical movement much of the time. Villafana is a projectable 6-foot-4 and might have more velo in the tank, especially if he moves to the bullpen eventually. He’s an arm strength dev project toward the bottom of this system.

Floyd was a two-year starter at LSU whose stock exploded during the 2023 College World Series when he struck out 17 Florida Gators in a single game, topped out at 98 mph, and bent in sliders that were suddenly much harder than usual. Floyd struck out 120 hitters in 91 innings as a junior using mostly his riding mid-90s fastball. He was ranked 48th on the 2023 draft board and was picked 38th overall. He set a career-high in innings prior to the draft and was shut down for the rest of the summer, then in 2024 he began having elbow discomfort, which spiraled into a shoulder injury that required surgery. His missed all of that season and made his pro debut at Low-A Daytona at the start of 2025. After just a few outings, his elbow barked again and required surgery, which occurred close to the middle of the season, late enough that a big chunk of his 2026 will likely be missed as well. He’s purely a bounce-back candidate at this point.