Cincinnati Reds Top 45 Prospects

Burns was one of those pitchers who was already touching 100 as a high schooler, throwing with such effort and violence that teams were standoffish and generally had him pref’d in the comp round. That wasn’t high enough for Burns to sign, and he ended up at Tennessee, where after a great freshman season as a starter, he was squeezed out of a talented rotation as a sophomore (but was great in high-leverage long relief). Burns transferred to Wake Forest (renowned for its pitching development) for his junior year and had an incredible season (100 innings, 96 baserunners, 191 strikeouts), though he missed out on a national title. He went wire-to-wire as maybe the best pitching prospect in the 2024 draft class from 2021 on, and seems likely to be among the first from the class to debut in the bigs. After he broke camp at High-A Dayton, Burns has already been promoted to Double-A Chattanooga and made his first start there the week prior to list publication.

Burns has been able to sustain elite velocity for his entire career, and the way his pitches work together when he is commanding them (which is an issue at times) is stylistically similar to Justin Verlander and Hunter Brown. While he’s a more tightly wound athlete than most front end big league starters, Burns otherwise has prototypical size and physicality. He will probably grow more and more barrel-chested as he ages; his frame started creeping that way late in college. Burns uses big spinal tilt to get to an extreme vertical arm slot that, in concert with his size, gives his fastball huge downhill plane. Even at his velocities (up to 101.5 mph, averaging 98 so far in 2025), this causes his fastball to be hittable when it’s in the meat of the zone and below. He needs to command it more consistently to the upper boundary of the strike zone for that pitch to max out. If he can, then we’re in Verlander pitch mix territory because of the way Burns’ secondary stuff can play off of that fastball location.

His high arm slot makes it very difficult to spot breaking balls popping out of Burns’ hand because they’re always descending. His slider has nasty vertical depth for a pitch in the 87-90 mph range and can be used to get strike one, or be deployed like a cutter in on the hands of lefties, or used as a finishing pitch in the dirt. His curveball gives him a second, slower version of everything, but it’s not nearly as nasty as the slider. It’s tough to turn over a changeup from Burns’ arm slot, and in college he’d often lower it to throw his changeup. That appears to have been corrected already in pro ball. It hasn’t suddenly made that pitch good, but let’s see how it develops now that it isn’t so easy to diagnose out of the hand. Burns’ mechanical operation requires a lot of effort and it detracts from his command. It’s possible he’ll continue to refine the feel for his body and release as he matures (he’s a 22-year-old kid throwing 100, for goodness sake), but it certainly wasn’t a polished part of his game as of draft time. He’s a pretty good bet to become a mid-rotation starter and has front-end upside if his command gets better.

Duno’s tools turn me into the Tex Avery wolf. He’s one of the freakier prospects in baseball, a tool shed 6-foot-2 catcher with enormous power potential and rare speed and twitch for someone so big. His titanic size and strength, as well as his remarkable athleticism for such a huge teenager, give Duno both extraplanetary power potential and room to forecast huge growth on defense. He’s still very crude in a few key ways, but we don’t yet know whether that’s mostly due to a lack of reps. One of those rougher areas is his receiving. A few times this year, Duno has just whiffed on pitches traveling toward his mask, or allowed pitches to pop out of his glove and skitter away from him. I’ve seen him try to remove his mask to search for a ball in the dirt, only to throw it straight up in the air and have it fall back down on top of his head while he looks at the ground for the baseball.

These are the bloopers of a teenager who has barely caught in actual games. Duno DH’d his entire 2023 debut season in the DSL due to a bum elbow. The Reds then skipped him over the domestic complex and sent him straight to Low-A Daytona in 2024, where Duno played just 21 game as a catcher before he broke a rib and was shut down for the rest of the year. In 2025, he is back in Daytona and has been a mixed bag as a receiver, though his strength at the catch point is a promising indicator of his future ability to frame low pitches. Duno’s arm has been a weapon this spring. He was touted as having a 70-grade arm as an amateur, then the elbow issue clouded things for a while. He’s hosing roughly a third of opposing basestealers so far in 2025 and popped as low as 1.89 for me during the spring. His combination of size and athleticism give him huge long-term ceiling on defense, especially when it comes to ball-blocking. His mobility is incredible, and the way he can bend and explode out of his crouch to field his position is very exciting.

At the plate, Duno is still getting a feel for his volcanic bat speed and bodily verve, but holy cow, can this guy swing it. He has plus raw power right now at age 19 and is going to grow into more. He’s big but not maxed out, built like Heliot Ramos scaled up three inches. Duno’s hips and butt bail way out toward the third base line during a lot of his swings, leaving him very vulnerable to sliders away from him. Again, this might simply be because he’s barely played, and Duno could naturally adjust over time. I can sympathize with wanting to let him just go out there, play, and be healthy for a while before the Reds start tinkering with his swing, but at some point this is going to need to change or he’s going to get wrecked by generic sliders. Duno is also shockingly fast, and not just for his size, posting some run times to first base near 4.25 seconds. Duno has one of the most exciting toolsets in all of minor league baseball, a risky prospect with superstar ceiling.

Petty, who touched 102 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.

Petty is an incredible on-mound athlete whose body whips around like a tornado throughout his delivery, which looks like a more consistent version of Abner Uribe’s. He has never had issues throwing strikes, and now he’s proven he can sustain plus arm strength under the stress of a starter’s load of innings. Another big development for Petty is that he’s altered his approach with his heater. He formerly used it as a low-in-the-zone sinker, but now he’s peppering the top of the strike zone with a bigger ratio of four-seamers, a shift that has occurred against both lefties and righties. When Petty does throw a two-seamer, it’s generating grounders at a 60% clip.

Petty’s nastiest pitch is his well-located two-planed slider, which bends in at 84-88 mph most of the time. He’s struggled some with commanding that pitch early in 2025. His cutter (often 88-92 mph) and changeup (87-90) are more about inducing weak contact from lefties. If Petty can continue on this mid-rotation path, he’ll stand apart from the routine failures that most of the hardest throwing high school pitchers in the draft endure. He’s a special athlete with special arm strength, and he seemed to make relevant tweaks in 2024 while simultaneously increasing confidence that he can actually start by holding his stuff all year. He was promoted to start the backend of a double header two days before list publication.

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 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. As of list publication, Lowder is still recovering from a forearm strain that has kept him out for all of 2025 so far. He’s progressed to bullpen sessions and is targeting a May return.

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. 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. Lowder is a low-variance fourth starter.

Mey is one of the hardest throwers in the entire sport, with a fastball that sits 99 and will touch 103. After years of walk rates in the 15-20% range, it looked like things clicked for Mey in the 2024 Fall League, when he allowed just one hit in eight appearances. He was dominant for stretches during 2025 spring training and wild for others, which has continued at Louisville to start 2025.

Mey will touch 103, and his fastball sometimes has enough hair on it to break the bat of both the hitter and the guy in the on-deck circle at the same time. His best sliders have incredible wipeout movement, while his worst ones are crushable hangers. Mey has flashed late-inning stuff like this since he was 19, but he’s never been able to control it for any length of time. He struggles to repeat his release, as if his body is too explosive for its own good, but what the entire industry saw in the 2024 Fall League and during the Reds’ 2025 Spring Breakout game was a slam dunk closer. There are guys like Josh Staumont or Camilo Doval for whom things click for a period of time before backpedalling into unpredictability, and risk of this kind will probably always exist for Mey. But this projection is optimistic that Mey will harness his stuff and actualize as a monster late-inning weapon. His combination of talent and proximity make him one of the best couple of relief prospects in baseball. He made his big league debut the day before list publication.

Serwinowski was a Pick to Click two Prospect Weeks ago, and while he didn’t throw enough strikes in 2024 (12.3% walk rate in 85.2 innings) to justify a windmill slam onto the Top 100 entering 2025, he is still basically on that trajectory and has mid-rotation upside. His delivery is very deceptive, and the line on his fastball is nasty. It’s a difficult to see and also difficult to get on top of. He shares mechanical similarities with Yusei Kikuchi and Kyle Freeland, with perhaps an even more deliberately short arm action than either of those two. Serwinowski’s heaters will sit 92-95 throughout the entirety of his starts (he’s yet to work more than five frames in a single outing, but that likely won’t be true for much longer), and he can rip 94-97 in short bursts. He also features a plus 77-84 mph slider with big two-plane arc. He can land it in the zone for strikes or bury it as a chase pitch.

Changeup/splitter projection here is tough. Serinowski’s ultra-short arm action is less fluid than those of pitchers who tend to have positive long-term changeup development. A lack of clarity around a third pitch creates relief risk, but if he eventually has to downshift into the bullpen, we’re talking about a good setup man. Serwinowski’s slider plays as a bat-misser to the back foot of righties, and he doesn’t necessarily need a changeup to act as a platoon-neutralizing finisher as much as he just needs a distinct third pitch to give hitters something else to think about. Perhaps that’ll eventually be a cutter. Serwinowski has two future plus pitches and is comfortably on pace to work a big league starter’s load of innings by the time he has to be put on the 40-man roster during the 2026-27 offseason.

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, and he returned in the Arizona Fall League. Arroyo is an incredible infield athlete with plus attributes in all but one important category: his hands. His range and, especially for an athlete his size, his arm strength are both sensational, and they drive an above-average overall projection as a shortstop glove, but Arroyo sometimes struggles to handle the baseball.

On offense, Arroyo is geared to hit for power. He loads his hands very low and his bat path is uphill for its entire journey. Arroyo’s hands are explosive and powerful for a hitter his size, especially from the left side of the plate, and he’s a dangerous low-ball hitter to both gaps. He isn’t a skilled mover of the barrel and has some plate coverage issues away from him. His K% was roughly average during Arroyo’s healthy 2022-23 window, but here those are forecast to increase based on the contact concessions made by this style of hitting. Arroyo is a special athlete and defender who might just be a little rusty as a hitter from the time off. The overall package here is still that of a good utilityman or second-division shortstop.

Collier is a lefty power bat who, similar to Bryce Harper, 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 overslot bonus of $5 million at pick 18 in 2022, and though he’s been in pro ball for parts of four years, he is still six months away from turning 21. Collier is coming off a 2024 season in which he slashed .248/.355/.443 and clubbed 20 homers as a 19-year-old at High-A Dayton. He began 2025 on the shelf after tearing the UCL in his left thumb during spring training. It necessitated surgery and came with a four to six week recovery window, which we are nearing the end of as of list publication.

Collier has great raw power for a 20-year-old prospect and is already touting above-average measureable pop. He is a big, maxed-out lad, and his frame is much less projectable than most hitters this age. This is the sort of prospect who might be overvalued by models that care about the relationship between age and power, but don’t know about the player’s state of physical maturity. I think there’s room for a little more strength as Collier ages into his mid-20s, but I doubt we see 70- or 80-grade raw down the line. As such, the contact piece of his profile and its long-term viability are important unanswered questions for Collier. He’s a good low-ball hitter, with power to all fields across the bottom two thirds of the zone, but Collier swings underneath a ton of fastballs in the upper third, which he is often too late to snatch. He chokes up with two strikes to try to combat this. Like Sal Stewart, Collier’s granular contact data is pretty encouraging (it’s basically in line with big league averages across the board) and doesn’t especially reinforce these more visually-derived yellow flags. It’s an important piece of Collier’s profile, and one we may not truly learn much about in 2025 if Collier has a hitting hangover after his surgery.

Collier’s arm is a fit at third base, but his below-average feet, range, and athleticism might not be. He’s tracking like a 40-grade third base defender and part-time first baseman. It puts a ton of pressure on the hit tool to hold up if we’re hoping for Collier to delivery everyday impact. I’m mindful to avoid prospect fatigue here. Collier has been around for a while, but he’s still very young and has performed well for a player his age at each level. Lefty power like his tends to enable a considerable platoon role, even with a lot of strikeouts.

This evaluation is on the skeptical end of what one could consider a reasonable range for Stewart, and has him more in the territory of a good corner role player than a franchise build-around guy. If you were to take a very data-driven approach to assessing Stewart, he looks like a great all-around bat, and that’s been the case for a while. He was a good amateur performer who commanded a $2 million bonus to keep him from going to Vanderbilt, and he’s a career .279/.393/.434 hitter in the minors as of list publication. He posted average or better contact and power data in basically every relevant statistical category in 2024, including an 81% overall contact rate (85% in the zone) and a 46% hard-hit rate. And after all that, Stewart is now a 21-year-old whose 2025 season is off to a great start at Double-A. He’s playing hard, and screaming into the dugout and towards the sky as he does all kinds of good stuff.

So why am I so apprehensive? First off, Stewart likely has limited athletic projection. He’s a huskier guy whose mobility is well below average, which impacts his defense. In some ways, he’s quite a skilled defender. He’s a good short-area athlete for his size, he has good hands and a quick exchange, and he’s adept at positioning his body to field the ball in ways that facilitate these skills. Still, because of his lack of range and athleticism, there are times when Stewart doesn’t get to balls most third basemen would, or struggles to position himself to make a strong enough throw. He can play third base but he’s below-average there relative to the big league mean, and there’s as good of a chance of early decline in this area as there is for any kind of improvement. Stewart also played a few dozen games at second base last year, but as of list publication, he’s played just one in 2025.

If Stewart’s performance as a hitter continues as it has without any kind of hiccup, he’ll still be a productive big leaguer even if he were to eventually slide all the way to first base. But I also have some reservations on the offensive side of the ball. Stewart has many hitterish elements. The way he makes in-flight adjustments to breaking stuff is beautiful, and he’s a good bad-ball hitter who’ll spoil tough pitches and turn a lot of well-located secondary stuff into doubles. I worry about how things will trend as he sees better and better fastballs, though. Stewart swings underneath a lot of in-zone fastballs already, and often his head kicks all over the place as he rushes to catch up to them. When he does make airborne contact with heaters, it is almost exclusively down the right field line because Stewart is always a tad late on them, and rarely on time to pull. He destroys sliders, but there isn’t going to be much of a reason for big league pitchers to throw him any if they can just rip 96 past him. I worry that means Stewart’s contact performance will sag in the majors. His raw power is closer to average, and Stewart’s body is maxed out. If I’m right about Stewart’s looming issues with fastballs (from Keston Hiura to Jeter Downs, this problem has undone a lot of guys), and Stewie’s contact performance slips into more of a 45- or 50-grade area, then we’re talking about roughly average all-around offense with below-average defense, which is a 45-grade player. If he also slips to first base, then he’s more of a 40 in the Ty France mold. That’s still a good big leaguer — this is a good FV grade — but probably not foundational piece.

Rodríguez, who came over from the Mets in the Tyler Naquin trade, has performed at a high level (he’s a career .296/.342/.470 hitter) despite being one of the most aggressive hitters in pro baseball during the last half decade. His walk rates have tended to live in the 5-6% range, and in 2024, Rodríguez had a 41% chase rate, 55% with two strikes (big league averages are 27% and 38%, respectively). This guy makes Jacob Wilson look like the dog from Hachiko. Given how apt he is to expand the zone, it’s incredible that Rodríguez has consistently maintained low strikeout totals. He’s never once sniffed a concerning strikeout rate at any level, and even as he posted a career-worst full season line at High-A Dayton in 2024 (.274/.309/.420), he only punched out 13.3% of the time.

Early in 2025, as Rodríguez again has success at Double-A Chattanooga (which is a hitter’s haven, let’s keep in mind), he is being more selective; his overall chase rate is closer to average and it’s barely worse than that with two strikes. Whether this is a small sample blip or an actual improvement, we just can’t know yet, but it’s either a positive development or a neutral thing at worst. Rodriguez also packs a pretty good punch for a hitter his size. He’s a compact 5-foot-10, 200 or so, but he has above-average raw power at age 21. His tendency to expand means he’s often making sub-optimal contact and his SLG might play below his raw as a result, but this guy torched fastballs and covers a pretty good amount of the strike zone with some measure of power.

It seems as though Rodríguez has moved completely out of center field. He played one game there last year and has only been in the corner spots so far in 2025. It shifts his projection into more of a righty-mashing platoon range (a 45 FV player’s role that I’ve dialed down a tad here to account for the volatile chase/OBP portion of his skill set). Readers should expect Rodríguez to be added to the 40-man after this season and then compete to succeed Jake Fraley when he hits free agency after the 2026 season.

An absolute unit, Maxwell is the size of some NFL linemen at a whopping 6-foot-6, 275 pounds. He spent most of 2024 at Triple-A Louisville and is back there again to start 2025, where he’s struggling to throw strikes. Maxwell wields triple-digit heat and can reach back for 101. 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 embarrassed hitters. This is late-inning stuff. Maxwell has K’d 13.5 hitters per 9 IP throughout his minor league 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 1.50, 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.

The biggest development for Jorge across the last year or so is that it looks like he’s going to make a successful move from second base (where he wasn’t very good) to center field (where at times he looks like an impact defender). 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 Jorge make a bunch of highlight reel plays out there as he goes full tilt into the gaps. Jorge hasn’t played any infield yet in 2025; this seems like a permanent move.

After he had success as a hitter in the lower levels, Jorge has struggled at High-A Dayton; as of list publication, his career OPS at Dayton is a shade under .700 across 136 games. He’s repeating High-A to start 2025. Jorge packs quite a punch for a hitter his size, even though he looks like a leaner, less muscular athlete than before. His pull-heavy approach generates power against pitches middle-up and leaves him open to whiffs against stuff on the outer third. He’s hitting the ball harder this year, and is going to have mistake power and make an impact on the bases (he’s swiped about 30 bags per season the last two campaigns). That’s enough to play a meaningful complementary role on a good team, though strikeouts will likely cap Jorge’s output.

Lin was a two-way amateur prospect who I considered much more likely to make it as a pitcher, and it appears that that is the way things are headed. The Reds signed him for $1.2 million, but a hamstring injury limited his time on the field in Arizona in 2023. He stayed on the complex in 2024 and had a good surface-level line as a hitter (.308/.418/.419), but he struck out 31.6% of the time. He pitched during instructs in a more controlled setting and looked really good for a couple innings at time. He has a very consistent, balanced delivery that he’ll vary the pace of to confuse hitters, and he commands a good changeup and curveball, which both have bat-missing movement in opposite directions. He was sitting 90-93 mph the September before he signed while pitching for Taiwan’s U-18 National Team, then was more 93-96 last fall.

Lots of caveats apply to Lin’s fastball. He hasn’t yet had to endure anything close to the workload of a pro pitcher across an entire season, and instructs innings can be rolled if a pitcher is struggling, so they basically never throw more than 25 bolts in a frame. Lin is also not especially projectable. He’s a shorter prospect with a relatively maxed-out frame. His athleticism, command, and secondary pitch quality give him a starting pitcher’s profile, and his ceiling will be dictated by how much his backfield velocity can be sustained across 100-plus innings, something we’re still probably a couple of years from learning.

Lewis is a hard-swinging left-handed-hitting shortstop from Nebraska who was given a $3 million bonus rather than go to Arkansas. Lewis blew up at the Combine and was the second fastest player there. He has plus bat speed from the left side, which requires big time effort to generate. Lewis looks fluid and easy during BP, but tends to get messier in games. Limited exposure on the showcase circuit created variance in evaluating his hit tool prior to the draft, and he has looked crude in this regard in Arizona during early-season activity in 2025. He has a classically projectable baseball frame, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist. His hands, actions, and arm are fine at shortstop, and the speed to play center field is there if the requirements of pro infield play end up being too much. He’s a toolsy, high-variance prospect with a volatile contact profile. If he hits for even an average rate of contact, Lewis’ other tools should carry him to an everyday role.

Phillips had an electric 2022 spring with the Mariners, then became the Player to Be Named Later in the Jesse Winker deal and was dealt to the Reds. He was absolutely unhittable throughout his first 14 starts of 2023, but across the rest of the season (including a big league cup of coffee), Phillips regressed to the walk-prone ways that have clouded his profile for most of his time as a prospect. Even with that regression, it seemed very, very likely that Phillips would be part of the Reds’ 2024 pitching staff in some capacity, certainly for long enough to lose rookie status. Instead, he didn’t pitch in the big leagues at all. He ran an 8.01 ERA at Triple-A Louisville, walked 6.86 BB/9 and was shut down for two months straddling the middle of the season to rework his delivery in Arizona. Phillips had his usual plus stuff (lots of 94-98, up to 99, two plus or better breaking balls) in the 2024 Arizona Fall League and again in three 2025 Cactus League outings, before he was optioned and shut down with shoulder fatigue. He began the 2025 regular season on the IL and has yet to pitch as of list publication.

It would make a ton of sense if Phillips moved directly into the bullpen when he returns from his injury. He’s starting to run low on options, which is often when an org’s focus shifts from development to present ability. The ceiling on Phillips as a reliever is still pretty high. He’s the sort of powerful, tightly wound athlete commonly found pitching toward the back of a bullpen. Phillips has plus velo and slider quality, and his curveball gives him enough of a weapon to compete against lefty batters. He could end up as a multi-inning relief weapon (his fastball velo has held up to 100-plus innings before) or the third-best single-inning option on a contender.

Laureano is a potential late-inning reliever who is currently on the full-season injured list after undergoing elbow surgery, though when it happened is a little cloudy. He was put on the IL late last year after his stuff slipped, and then placed on the full season IL in March; 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 last year, 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.

The 2025 season was slated to be Laureano’s 40-man platform year, and he might make for an interesting Rule 5 candidate this offseason because his stuff is so electric. The exact timing of his surgery and his rehab timeline are especially important to know for this reason. It’s doubtful Laureano would throw strikes consistently enough to make a roster, but one or two of the players taken every year is a guy coming off TJ who gets to begin the season on the IL. Laureano is of this ilk, and one of the higher ceiling’d arms in this system.

Acuna was traded from the Mets to the Reds in the Tyler Naquin deal just ahead of the 2022 trade deadline and has had success through the mid-minors. He owns a career 3.44 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 9.93 K/9 and 3.67 BB/9, and got a cup of coffee at Louisville last year (though he’s back in Chattanooga to start 2025). He has thrived on the back of his touch-and-feel command, but his stuff has been average or a shade below. In 2025, the nature of his pitch shapes has changed. Acuna used to have a fastball with equal parts vertical and horizontal movement, but it appears the Reds have changed his hand position on release to create more vertical ride. Whereas before his heater had “round-down” traits to the extreme, now it’s closer to average. His upper-80s cutter has also changed and become his go-to secondary. Acuna now splits the plate laterally with his cutter and tailing changeup, while his low-80s slider has taken a back seat. The real feature here is Acuna’s command. He has a silky smooth, repeatable delivery, and he commands his pitches to the corners with regularity. He’s a good on-mound athlete but has just one year (2023) with 100 or more innings. If he can pitch like this all year, he’s a backend starter on pace to debut in 2026.

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 ’23 at Double-A Chattanooga. That year, he worked 125 innings of 2.95 ERA ball, posting a 1.10 WHIP, 26.8% K%, and 7.2% BB%. In 2024, his stuff backed up and he needed Tommy John after the season. None of Aguiar’s pitches generated even an average rate of miss last year. Before, his semi-erratic changeup (though it’s 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. The 2024 version was more of a fringe 40-man prospect.

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, 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 2024 and made his pro debut at Low-A Daytona at the start of 2025.

Floyd’s velo is way down, sitting 90-93. His breaking pitches are generating few if any misses against Low-A hitters, though his changeup looks better than it did when Floyd was in college and might be his best secondary pitch at the moment. The uphill ride on Floyd’s fastball gives it some bat-missing margin for error, but it’s still not great that it’s currently averaging nearly three ticks less than the average big league heater. He’s mostly a bounce-back candidate at this stage.

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. His low-to-mid-90s fastball has downhill plane. It lost a tick of velo in 2024 and only sat 92, and now he has opened the 2025 season on the shelf with a vague UCL injury. Especially if he continues to work with below-average velocity, his fastball’s lack of in-zone playability is probably going to be an issue, but he managed a sub-1.00 WHIP against SEC hitters in 2024. Holman has two good breaking balls, led by a huge mid-70s curveball that looks like it’s headed to the backstop and bends into the zone. His low-to-mid-80s slider has lateral action and distinct shape from the curveball, and is used as 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.

Dunn had an outstanding 2023 — .312/.425/.522, 23 home runs — inflated by the hitting environment at Chattanooga, then hit .240/.337/.354 at Triple-A in 2024. He continues to have fifth outfielder projection thanks mostly to his viable center field defense. Dunn has average range, and he plays with big effort and confidence at the warning track. He’s late on a lot of fastballs. His levers are short enough for him to have punched the ball the other way in the minors, but he’s struggling to hit big league pitching so far. He isn’t a true talent .180 hitter by any stretch, but he probably won’t be much more than a .220 hitter with below-average slug, either. He could get the occasional start against lefties and act as a defensive replacement and pinch-runner.

Moore was a nice semi-under-the-radar pickup for the Reds in the Luis Castillo trade. Moore’s velo climbed throughout his 2021 JUCO season. After he was 91-94 mph early on, he finished in the 93-96 range and he’s consistently been in the 95-97 range in pro ball — until this year, that is. Moore’s stuff is down a couple ticks at the start of 2025, and he’s averaging 94 mph as of list publication. His slider has also lost a good amount of bite and effectiveness compared to Moore’s norm, and his breaking pitches have lost demarcation. Whereas we’re used to seeing Moore with a firm, gyro breaking ball and a slurve that moves more laterally, his breaking balls are all hovering in that gyro area so far this spring. Moore’s athletic, drop-and-drive style delivery generates nearly seven feet of extension and helps his stuff play up a bit, but the effort it takes him to drive down the mound that far hinders his control a bit. At peak, his stuff has looked like that of a potential setup man, with the command piece likely rounding his role down a bit. Right now, he looks more like a standard middle reliever.

Here we have an “old dog, new tricks” situation as, at age 26, Abel has 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, tailing changeup (though he locates it less precisely). The lower slot has robbed him of some breaking ball depth and made that pitch more important to command 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.

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 last year, he’d spent the better part of three seasons at Low-A Daytona; since then, he’s been ascendant. In 2025, he broke camp at Double-A Chattanooga, where Franco has been working around elevated walks and has a sub-1.00 ERA as of list publication.

Franco is probably going to be a big league reliever. He’s consistently touching 97-98 mph as a starter and living in the 94-96 range for the duration of his outings. His best sliders are plus 84-88 mph two-planed darts, but Franco’s lack of consistent command causes that pitch to play more like average, and his average changeup similarly plays down due to poor location. If a velo spike occurs when Franco is shifted into the bullpen, perhaps he’ll look more like an on-roster middle inning guy. For now, he looks like an up/down, bottom-of-the-40-man type.

Hayden was set to transfer from Indiana State to LSU, but he threw hard at the Combine (sitting more 96 mph rather than the 93 he averaged during the regular season) and ended up inking a deal with Cincinnati for just shy of $200,000. Hayden’s velocity has held so far this spring, as he’s been averaging 94 and peaking at 96-97 a couple of times per start at Dayton. He has a violent, high-effort delivery with a very sudden explosion as his arm unwinds like a spiral into a vertical release. Even though his repertoire is designed to support some amount of inefficiency, it’s going to be tough for Hayden to consistently throw strikes like this, and he’s at a shade under 60% strikes as of list publication.

Hayden worked with a plus-flashing slider in college and now he’s emphasized an upper-80s cutter in pro ball, which he’s throwing about seven times more often than he did in college, at 20% usage. Relegated to being the fourth pitch on Hayden’s pallet right now is his changeup, which is aided by his whacky, high-effort arm speed. He doesn’t create consistent action on it right now, but there’s enough arm speed here to project that Hayden will be able to do so eventually. There’s a starter’s mix here, but there isn’t likely to be starter-quality command. Still, it makes sense to develop Hayden as a starter, just in case things click. Even if they don’t, he should be a solid long reliever.

Huggins has a giant frame and showed upper-90s heat at the 2022 Draft Combine, where he sat 96-98 mph and absolutely dwarfed many of the pitchers from Power Five schools. The Reds used about $400,000 to sign Huggins away from a commitment to Louisiana Tech. He blew out in late June of 2023 (his first full season), had TJ, came back late in 2024, and in 2025 broke camp back at Low-A Daytona, where he had thrown 42.2 combined innings on either side of his surgery. He’s currently working three to four innings at a time as a starter and pitching well. He’s probably a reliever, but any JUCO pitcher who missed most of their first two full pro seasons is likely to be technically crude, and it makes sense to develop Huggins as a starter to see if there’s more in the tank.

Huggins’ fastball works downhill and is vulnerable in the meat of the strike zone, which is where he tends to live because he’s not often precisely locating it at the top of the zone. If he can ever learn to do that, it’s going to be a big deal not only for the playability of his fastball, but also of his slider, which naturally plays best when it’s diving into the top of the zone. Some of Huggins’ pitches are being auto-classified as cutters, but they’re all basically the same velocity and have such similar movement that I’m inclined to believe these are just release variations of the same pitch. That pitch will peak in the 88-90 mph range and is generating plus-plus miss from low-level hitters so far during Huggins’ career. He comfortably projects to have two plus pitches, which would allow him to work in a pretty standard middle relief role.

The 2025 season is Huggins’ 40-man platform year, but coming off surgery, it seem very unlikely that he will be asked to work enough innings, or be promoted rapidly enough, for a postseason roster addition to be in his grasp. This is the sort of situation where it makes sense for the team to slow-play Huggins’ promotion pace and maybe give him a second-half taste of High-A. It would keep Huggins far enough from the upper levels to deter Rule 5 consideration, and also tee him up for a High- to Double-A move (and then a post-season 40-man addition) in 2026. By that time, Huggins will need to have shown a third pitch to be in the big league mix as a starter.

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 years. At the positions he can actually play, that puts Callihan more on the 40-man fringe. He made his big league debut just before list publication.

Stovall was one of the more polished high school hitters in the 2021 draft class but ended up at Arkansas. He didn’t hit for much power as an underclassman but broke out as a junior in 2024, when he posted a .944 OPS. Stovall played a little bit at Daytona after the draft and broke camp this year at High-A Dayton. He has great hitting hands and bat control, with a penchant for opposite field contact. Stovall lacks big bat speed, strength, and size. Though he showed some ability to turn on pitches around his hands in college, that hasn’t been the case so far in pro ball. He’s a fringe second base defender who has played a mix of the keystone and first base, and is probably a better fit at the latter, but Stovall is unlikely to have first base-worthy power. His right tail outcomes look like that of Tommy La Stella.

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 it’s starting to go pretty well. He’s a little undersized for a pitching prospect, but he’s a plus on-mound athlete, his velocity is growing (he’s sitting 93.5 mph and is up to 96 in a three to four inning long relief role so far in 2025), and his secondary stuff and command have both rep- and athleticism-based projection. He’ll flash a power upper-80s changeup and has precocious slider command. If one of them becomes plus, then Ortiz should be a fine reliever.

Morillo is a well-built, medium framed catcher who slashed .254/.442/.447 in his first pro season in last year’s DSL. He is not listed on my Reds AZ extended spring training roster, so unless he was added to the domestic reserve list late, he’s ticketed for another DSL season. Morillo has a lovely, easy left-handed swing. He’s compact and has solid average barrel feel, he’s adept at covering the top of the strike zone, and he hits the baseball pretty hard for his age. Though he’s a work-in-progress on defense and lacks typical big league catcher size right now, Morillo’s athleticism gives him favorable projection behind the plate. A quick exchange helps his average arm play up. He’s a switch-hitting up-the-middle player with advanced contact feel, and a good DSL prospect to monitor this year.

Confidan is a huge-framed lefty power bat who was slow to leave A-ball, hitting .197 there in 2023. His 2024 went much better, as Confidan was able to get to more of his plus raw power and post a 119 wRC+ in his second full season at Daytona. Confidan had a 50% hard-hit rate last year, and in the early going of 2025, that mark is well over 60%. He destroys pitches around the belt and has hit balls 115 mph in the past. Built like an rookie tight end, Confidan’s frame has great long-term athletic projection, and he might have 70-grade raw power at maturity. His lower body is stiff and upright throughout his swing, causing him to swing over the top of a lot of soft stuff, even pitches that don’t quite finish below the zone. It’s enough of a problem that Confidan’s overall offensive skill set is in the Quad A player area; he might a candidate for Japan or Korea eventually. Still, there’s just too much power and size here for Confidan not to have a little bit of prospect value.

Sanchez was one of the top prospects in the 2024 international amateur 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. He still has power and power projection. Sanchez’s swing has lovely natural loft and he’s built like a young David Peralta, with some similar timing and swing elements. His front arm does bar as he loads and creates a lot of distance back to the baseball. There’s substantial hit tool risk here and it’s imperative that Sanchez have a much better showing in his second DSL season. At this stage, he’s a bounce-back candidate more than a prospect the rest of baseball values.

Lantigua was acquired from the Dodgers during the offseason as Los Angeles was trading for pool space to sign Roki Sasaki and keep as many of their other commitments as possible. He was coming off his second DSL season, during which he slashed .301/.430/.575 with 17% walks and strikeouts. Lantigua is a big-framed power hitter whose 50% hard-hit rate last year would rank in the top couple tiers of pro baseball, let alone the DSL. Though his strikeout rates haven’t been out of control in his first two pro seasons, his lever length looms as a potential issue as he climbs. He played a lot of center field in the DSL but projects in the LF/1B range due to his size and lack of mobility. Though he’s just a deep projection prospect right now, Lantigua was a nice power-hitting pickup for the Reds, who might not have otherwise used the pool space they traded to acquire him.

Richardson is a tightly wound athlete whose fastball will peak in the upper 90s and sit around 95. It plays down due to both its tailing shape and because Richardson has poor command, which has been his most prominent wart since turning pro. A lack of fastball playability has forced him to lean more heavily on his plus changeup early in counts. The 2025 season is the first in which Richardson has been deployed exclusively in the bullpen, and in the early going, he’s throwing more strikes. He’s running out of options and will need to continue to fill the zone to hold down an on-roster middle-inning job over the long haul.

The Blue Jays used international pool space they acquired in the trades of Kendrys Morales and Dwight Smith to sign Zulueta just before the 2018-19 signing period ended. They did so knowing he’d need Tommy John, which he had shortly after signing. He was touching 99 upon his return, but he tore a ligament in his knee just a few pitches into his very first official pro start and missed the rest of 2021. When he returned from that injury, Toronto pushed Zulueta through the minors quickly and moved him to the bullpen. A lack of strikes led to a DFA and a Reds waiver claim at the start of 2024. Zulueta has been in the Louisville bullpen each of the last two years, and briefly made his big league debut last season. He sits 95 mph (down a tick from last year) but without effective movement or command, while his slider is a comfortably plus pitch in the mid-80s. He’s a fringe 40-man up/down relief type.

Allen missed meaningful portions of each of his first few seasons with oblique and thumb injuries, then turned in a career-best offensive season in 2024 as he slashed .224/.372/.345 with 10 homers at Dayton. His profile is driven by his speed and center field defense, as Allen 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 be get a ton of big league playing time. Instead, he’s a fifth or sixth outfield type on the 40-man fringe.

Balcazar is a slick shortstop defender who put up good offensive stats in the low minors, missed most of 2023 with a torn ACL, and then struggled in his return to the field in 2024. He had an .880 OPS at both rookie ball levels but tended to live in the Honorable Mention section of the Reds prospect lists due to my skepticism about the sustainability of his offense. That concern persists, but Balcazar does enough on defense to be considered a future big leaguer even if he doesn’t hit very much. Everything looks easy for Balcazar on defense. He makes comfortable throws from the hole, he’s sure-handed and has a lightning-fast exchange when he needs to, and he’s poised when he has time to set himself and throw.

On offense, Balcazar’s swing is geared through the down-and-on quadrant of the zone and he struggles to cover the rest of the plate. Like a lot of Reds prospects, he’s late on fastballs a lot of the time. Though his 2024 output (a .264/.295/.354 line with a 3.4% walk rate) was likely impacted by his return from injury, Balcazar has had these issues for a while. He’s a below-average hitter with below-average power and not a lot of physical projection. The plate discipline piece of his skill set is tougher to nail down. He was fairly patient in the low minors and then suddenly had one of the lower walk rates in pro baseball last year. Regardless, this is a glove-first profile with fringe 40-man utility in the Sergio Alcántara mold.

Acosta, who was acquired from San Diego for Brandon Drury, continues to track like a fringe 40-man infielder. He’s a well-rounded shortstop defender with a plus arm. He has experience at both middle infield positions and should probably be exposed to third base, and maybe the outfield, at some point soon because versatility is going to be an important aspect of his rosterability. He hasn’t slugged over .400 since his first season in pro ball and likely won’t make enough of an offensive impact to be a big league regular. But Acosta has a compact swing and a fairly effective, conservative approach to contact form both sides of the plate. Still, while he posted roughly average BABIP-aided lines in the lower minors, his underlying data (especially his chase, despite above-average walk rates in the past) indicate looming regression. He’s a gap-to-gap singles hitter without a plus tool, but he does a little bit of everything and should be on and off many a roster throughout his prime.

One of the many defense-first shortstops from the 2025 international class, Aponte is a very twitchy, undersized infielder with great hands and actions. He desperately needs to get stronger to have any shot of hitting enough to be a regular big leaguer. He was ranked 43rd on the International Board and signed for just shy of $2 million in January.

Henley, who signed for just shy of $400,000 rather than head to Georgia Tech, is an amazing young center field defender with elite long-term body and athletic projection, but he’s very unlikely to make enough contact to be anything more than an extra outfielder. The way Henley 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. His swing is very long and results in oppo spray and lots of whiffs. He struck out a third of the time in rookie ball last year and is faring even worse to start 2025. His future is as a pinch-runner and defensive replacement.

Purely an athletic developmental project at this stage, Herrera was an undrafted two-way high schooler who is focusing on pitching in pro ball. His frame is on the smaller side, but his delivery is beautiful and athletic, he’s taken advantage of pro strength and conditioning facilities, and the line on his fastball is going to be really tough for hitters to get on top of. He’s sitting in the low-90s with flat angle and carry in a long relief role for Daytona to start 2025. Herrera has a mid-80s changeup, an upper-70s knuckle curveball, and a mid-80s slider. The depth on his curveball is exciting, and its shape pairs nicely with that of his fastball, but his other offerings and control are both pretty raw right now. I like the athletic ingredients and fastball traits enough to consider Herrera a sleeper starter prospect at the bottom of this system.

Signed away from a UC Santa Barbara commitment for a $1.9 million bonus in 2023, Schoenwetter has struggled to develop viable strike-throwing ability and remains in Low-A, where he’s walking a batter per inning in the early going of 2025. The aspects of Schoenwetter’s prospectdom that made him exciting in high school remain. He has a prototypical 6-foot-3 frame and one hell of a curveball, but the strikes have never been there. Schoenwetter’s ability to spin a curveball gives him a shot to develop a great slider/cutter, and he’ll occasionally throw a good one, but a lack of control limits that pitch’s effectiveness and consistency. He’s still just 20 years old, but he has yet to find his footing in pro ball and is now valued as more of a late-blooming flier rather than a high-upside prospect.

Portes comes from Antigua, part of a two-island nation (Antigua and Barbuda) in the Eastern Caribbean where elite athletes tend to become sprinters. When Portes played Little League, he did so on a local cricket field. The Red Sox signed him in 2022 and Portes spent two years in the DSL. He was throwing so hard (95-98 mph) during the 2024 FCL season that the BoSox were compelled to send him to Salem. He was traded to the Reds soon after for Lucas Sims.

Now 20, Portes is still sushi raw. His fastball has continued to average 95 mph in the early going of 2025, but he struggles to control it. His two-planed slider has average movement, flashes above, and is more frequently well-located. Portes also has a changeup, but it constantly sails on him, way up away from the zone. He is still a projectable 6-foot-4 and has impressive arm strength and breaking ball quality for a pitcher of his size, age, and developmental background. He’s a deep projection relief prospect.

There have been times during Adcock’s prospectdom when he’s sat 94-96 with a plus split/changeup, and there have been times (like so far this year at High-A Dayton) when he’s sitting more 91-94 and pitching more heavily off his breaking stuff. This seems to be a developmental focus in the season’s early going. Adock’s splitter is nastier than his two-planed slurves, but he doesn’t command it as well. His fastball’s movement is enough for it to miss bats at the belt even when it isn’t at peak velocity, and his cross-bodied delivery adds to his deception. He remains in the up/down relief bucket.

Rosario has resurfaced after four years away from affiliated ball. The Phillies released him in 2021, when he struggled to throw strikes in his fourth rookie ball season. In the four years between then and now, there isn’t a winter league or Indy ball appearance, or anything of that nature that I can find. A Reds source told me it was a pro scout who found Rosario, but I have no other details. In any event, Rosario is about to turn 25 and he’s only pitching at Low-A Daytona, but he’s touching 100 and sitting 97. His curveball has above-average depth and roughly average bite in the 78-82 mph range, and Rosario can drop it into the zone for strikes. His delivery requires a ton of effort and violence in his torso; this is a relief-only guy who is a nice out-of-nowhere signing for the pro department. He’s an older lottery ticket currently on the IL with an oblique strain.