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Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

Noelvi Marte broke through onto the Cincinnati Reds squad in 2023, filling in for other infielders who were sidelined due to injuries and putting up a strong.316/.366/.456 line in 123 big league at-bats. When he started playing for the Gigantes del Cibao in the Dominican Winter League, the system’s top prospect continued where he had left off, collecting hits in seven of his first seventeen PA over four games.

He would only play in the DWL for that amount of time, though, since a Grade 2 hamstring strain at the end of November prevented him from playing in the 2023 calendar year and hindered his preparation for the 2024 MLB season. According to what Gordon Wittenmeyer of The Enquirer reported from Goodyear’s spring training today, Marte is almost ready to go, but the Reds plan to progress him more “deliberately, monitoredly.”

Marte will not be available for the Reds to play in any of their first five spring games. At that point, hopefully, he’ll be fine to start ramping up, and neither the player nor the team appear concerned that he won’t be prepared for the start of the regular season. It remains to be seen whether it plays a role in his place on the Opening Day roster, but when players in contention are hurt or recuperating from injury (and have minor league options), roster crunches really do tend to work themselves out quickly.

(Also, is it just me, or have the Reds’ hamstring problems over the past several years been worse than they have ever been? Maybe all that’s haunting me are the missing months after theirs of Donovan Solano and Jonathan India.)

In other news, Marte is placed 17th overall in Keith Law of The Athletic’s Top 100, making him the best prospect in the Cincinnati Reds system for 2024. Marte is not the top-rated Red on the list, but he is ranked 51st overall by Dan Szymborski and his ZiPS supercomputer in the ZiPS Top 100.

This interesting interview by David Laurila with Reds pitching prospect Rhett Lowder is also available on FanGraphs. The child is obviously quite the thinker.

(Joey Votto is missed.)

I’m still not sure whether to employ new Reds starter Nick Martinez or new Reds reliever Nick Martinez after reading MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon’s interview with Martinez. But in my opinion, that’s sort of the idea!

At last, MLB is defying convention and genuinely accomplishing something really remarkable! Similar to prospect all-star teams put together from each franchise’s farm system, the Spring Breakout games this March are scheduled to pit one team against the other. But because there aren’t as many Cactus League clubs as Grapefruite League clubs, someone will always get to play twice, and the Reds were selected as that Cactus League team. Thus, on March 14th (versus the Baby Rangers) and again on March 16th (hosting the Guardianitos), we will get to witness the Reds Farm Globetrotters twice.