The Cincinnati Reds have three Top 100 prospects

The Cincinnati Reds have three top 100 prospects according to both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus. Both lists were released this week and both lists featured the same three Reds prospects.

Noelvi Marte headlines the Reds group of prospects. The club’s #1 prospect, Marte ranked 23rd on Baseball America’s list and 25th on the Baseball Prospectus list. The infielder came over to the Cincinnati organization in July of 2022 from the Seattle Mariners in the Luis Castillo trade. During the 2023 season he went from Double-A, to Triple-A, to the big leagues. His OPS at each level was wildly consistent. In both Double-A and Triple-A he put up an OPS of .820. In his 35 games with the Reds to end the season he put up an OPS of .822.

Rhett Lowder was the next highest ranked Reds prospect. Lowder, who was the club’s 1st round draft pick in 2023, did not pitch after the draft. He went 15-0 at Wake Forest in 2023 and posted an ERA of 1.87 to go along with 24 walks and 143 strikeouts in 120.1 innings. The right-handed starter was just inside of the  top 50 on the Baseball Prospectus list, but came in at #60 on the Baseball America list.

The final prospect from the Cincinnati organization to make the list was another pitcher – Connor Phillips. He, like Marte, began his season in Double-A with Chattanooga before moving up to Triple-A Louisville and then making his big league debut late in the season with the Reds. Phillips was very good in the first half with the Lookouts, but the league was also experimenting with a pre-tacked baseball in the first half last year and pitching was notably better than the past. After a promotion to Triple-A, Phillips struggled with his control and his ERA jumped from 3.34 up to 4.69 while his strikeout rate took a big nose dive. After joining Cincinnati for five starts to end the year his ERA jumped up to 6.97. Of course, all of that stuff happened while Phillips was among the youngest pitchers in each league.

Reds add an additional minor league team

Cincinnati has added another team to their farm system. While there are limits to how many teams an organization can have in the United States due to the number of roster spots they can have (165 starting in 2024), that doesn’t apply to the Dominican Summer League. Many organizations already had two teams in the league – 20 of them, to be exact). This year the Reds join that group as they are adding a second team in the league.

That gives the organization seven minor league teams – the Louisville Bats, Chattanooga Lookouts, Dayton Dragons, Daytona Tortugas, Arizona Complex League Reds, and then the two Dominican Summer League Reds teams. That’s still one team short of what they had back in 2019 before Major League Baseball came in and cut all of the non-complex level rookie leagues, resulting in the Reds losing both the Billings Mustangs and Greeneville Reds clubs.