For 65 games, top Cincinnati Reds prospect Alfredo Duno mashed his way through Midwest League pitching for the A+ Dayton Dragons. He owned a .902 OPS while hitting .260/.390/.512, bashing 16 homers and driving in 47 runs while also serving as the team’s primary catcher.
Only two Midwest League players had more than Duno’s 16 homers as of Monday morning, one of them being his teammate Carter Graham, a 1B from Stanford University that the Reds drafted in the 8th round of the 2023 MLB Draft.
Those two
will still be teammates come Tuesday – it’ll just be with a different squad.
The Reds are promoting both Duno and Graham to AA Chattanooga, along with shortstop Carlos Sanchez and outfielder Kien Vu. Right-hander Jose Montero is joining them in the promotion as well, according to Joey DeBeradino of Dayton’s WDTN.
It’s quite the honor for that crew, so congratulations to them. It will also temporarily create a pretty potent bit of star power on the Lookouts if they don’t make promotions of their own up to AAA Louisville.
Outfielders Carlos Jorge and Jay Allen currently anchor things on the grass, with Jorge having a breakout season in CF and Allen, a former 1st round pick, having the best offensive season of his pro career. Vu, presumably, will slot in alongside those two to form a solid, athletic-as-can-be outfield. Sanchez, meanwhile, will likely get time alongside Leo Balcazar on the middle infield with fellow top prospect Cam Collier anchoring 3B and Graham holding down 1B.
There’s no blocking Duno, of course. 25 year old Cade Hunter has been Chattanooga’s primary catcher so far this season, but he’s barely sporting a .600 OPS. Safe to say the Lookouts are about to get a big boost behind the plate beginning this week.
It does beg the question whether the Class A Daytona Tortugas will be promoting any Reds prospects to help fill these openings. 23 year old C/1B Jacob Friend is having a whale of a season in the pitcher-friendly Florida State League, and obviously there are now available PA at the A+ level for him at both positions. You’d like to hope that Sanchez’s promotion would pave the way for top prospect Tyson Lewis, too, whose overall body of work isn’t great (.687 OPS in 236 PA) although he has heated up a lot of late (.308/.386/.538 in the month of June).
We’ll find out exactly which dominos begin to fall soon!
