As of the morning of May 29th, there have been 171 players who have logged at least 120 plate appearances at the AAA level so far this season. Noelvi Marte is one of them, and none of the other players in that group has hit for a higher average (.371) than him.
He ranks fifth among that group with a 1.005 OPS, surrounded on the leaderboard by familiar names like Rece Hinds (1.045, 4th) and Edwin Arroyo (.960, 14th). Unlike Hinds, though, his 15.8% strikeout rate ranks among the toughest to fan among that sample,
ranking as the 15th lowest.
These are nice numbers. Very nice, very good numbers, indeed. They aren’t at all the numbers the Cincinnati Reds are looking for, however, as they gauge whether or not to bring Marte back into the big league fold.
At the big league level to begin the 2026 season, Marte struggled mightily with these traditional production stats, but more than anything he struggled with many of the underlying ones hitting coaches everywhere break down on film each day. In particular, Marte posted a 45.8% O-Swing% in his time with the Reds, a mark that measures how often a player swung at pitches that were located outside of the strike zone. Among the 309 players who logged at least 30 PA through April 14th – the day Marte was optioned back to AAA due to his struggles – that ranked 9th highest in the sport.
The prevailing sentiment about the gap between big league pitching and the pitching in AAA ball right now isn’t so much about ‘stuff’ as it is about ‘command.’ In AAA, a ball two inches outside the zone is often a trackable delivery that’s simply missing its spot, a pitch intended to be a strike that simply wasn’t accurate enough. That’s the kind of pitch where expanding the zone doesn’t hurt so much, as chasing a four-seamer with a bit of a longer swing can still produce excellent contact. Pitches two inches outside the zone at the big league level, though, are so often there by design – pitches with enough movement to look like they’re going to be in the meat of the zone only to dive just out of reach at the very last.
The worry early with Marte was that while he was producing at the AAA level after being sent down, a lot of that was still coming by swinging at pitch locations that would penalize him, and the Reds offense, if he kept that up upon returning to the bigs. So far with the Bats, though, Marte has begun to rein in those tendencies, and so far sports just a 35.4% O-Swing% at the AAA level this year. That’s much more in-line with where he was at the big league level in 2025 (33.0%) and at AAA last year (35.1%), suggesting that he’s beginning to target the right kind of pitches at which to swing in lieu of free-swinging in a way that simply won’t work at the highest level.
That’s half the equation for Marte fighting his way back onto the active roster of the Reds. The other, of course, is where the heck he’s going to play, something the Reds have been attempting to figure out since the moment they acquired him from the Seattle Mariners.
The Reds picked him up as a SS, and promptly began working him there, at 3B, and even at 2B for a time. We all know their insistence on upgraded defense over his at 3B last summer led to the fateful decision to acquire Ke’Bryan Hayes, a move that shifted Marte to a corner outfield spot where he’d never played before. He’s still getting run in RF so far this season, yet in each of his most recent appearances with the Bats he’s started and played exclusively in CF – something that has coincided with the AAA outfield losing Rece Hinds to the Marlins and Blake Dunn to the big league roster.
Clearly, Reds brass is doing their best to equip him to be the most versatile version of himself defensively in order to get him back on the roster in some form, at some point. The more positions he can play, the fewer pitches he chases will continue to inch him closer to a return to the Reds, something that seems inevitable if he continues to perform at this type of level.
The biggest problem for him now, though, is that the Reds have seemingly found a lineup at the big league level that’s producing well enough without him. Dunn has become the apple of Terry Francona’s eye atop the order and in CF, his speed and defense calling cards being buttressed by more offense (especially against RHP) than most anyone anticipated. That’s beside JJ Bleday carving out a vital everyday role in one outfield corner, while Spencer Steer has had perhaps the hottest bat on the club besides Bleday for the last month while, more often than not, occupying the other outfield corner – that’s because 3B/1B/DH have been seized by Sal Stewart, Eugenio Suarez, and Nathaniel Lowe.
Even if the Reds were to call time on Matt McLain at 2B for a bit, sliding Steer to 2B and calling up Marte for a corner OF spot might not be the most direct move. Arroyo has hit so damn well and is deserving of his own shot at big league pitching, and he’s a more natural fit for 2B in that alignment. And if Dunn begins to struggle as big league pitching gets more of a book on him, there’s a real chance he still sticks around as the 26th man due to his defense and speed while the club turns CF back over to TJ Friedl once more in hopes that the latter can fully shrug off the slump he began the 2026 deeply within.
So, the 24 year old Marte sure looks like he’s going to have to marinate with Louisville for a while longer, barring some catastrophe. And if that’s still the case come July, we’ll find out if there’s another team out there who, during trade season, might have bigger eyes for the future of Marte than the Reds do – especially if it means the Reds get something for a playoff push they can more readily use in 2026.
