In Arizona Fall League news, shortstop Carlos Sanchez smashed a homer for the Peoria Javelinas over the weekend.
Sanchez, who surged up prospect lists on the back of an excellent 2026 season that saw him hit a combined .270/.376/.440 in 579 PA split between High-A Dayton and AA Chattanooga – has settled in nicely in AFL ball so far. As of Monday morning, he was hitting .250/.400/.464 across 8 games played.
Speaking of AFL play, the Reds finally got a chance to see former top draft pick Luke Holman
do some dealing under the lights in a game of moderate importance. The former LSU star and 2nd round pick of the Reds back in 2024 has dealt with injury problems since just about the day he signed with Cincinnati, and he’d logged a grand total of just 15.2 IP as a professional prior to this AFL campaign. In a pair of appearances for Peoria, though, he has looked the part, firing 5.0 IP and allowing just a lone earned run while fanning 10 against a lone walk. Given the dearth of top pitching prospects in the Reds system at the moment, getting the Holman they thought they drafted over two years ago back at the caliber they then hoped would be quite the boon. Doug Gray at Reds Minor Leagues had more details on his fine first start down in the Land of the Endless Strip Mall.
In an effort to turn the Boston Red Sox into a World Series contender again, here’s one trade ideathat would land them Cincinnati superstar Elly De La Cruz. It includes Cincinnati landing #2 overall prospect Franklin Arias, which is nice and shiny, but it also involves the Cincinnati Reds trading away the most talented player in the sport today, and just consider that as something we all have to deal with for a second. The Reds have just that, yet are so poorly put together that moving on from him might be the one single way they can continue to subsist. What an indictment of how bad off things are around these parts.
Speaking of how poorly run this franchise is, Joey Votto chimed in on how bad-off the team’s investment in analytics and performance is relative to their peers in a talk with The Enquirer over the weekend. He’s not wrong. In fact, he’s right, because he’s Joey Votto. If the powers that be had any sort of clue what they were doing, Joey would be running the show here already.
Of course, Joey-in-charge would trade Elly for a franchise-altering haul of younger players. He doesn’t hate the player, he just knows the game.
Here’s a godawful attempt at a trade proposal that would send Elly to the New York Yankees. Get ready to be baraged with this kind of crud for the next two years.
No, of course I’d never send you to such a link.
Former University of Cincinnati star Ian Happ is a free agent this winter after his deal with the Chicago Cubs lapsed, and he unsurprisingly had positive things to say about Cincinnati itself when asked about one of the 30 potential professional teams that could provide him with his next contract to play professional baseball. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, kids.
Finally, MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon ID’d a trio of Cincinnati Reds prospects on whom we should keep our eyes heading into 2027. I have moderate faith in a grand total of one of these players to actually turn into a serviceable big leaguer, but if you’ve got nothing better to do you can dream on the other two, too.
