On Monday night Cincinnati Reds prospects Edwin Arroyo and Hector Rodriguez were both able to extend their hitting streaks in their respective winter leagues. And both of the hit streaks were extended to six game.
Edwin Arroyo didn’t play for the first couple of weeks of the Puerto Rican Winter League, but he joined Santurce in December and picked up a hit in each of his first two games. He slumped a little bit early on, though, but after going 0-4 on December 12th he came back the next day and went 4-5 with two doubles and an RBI. He’s picked up a hit in each of the five games since then, including going 1-3 with a walk and a run scored on Monday.
During the hitting streak he’s gone 12-24 with one walk, six runs batted in, and just two strikeouts. When his hitting streak began his OPS was just .646 through seven games. But now he’s hitting .353/.421/.471 and has seen his OPS jump to .892.
For as well as Arroyo has been hitting, Hector Rodriguez has been even hotter. Well, sort of. He did not play for about 10 days, but he was back in the lineup on Monday for Escogido. Rodriguez was riding a 5-game hitting streak from December 9th through the 13th and he didn’t miss a beat in his return to the team. The outfielder walked in his first plate appearance before picking up a single in the 3rd inning, a double off the wall in center in the 5th inning, and then crushing a 432-foot home run in the 6th inning. He finished the game 3-3 with a walk, double, home run, three runs scored, and four runs batted in.
Like Arroyo, Rodriguez didn’t join his team until a few weeks after the season began. The Dominican Winter League starts earlier than the Puerto Rican Winter League, so Rodriguez got his season started on November 5th. He got out to a slow start and was up-and-down for the first month or so, but he went 3-4 on December 9th and has been on an absolute heater ever since as he’s gone 12-24 with two home runs, a double, two triples, eight runs scored, and eight runs driven in. He’s walked once during the streak and hasn’t struck out.
The hot hitting of late has pushed his line to .301/.375/.504 with five doubles, three triples, and four home runs in 30 games for Escogido. Rodriguez has struck out just 13 times in 128 plate appearances – matching his walk total in the same span. With the amount of time he’s missed he’s just below the threshold to qualify for the league leader stats, but if he were eligible for them he’d be 9th in the league in average, 11th in on-base percentage, 2nd in slugging percentage, and 3rd in OPS. And he’s doing all of that while being the youngest player getting any sort of regular playing time in the league.