CINCINNATI (WXIX) – Last season, as the Cincinnati Reds’ front office and coaching staff weighed which hitter to add to the big league roster in September, the group considered two prospects who had a real chance to spark the Reds’ offense.
The pick ended up being Sal Stewart, who looked great down the stretch in 2025 and will be a big part of the team’s plans again in 2026.
The other top prospect under consideration for a September call-up last year was outfielder Héctor Rodríguez.
“He played really well last year,” Nick Krall said recently. “At the end of the day, we could only take so many guys in September, so we ended up selecting Sal to the roster just because of the positional fit. We’re really excited for what (Rodríguez) can do. He’s going to come in this spring and compete for a spot. We’ll see what happens.”
Last September, if the Reds didn’t have six other outfielders competing for playing time in the big leagues, then Rodríguez could have been the rookie hitter making a splash in must-win games. The fact that he could have been called up in 2025 shows that the 21-year-old, left-handed hitting outfielder has a shot this spring. Krall said that Rodríguez can “absolutely” help the Reds in a big way in 2026. Rodríguez isn’t officially ranked as a top-100 prospect, but he probably should be and is in the same tier of prospect that Stewart and Spencer Steer were in before their debuts.
The Reds are still looking for outside help to boost their offense in 2026, evaluating both the free agent and the trade markets. They’re actively working to improve the roster.
But if you’re looking for hitters who could elevate the offense over the course of the season, Rodríguez can help, too.
“He can hit,” Terry Francona said. “He can flat out hit. And he’s getting better in the outfield. It’ll be fun to watch where he is. He’ll be a fun guy in spring training.”
For a Reds’ team that needs more offensive punch in left field, Rodríguez may end up being the most interesting player to watch in spring training.
“I’ll continue to focus on my game and my training,” Rodríguez said via interpreter Angel Gonzalez. “I appreciate that I’m in those conversations to have opportunities, and I’m looking forward to more in spring training to hopefully make the team.”
Rodríguez has played with Stewart since they were in Rookie Ball. They’ve come up through the Minor Leagues together and have always been the two best hitters on the team. After watching Stewart debut and have success in MLB last September, Rodríguez is looking forward to catching up with him.
“(Stewart) works hard,” Rodríguez said. “He’s focused on his craft. I want to do that, and maybe even do it a bit better than Sal. That’s my goal, to get that opportunity and hopefully show what I can do.”
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Who remembers who the Reds got in return for Tommy Pham at the 2022 trade deadline? That would be Nick Northcut, who’s now playing in an independent league. Who remembers who the Reds got in return for Brandon Drury? That would be Victor Acosta, who has spent the last two years in High-A Dayton and is a career .231 hitter in the Minor Leagues.
Who remembers who the Reds got for Tyler Naquin?
The Reds took fliers on two 18-year-olds in that deal in 2022. Naquin ended up struggling with the New York Mets, which turned into the last real chance of his career to hit at the big league level. In return for Naquin, the Reds landed two unheralded players from the Mets’ Rookie Ball team.
One of them was Héctor Rodríguez, who didn’t show up on any top prospects lists at the time.
“You try to pick the guys you like, but when they’re that young there’s still so much development,” Reds general manager Brad Meador said. “You never know. He’s a great kid, he works his butt off and he can hit.”
Rodríguez joined the Reds’ organization in the middle of the 2022 season and only got to play seven games of Rookie Ball with his new team. He opened the 2023 season in Low-A Daytona, where he had to compete for playing time with minor league outfielders who were more well known at the time.
Rodríguez had a pretty good 2023 season. But what happened next, between October of 2023 and February of 2024, sped up his development and turned Rodríguez into the prospect that he has become.
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The Dominican Winter League is so intense that managers in the league just get fired because of a single losing streak. It’s the only chance that professional players from the Dominican Republic get the chance to play at home, so they take it very seriously.
The league has six teams and a 50-game season. Rosters are filled with names that you’d recognize, including big leaguers who are looking to bounce back from a down year or get some reps in after missing time due to injuries. Most players in the Dominican Winter League have played in the big leagues or will play in the big leagues soon.
The rest of the Dominican Winter League is mostly filled with players who are experienced minor leaguers. Big league All-Stars also make cameos for a few games every year.
The Dominican Winter League is a very advanced level for a 19-year-old to be playing at, which Rodríguez did in 2023-24.
“Winter ball does such an awesome thing for players because you play to win every night,” Reds farm director Jeremy Farrell said. “Whether it’s the accountability factor, the ability to show up, the ability to move a runner with the game on the line, the championship-winning baseball things that maybe in the (U.S.) show up later in the Minor League season or in playoff baseball, that’s every night in winter ball.”
Heading into the 2024 season, a 19-year-old Héctor Rodríguez wanted to play.
He was a part of team Escogido, which had the best offense in the league. The average age for a position player on that team was 27. The only other 19-year-old on that team at that time was Junior Caminero, who’s currently an MLB All-Star and is already an AL MVP candidate on the Tampa Bay Rays.
Four guys on the 2023-24 Escogido team had experience as everyday players in the big leagues. Guardians All-Star Jose Ramirez joined the team for 10 games. Just about every hitter on Escogido has already gone on to play in MLB. It was a talented group.
The 19-year-old Rodríguez had to earn his place.
“I worked my way onto that team,” Rodríguez said. “My training and my work paid off. They gave me the opportunity to show what I can do, and I took advantage of it to be able to get those at-bats and that playing time.”
Rodríguez was so good that he ended up hitting in the middle of Escogido’s lineup every night. Rodríguez won the league’s Rookie of the Year award by hitting .309 with an .831 OPS.
“Going to Winter Ball, I learned a lot about the game, about myself and about how I can become a better ball player,” Rodríguez said. “For me, the confidence came from playing the game and not focusing on the outside noise. The more reps you get, the more comfortable you get. I want to continue to work on that and get as many reps as possible to grow.”
Being a part of Escogido helped show Rodríguez how to play the game. He was on a team full of veterans who had been in his shoes. Those veterans showed him the ropes, gave him feedback and stressed the details.
“It sounds like the guys embraced him and took him under his wing,” Farrell said. “He has really flourished performance-wise since then. You’ve seen him take more pride in his defense. Take more pride in his base running. He plays with more confidence. He speaks with more confidence. Looking back at that time, that’s when his career really started to take off.”
Rodríguez’s success in Winter Ball put him on the radar. He opened the 2024 season in Dayton and had a good year. When the season ended, he played another season with Escogido. Rodríguez’s Dominican Winter League team won the title in 2024-25 under manager Albert Pujols.
Then in the minor league season in 2025, Rodríguez hit .283 with a .785 OPS and 19 homers (many of them playing in a big Chattanooga home ballpark) between Double-A and Triple-A while being one of the youngest guys on each team.
“What he has done over the last few years in the Dominican Winter League, it’s helped him speed up his development process,” Krall said.
Meador said, “It’s done everything for him. Because of the competition there, the pressure and how good of a winter league that is, and being around big leaguers, it’s given him a lot of confidence to know how good of a hitter he is. And it’s helped him in the outfield, too.”
This winter, in 31 games with Escogido, Rodríguez is hitting .301 with a .879 OPS as he has his best Winter Ball season. Reds hitting coach Chris Valaika said that watching from afar, what’s impressed him the most is that Rodríguez has an even strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Rodríguez is taking another step this winter as he prepares for big league spring training.
“It feels like he has played three straight full years baseball because he won’t stop playing,” Meador said. “This year, I called Jeremy (Farrell) and said, ‘Can you talk to Héctor and see how long he’s going to play over there? Because we’re going to need him.”
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Last summer, Rodríguez was taking an at-bat in Triple-A. He fouled off one pitch. Then another. Then another. Finally, on the 10th pitch of the at-bat, Rodríguez smoked a 108 mph line drive up the middle for a base hit.
Triple-A outfielder Rece Hinds watched the at-bat. Then, he checked the iPad in the dugout to see where the pitchers were thrown.
None of them were in the zone.
“The fact that he can make hard contact on the barrel so consistently is an incredible thing,” Hinds said.
Rodríguez’s hit-tool gets rave reviews from his teammates.
Chase Burns said, “He’s crazy. The way that he’s able to adjust. He’s not the biggest guy. But with the power he has in his bat and in his hands, he’s dangerous. Hopefully we get to see him soon.”
Sal Stewart said, “There are some pitches that he hits that make you scratch your head. How did he even do that? It leaves me speechless at times. He’s a one-of-a-kind hitter. He’s really, really special. His bat speed is through the roof. He can hit for power, hit for average, hit balls inside the zone or outside the zone. It’s really impressive. He’s a good buddy of mine. People better watch out when he comes through.”
Rodríguez said that his elite ability as a “bad ball hitter” is a “gift from God.”
Rodríguez says that his power comes from his training. “A lot of exercises, drills. A lot of it is the work outside when no one is looking.”
He’s an intriguing style of hitter — an aggressive swinger who’s looking to do damage and has a swagger in the batter’s box. Farrell jokes that Rodríguez could “roll out of bed and get a couple of knocks.” Rodríguez isn’t an old school slugger, and Valaika describes him as “twitchy.” Kind of like Noelvi Marte, Rodríguez’s type of power translates into 110 mph line drives more than 450-foot home runs.
“He hits the ball extremely hard,” Valaika said. “He’s special. I’m really looking forward to hearing the ball come off that bat. It’s a different sound.”
Since he can make contact with just about any pitch, Rodríguez also strikes out at an unbelievable, incredibly low rate — he struck out just 15% of the time in the Minors in 2025 (86 strikeouts all season in 575 at-bats!), and just 30 total qualified big league hitters posted a better strikeout rate than that last season (none of those 30 hitters were on the Reds).
Just because Rodríguez can hit a pitch in the dirt doesn’t mean that he always has to swing at it. Even though he rarely strikes out, the big focus has been being more selective and taking a few more walks.
“We know how well he can impact the ball,” Valaika said. “He can do some special things with his bat-to-ball skills. Something with him has been controlling the strike zone as a priority. He improved from his time in the minor leagues. Getting to the big leagues, there will be an acclimation and some adjustments. If he shows the adjustments that he has made and taken into winter ball, I’m really excited to see what that looks like in the big leagues.”
The other big focus for Rodríguez has been improving his outfield defense, which has gotten better but has been a weakness in his game.
He began his professional career as a second baseman. While Rodríguez really turned some heads at the plate last spring, Francona said that there were still a few “adventures” with him in the outfield. Getting more reps in the outfield during the offseason has been one of the biggest benefits of having Rodríguez play in Winter Ball.
Rodríguez steals double-digit bases every year in the minor leagues, so he has the athletic tools to translate into a solid left fielder. Francona said on Saturday, “He has worked really hard improving his outfield skills.”
The Reds’ options in left field on the roster right now include Will Benson, JJ Bleday and Dane Myers, as well as Spencer Steer on days where Sal Stewart is at first base. It’s still realistic that the Reds will add another outfielder to the roster between now and Opening Day.
But even if they get that done, Rodríguez should still get plenty of opportunities over the course of the season.
Whenever he gets the call up to MLB and officially joins the Reds — whether that’s Opening Day or during the summer — Rodríguez will be in a similar position to where he was with Escogido in 2023-24: He’ll be the young guy on a team that’s trying to win and in a lineup that needs a young impact bat in the middle of the order. Rodríguez’s experience in the Dominican Republic during the winter has helped prepare him for his MLB debut when that comes.
“I just want the opportunity,” Rodríguez said, “And I want to take advantage of it whenever it comes.”
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